Ran 4/4/08

ANYTIME

SHORTIES THE MORGAN LIBRARY PHILIP GUSTON

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NEW YORK CITY — From May 2 through August 31, the Morgan Library and Museum presents the first retrospective of Philip Guston (1913–1980) drawings in 20 years. Featuring approximately 75 drawings from the mid-1940s to 1980, the exhibition will examine the importance of drawing in Guston’s art.

Guston was a prolific draftsman who often turned to drawing to explore new directions in his art before transposing them to painting. Several times during the course of his career he stopped painting altogether to concentrate on drawing. Such phases mark the dramatic changes that characterized Guston’s art from figuration to abstraction and vice versa.

In the early fifties, as he was embarking on a major phase of abstract painting, Guston explored the power of simple lines in drawings reminiscent of exercises in calligraphy. In the late sixties, Guston spent two years making drawings of startling economy before dramatically shifting to the cartoon-like imagery that would be typical of the last decade of his art. In a transformation that shocked the art world in 1970, Guston returned to depictions of everyday objects, such as shoes, books and irons.

Organized in cooperation with the artist’s estate, the exhibition includes many rarely-seen works that were left in the artist’s studio after his death, as well as major loans from museums and private collections. The exhibition is organized by the KunstMuseum in Bonn, where it premiered in March 2007, and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, and will travel to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and the Albertina in Vienna before it comes to the Morgan — the only American venue.

The Morgan Library and Museum is at 225 Madison Avenue. For more information, www.themorgan.org or 212-685-0008.

Illustrated Medieval Hunting Treatise

Exhibit At The Morgan Library

Ran 4/4/08 Page 62

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SHORTIES THE MORGAN LIBRARY LIVRE DE LA CHASSE

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NEW YORK CITY — The most influential medieval treatise on hunting was written by Gaston Phebus between 1387 and 1389. The 46 surviving manuscripts and numerous printed edition of Livre de la Chasse is at the Morgan Library and Museum. It is one of the two most luxuriously illustrated manuscripts; the other, in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, was made at the same time and also contains 87 miniatures. Both were made in Paris about 1407 and were probably commissioned by John the Fearless.

Since the manuscript had to be disbound — for reasons of conservation and the preparation of a facsimile — the Morgan will exhibit as many leaves with miniatures as possible, from April 18 to July 20, providing the public with a unique opportunity to “walk” through the manuscripts, as well as to turn the pages of the facsimile.

Four parts of the exhibition will show miniatures from the four books of the treatise which deal with domestic and wild animals, the nature and care of dogs, instructions to hunters with dogs and the use of various snares and crossbows by hunters.

Another part will comprise other hunting-related manuscripts and printed books, including among the latter the famous St Albans’s Hunting of 1486 and the first illustrated version Livre de la chasse (circa 1505–07).

The Morgan Library and Museum is at 225 Madison Avenue. For more information, www.themorgan.org or 212-685-0008.