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ENRICHING YOUR MODERN ART EXPERIENCE
Feel intimidated by abstract art? Join Director Kinney Frelinghuysen as he guides and enriches your understanding of modern art using Cubist masters from the collection. PLEASE REGISTER 637-0166-limit 24.
August 6@11am – 20th Century Revolution in Art--Review art history with emphasis on American Abstract Artists and Suzy Frelinghuysen, touching on why women are depreciated in art. View slides and paintings. Merritt Abrash Professor Emeritus, RPI.
August 20@11am--Exercises in Color and Shape –Mix paint colors and/or colored paper and shapes to experience the process behind creating modern art. Bring in an example of a work of art for discussion. Kinney Frelinghuysen, Sean McCusker, artists.
COST- price of admission, house tour add-on $5.
Bombay to Bali
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio in Lenox, MA, opens its season June 24th with a new exhibit featuring rare, restored film footage from Morris’1934 Far Eastern voyage. Shot with an artist’s eye, the 10-minute black & white, silent films capture colonial, pre-WWII India, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, China and Japan. Ancient temples, World Heritage sites, artistic monuments as well as daily life, dances and celebrations are depicted in these soothing, yet riveting films. Diary excerpts and sculptures and paintings from and commemorating the trip are exhibited next to the four flat screens installed in the Studio.
In addition to the new exhibit, lifetime learning workshops and lectures are offered in the Classroom for one hour for the price of admission. An additional fee to add on a House & Studio tour will be applied.
August 6@11am – 20th Century Revolution in Art--Review art history with emphasis on American Abstract Artists and Suzy Frelinghuysen, touching on why women are depreciated in art. View slides and paintings. Merritt Abrash Professor Emeritus, RPI.
August 20@11am--Exercises in Color and Shape –Mix paint colors and/or colored paper and shapes to experience the process behind creating modern art. Bring in an example of a work of art for discussion. Kinney Frelinghuysen, Sean McCusker, artists.
FMHS featured in The Berkshire Eagle, From Angkor forest to Aurangabad,
"The Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio in Lenox is now expanding its repertoire beyond the abstract", writes Berkshire Eagle writer Abigail Wood. "I think why I was interested in putting the show up is it was pretty daring for us to try this multimedia experience," said Kinney Frelinghuysen, director and nephew of Suzy Frelinghuysen. The exhibit, called “Bombay to Bali,” will screen rare, restored film footage from an Asian voyage that George T.K. Morris took with his younger brother in 1934, as well as diary excerpts, paintings and artifacts such as Morris’ sticker-covered suitcase and the camera he used to make the film.
This exhibit is quite out of the ordinary for the museum, explained Kinney Frelinghuysen.
“We try and get people to understand abstract art, and what that means is you try and look at something like [a painting by Morris] and you try and get a feeling for the dynamic properties of it, what makes it active,” he said. This particular exhibit, however, does not examine any of Morris’ abstract work; it looks at commemorative paintings of the trip not in his known style. Although the paintings are beautiful, the real focal point of this exhibit is the film footage. Four newly installed flat screens loop ten-minute black and white silent film scenes from pre- WWII India, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, China and Japan.
Titles like “Aurangabad Street Scenes” and “More ruins in the Angkor Jungle” precede images of everything from World Heritage sites to ancient temples to people performing dances and rituals.
As a retrospective, the films can be emotionally powerful. Each shot is seen through an artist’s eye — the composition is beautiful for such early film equipment. A lack of crowds at what are now tourist hot-spots reminds the viewer of a time when long-distance travel was not so easy. This, along with the absence of sound and color, arouse a feeling of sentimentality for simpler and calmer times.
Frelinghuysen, however, believes his uncle was not attempting to make any social commentary when deciding what to film.
“He’s never seen himself as a social critic or a political critic… There’s sort of a commentary there that people have been exploited, but he’s very neutral and very level-headed and nonjudgmental, just listing stuff as he goes, so you can draw your own conclusions,” he said. Although only excerpts of Morris’ vast travel diaries are included in the exhibit, just this glimpse creates a completely new perspective of both the film images and the artist that took them. Morris’ language in the entries is precise — listing everything he sees and experiences from an artist’s point of view — yet also extremely poetic, as if he could separate the lines into stanzas. On scrawled pages next to the video screens, his vocabulary and attention to detail suggest that a young Morris was taking in all the artistic energies around him for use in future paintings.
“In his diaries, he’s going into these Buddhist and Hindu temples and he’s making comments about the dynamism of the temples or the sculptures and carvings,” Frelinghuysen said. “And so I thought this was a wonderful way of seeing that all through his life he’s looking for those qualities… he’s very sensitive to artistic and cultural differences.”
The qualities Frelinghuysen speaks of are the dynamic properties of abstract art. In analyzing and comparing early Eastern art with modern Western forms, Morris was searching for those dynamic properties which would later define much of his own work, Frelinghuysen said.
