Yank Shonibare, Artist, b. 1962, London

'Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina' 2017

ENLIGHTENED PRINCESSES: CAROLINE, AUGUSTA, CHARLOTTE, AND THE SHAPING OF THE MODERN WORLD

THURSDAY 2ND FEBRUARY - SUNDAY 30TH APRIL, 2017

Specially commissioned new artwork by Yinka Shonibare MBE: Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina, 2017

Exhibition: Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World at Yale Center for British Art

This exhibition will explore the story of three remarkable German princesses: Caroline of Ansbach, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, all of whom married into the British royal family in the eighteenth century. Caroline and Charlotte became queens consort to George II and George III respectively; Princess Augusta never achieved this distinction but held the titles of Princess of Wales and Princess Dowager, and was mother to King George III.

Through their wide-ranging intellectual, social, and political interests, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte helped to shape court culture and the age in which they lived, and would leave a lasting legacy. They encouraged the greatest philosophers, scientists, artists, and architects of the day; and they brought art, music, dance, enlightened conversation, and experimentation into the palaces and royal gardens, and supported industry, trade, and imperial ambition. The exhibition will include many important works of art and manufacture, which belonged to these women and their families, or were commissioned by them. Works by Hans Holbein, William Kent, Allan Ramsay, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Johan Zoffany, and many more will be on display. Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World is a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art. It will be on view at the Center in spring 2017 and then at Kensington Palace from June 22 to November 12, 2017. The lead curator is Joanna Marschner, Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, assisted by Samantha Howard, Curatorial Assistant. The organizing curator at the Center is Amy Meyers, Director, who is assisted by Lisa Ford, Assistant Director of Research; Glenn Adamson, Senior Research Associate; and Tyler Griffith, Postdoctoral Research Associate.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication of the same title, a beautifully illustrated catalogue of works edited by Joanna Marschner, with the assistance of David Bindman and Lisa Ford. Co-published with Historic Royal Palaces in association with Yale University Press, the book will feature contributions by an international team of scholars.

 

 

 yinkashonibarembe.com

Bio

Yinka Shonibare MBE was born in 1962 in London and moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to London to study Fine Art, first at Byam School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College) and then at Goldsmiths College, where he received his MFA.

Shonibare’s work explores issues of race and class through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and film. Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. His trademark material is the brightly coloured ‘African’ batik fabric he buys in London. This type of fabric was inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s the material became a new sign of African identity and independence.

Shonibare was a Turner prize nominee in 2004, and was also awarded the decoration of Member of the ‘Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ or MBE, a title he has added to his professional name. Shonibare was notably commissioned by Okwui Enwezor at Documenta 11, Kassel, in 2002 to create his most recognised work ‘Gallantry and Criminal Conversation’ that launched him on to an international stage. He has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and internationally at leading museums. In September 2008, his major mid-career survey commenced at the MCA Sydney and then toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. He was elected as a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy, London in 2013.

Shonibare’s work, ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was the 2010 Fourth Plinth Commission, and was displayed in Trafalgar Square, London, until January 2012. It was the first commission by a black British artist and was part of a national fundraising campaign organized by the Art Fund and the National Maritime Museum, who have now successfully acquired the sculpture for permanent display outside the museum's new entrance in Greenwich Park, London.

In 2012, the Royal Opera House, London, commissioned ‘Globe Head Ballerina’ (2012) to be displayed on the exterior of the Royal Opera House, overlooking Russell Street in Covent Garden. The life-sized ballerina encased within a giant ‘snow globe’ spins slowly as if caught mid-dance, the piece appears to encapsulate a moment of performance as if stolen from the stage of the Royal Opera House.

In 2014, Doughty Hanson & Co Real Estate and Terrace Hill, commissioned ‘Wind Sculpture’ and it is installed in Wilcox Place, London. Measuring 6 metres by 3 metres, it explores the notion of harnessing movement through the idea of capturing and freezing a volume of wind in a moment in time.

Shonibare’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including the Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands.

Liz Burris, Student Work

Dimensions & Materials : (5) 18"x12" Foam Blocks, Acrylic Paint

Site: Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, Florida

Artist Statement:

As an artist I feel it is important to have a voice.

I was motivated by Donald Trump's 2018 Budget Plan and my personal stance against it. For this piece I created five tombstones, made from foam blocks and painted them with acrylic paint. The five tombstones represent the death of just a few of the important programs and organizations Trump plans to completely eliminate next year; The National Endowment for The Arts, The National Endowment of Humanities, The United States Institute of Peace, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Global Climate Change Initiative.