It remains unclear exactly what plans Morris had for the 1934 film, Frelinghuysen said. Morris planned the trip meticulously. His younger brother had just graduated from college, and Morris himself would soon be married to Suzy Frelinghuysen.
“Maybe this was a kind of a world-tour experience as two bachelors,” Kinny Frelinghuysen said. “This is really just a celebration that we found [the films and diaries] and that we put it together."
How We Care-Environmental Monitoring Program Installed
A year-long monitoring program has begun @ FMH&S with the installation of an outdoor “Weather Station” and 27 indoor dataloggers, pollutant dataloggers, and microstations placed on walls, in wall and ceiling cavities and crawl spaces.
These American made devices by Purofil and Onset Computer Company measure and record temperature, relative humidity and pollutants and this information will be downloaded once a month to a super-computer. Analysis of this complex data, along with weather station data which collects outdoor temperature, precipitation, humidity and solar gain, will begin after one year, pending grant approval from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This information will be used to understand climate activity and solve problems such as moisture migration through walls.
“We can’t solve problems with the building until we have more facts,” remarked Kinney Frelinghuysen, Director of FMH&S. “This building shows complex deterioration issues because of its design. We’ve done roof and skylight repairs, added UV filters to windows and installed climate control. We want to be sure that the humidity level is safe for both the artwork and the building.”
FMH&S has been pursuing conservation advice and grants since its inception in l998.
This latest project was advised in the Long Range Preservation Plan, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities’ grant. The design of the environmental monitoring program was funded by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and designed by Wendy Jessup, Conservator, and Michael C. Henry, Engineer/Architect.
Calder Mobile lent to Berkshire Museum
In 1933, George L.K.Morris and Alexander Calder exhibited together at the Berkshire Museum. Morris most likely purchased the mobile from Calder at that time. The two artists went on to exhibit at the highly publicized "Five Contemporary American Concretionists" show in 1936 at the Reinhardt Galleries in New York.
The mobile's installation in the Crane Room at the Berkshire Museum celebrates the homecoming for the Calder collection which has been on tour in New York, Paris, and Toronto. The Berkshire Museum was the first to give Calder a public commission, the mobiles in the theater. They also gave Morris his first exhibit.
Morris painting enlarged as giant outdoor screen in Seoul, Korea
“Indian Composition”, a 1942 George L.K. Morris painting owned by the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. has been replicated and enlarged to 150’ tall to screen a luxury condominium project in Seoul, Korea. The condominiums are called Mega Hills and sell for $3 million dollars. They are located in the fashionable Gangnam section of Seoul, on Cheongdam Street which is sometimes referred to as the Fashion and Art Street or Rodeo Street, referring to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California.
Mega-Mark, the construction company for the project, chose the Morris work for the giant screen to express the artistic and modern flavor of their high end condominiums in a neighborhood full of art galleries and boutiques.
Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio in Lenox, which owns the copyright to the painting, was paid a fee for the use of the image. Director Kinney Frelinghuysen would not disclose the figure but remarked, “It pays for the fully assessed property taxes the Foundation pays to the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge.” He added, “I love that a piece of artwork shown in Seoul can be used to beautify a construction project and pay for schoolbooks in Lenox and Stockbridge”.
FMHS featured in Art & Antiques
“Of all the towns that could have played host to New England’s first modernist building, Lenox, Mass., is among the least likely. When Mrs. Astor’s 400 finished summering at their extravagant, ironically named "cottages" in Newport, R.I., they would shift to Lenox, in the Berkshires, for several more weeks before returning to Manhattan in the fall. Lenox’s cottages embraced many architectural styles, but modernism definitely was not among them,” writes Art and Antiques journalist Sheila Gibson Stoodley. Read the full article
FMHS featured in The Berkshire Eagle, Artists at Home
"Of all the historic houses in Berkshire County, the only one in which I feel the presence of non-ghostly inhabitants is the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio in Lenox," writes Berkshire Eagle reporter Milton Bass. "The art that George L.K. Morris and his wife, Suzy Frelinghuysen, incorporated into the very essence of their home gives you the feeling that at any moment one of them may step in from an adjoining room.
Both George and Suzy were culminations of America's social and moneyed elite. George was descended from General Lewis Morris, one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Suzy was the granddaughter of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State for President Chester A. Arthur. George's family was fabulously wealthy, while Suzy's was comfortably wealthy. One of the most interesting things about them is that their luxurious life style did not deaden their seriousness about their artistic endeavors.
George knew early that he wanted to be an artist and studied at the Art Students League in New York after graduation from Yale. He then went on to Paris, where he studied with Fernand Leger and Amadee Ozenfant at the Academie Moderne. Cubism then became the base on which his personal art grew and flourished.
Suzy's background was more musical than any other discipline. It wasn't until her marriage to George in 1935 that she began painting under his tutelage. She started with Cubist collages in which she inserted carefully torn pages of opera programs and scores.
Old habits die hard, however, and in 1947 she returned to her first love, music, and won the title role in the New York City Opera's production of "Ariadne auf Naxos." The critics were wildly enthusiastic, especially after she performed the title role in "Tosca." However, she never lost her painterly zeal and returned to it full bore upon her musical retirement in 1951.
George never lost sight of his grail of "purity," and his works extended his abstractions despite the negative assessments by the leading art critics in the 1930s and 1940s.
George had built his studio in Lenox near his parents' great house, Brookhurst, on returning from his studies in Paris. It was the first modern architecture seen in New England. In 1941, he and Suzy decided to spend more time in the Berkshires and they commissioned Stockbridge architect John Butler Swann to design a house that would impeccably attach to the studio. Swann, who had spent time in Arizona and New Mexico, came up with a two-story stucco and glass block house that catches your attention no matter how many modern structures you have encountered. George created a large mural across the wall connecting the house and garage.
Meanwhile, Suzy and George attended the Art Students League in New York, where they studied the medieval art of fresco. George installed his frescoes in the living room, and Suzy did hers for the dining room. Encountering these frescoes today is like entering one of the Egyptian tombs in the Valley of the Kings where the bright colors dazzle your eyes and you know the drawings will never be too old to amaze.
Going through the Frelinghuysen Morris house gives you the same feeling, as you encounter exciting visual experiences one after another room after room.
The exhibition this year is profusely titled "Faces of Modern Art -- Vintage photographs of the artists from the Collection paired with their art work."
George was not only an artist but also a collector and he was equally creative at both. The house has works by Leger, Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Braque, and with each painting is a photograph taken by George or Suzy during visits to the artists in France. Missing from the collection is a Picasso painting titled "The Poet." Rich as he was, Morris ran into cost overruns while building his house, and his trust fund was at a limit. Consequently, he sold the Picasso to heiress Peggy Guggenheim for $4,500, to go in her new museum in Venice.
Along with the exhibitions at the museum, there is covey of lectures planned for July weekends dealing with modern paintings, furniture and architecture.
Well-trained guides, sometimes including Director Kinney Frelinghuysen, Suzy's nephew, conduct the tours of the house and studio. There is also a beautifully produced, hour-long video that gives perspective on the famous couple and their lifestyle. It is shown in the adjacent office and archive building.
George Morris was killed in an automobile accident in Lenox in 1975, and Suzy died in 1988. Her will stated that their house and art collection were to be used for an educational purpose. That has come true in all aspects. But there is also the added joy of spending time with two incredible people and the art they created."
Morris painting brings $104,000 at Auction
A 1957 painting by the late George L.K. Morris was sold for $104,500 at Christie’s Auction House, New York, in their “Important American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture” sale May 20th. The price was well above Christie’s estimate of $50-70,000 but still below Morris’ auction record of $169,000 reached last May at Sotheby’s Auction House.
Titled, “Labyrinth”; the painting measures 49x36 inches. It was sold by The Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey to benefit their Acquisition Endowment fund. The museum had acquired it directly from the artist in 1974, the year before his death.
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio Director Kinney Frelinghuysen commented that "it is unfortunate for such a beautiful painting to be removed from public view" as it will now go into a private collection.
Morris’ paintings, sculptures, frescoes and archives and those of his wife Suzy Frelinghuysen, can be viewed at the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio in Lenox, MA in their International-style house, along with their collection of Master Cubist paintings. The house-museum is opens June 25 for hourly guided tours Thursday-Sunday.
FMHS Featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"For a culture vulture, whizzing through the Hudson River Valley and across the Berkshires in Massachusetts en route to somewhere else can be frustrating," writes Post-Gazette reporter Mackenzie Carpenter. Read the full article
Here's what people are saying...
"A window into a world that participated intimately in the art of mid-20th century America..."
Claire
"Their love of art permeates the grounds and seeps into our souls..."
Alfred
"This was the best museum experience I've ever had..."
Evelyn
"We came away from the visit energized and enthusiastic and thoroughly impressed..."
Jay
"It's so rare to find a house tour where all the furniture hasn't been looted..."
Edward,curator
"There is a friendliness and excitement that one doesn't find in bigger museums..."
Anna
"I wish I could have known them..."
Shirley
"You feel like they would walk in at any moment..."
Alessandra
"The simplicity of the architecture allows the nature around it to become more in focus..."
Rod
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio Featured in The World of Interiors
"'Park Avenue Cubists' George Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen were a defiantly nonconformist presence in the conventional world of Forties Massachusetts. The ample fruits of their aesthetic rebellion — their own Abstract frescoes and pieces by celebrated artist friends — can still be seen in the couple's newly restored home, as Carol Prisant discovers..."
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