The money, taken from decreased funding and the totally eliminated programs (approximately $54 billion) will, according to the budget, be put towards our massive military, bringing its total budget up to a whopping $654 billion. With this budget increase, the United States' military budget alone will equal the size of the next eight largest military budgets around the world combined. I felt it was important to bring these tombstones to one of the places Trump has frequently visited during his time as President, the Trump International Golf Club located in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Joseph Provenza, Student Work

Mom

Fabric, paint, lazer prints, frame, artificial light.

3.5' x 7' x 3'

Kimmy Schander, Student Work

"Reflecting on Man Draining Nature: Diffract, Refract, Reflection" 

48" X 48" X 108"

Found tree trunk with PVC pipe embedded, more PVC pipes, tree branches, wrapping paper, assorted glass jars, water, glycerin, glass rods, and red acrylic paint

Statement:

After I gathered all my materials, I sat in the space with my tree trunk and pipes, allowing the three walls to surround me. I wanted it to shape my emotions, somehow, and incorporate my thoughts on nature. I was still reflecting on how light bends objects through water, too....and then the pipes spoke out! I immediately thought about how we are draining nature, and began incorporating all my previous ideas, and this one, into a whole new one. My goal being,  that my viewers would grasp a similar experience because our Earth's natural resources are diminishing,  and man is to blame. Winifred Gallagher called it "The Science of experience" in "The Power of Place. Yes, we need to reflect on how man is draining nature. We need to diffract from our current ways refracting in the light of nature. . .bending with the waters of willpower, and change our wasteful ways, before we drain her dry. 

Barb Hunt, Artist

barbhunt.com

A History of How Food Is Plated, from Medieval Bread Bowls to Noma by Michael Y. Park

Any foodie worth his salt knows that there's more to proper plating than a sprig of parsley and a radish flower, but most can't tell you how we got from shoveling down dinosaur drumsticks à la Fred Flintstone to the edible forest paintings of Noma.

Trenchers

Depending on where you dine, of course, what your dinner looks like might not be that different from what people ate a millennium ago, especially if you still yearn for the pre-Atkins bread-bowl fad (or go to Au Bon Pain every day). In the Middle Ages, plating basically consisted of ladling stews or porridge into trenchers--hollowed out "plates" cut from loaves of old bread, the staler the better. Sure, some royalty enjoyed elaborate, heavily meat-based feasts with over-the-top themes or off-the-wall twists in preparation (think turducken times 10), but for the hoi polloi? Presentation consisted of slop on a doorstop.

Marie Antoinette

Thank Catherine de Medici for changing a lot of that in the 1500s. The daughter of the powerful Florentine family brought dining innovations--forks! ballet! topless waitresses!--with her when she married Henry II of France, and her cultural influence only grew as she became the most powerful woman in Europe. A century later, Louis XIV brought the lavishness of Versailles to its apex, and sealed cuisine's place as an integral part of French culture, both for its flavor and its aesthetics. But the French court's culinary spectacles largely remained just that: spectacles. Pretty to look at, not necessarily to be repeated in your own castle kitchen.

Engraving from Le Patissier Royal Parisien by Careme

It was Marie-Antoine Careme, arguably the first celebrity chef, who brought plating into the modern world. Careme, who was born in 1784 and died in 1833, was an avid amateur student of architecture--he even considered pastry making "the principal branch" of the art. As chef de cuisine to personages all the way up to Napoleon Bonaparte, he presented dishes in the shapes of famous monuments, waterfalls and pyramids; he's believed to have invented the croquembouche.

Wild turbot, shellfish, water chestnuts, and hyacinth vapor at Alinea (Credit: Lara Kastner)

Careme didn't just revolutionize pastry. He came up with the mother sauces, reduced the size of portions (particularly since he was largely working on large banquets with plentiful courses), and emphasized complementary flavors and pairings in presentations.

"For example, today with fried fish we need a cold emulsion," says
Sergio Remolina, a professor at the Culinary Institute of America and chef of the CIA's new Bocuse Restaurant. "That's a classic flavor, and he's the one who starts to pair the flavors like that."

But it was still only the elite who got to see and taste the benefits of Careme's innovations in cooking and presentation. Bringing a new aesthetic appreciation for food to the larger masses had to wait for Auguste Escoffier, who was born two years after Careme died. The timing was no coincidence.

"The Industrial Revolution is happening, and with the Industrial Revolution we have the first millionaires, people who travel for pleasure, the railroad," Remolina says.

Arguably Escoffier's most important contribution to the history of cuisine? A la carte service.

"With Escoffier the portions are still coming in large trays, plated in multiple portions, not the individual plates we know today that are heavily decorated with a lot of work on each plate," Remolina says.

Born to an era where most of the cooking was still done over charcoal and wood in separate buildings and then carried a relatively long distance to where people ate, Escoffier tinkered with devices and methods that allowed cooks to finish meals in the dining room instead. Now smaller, more individualized plates could be served without getting cold.

"People can choose what they eat," Remolinda says. "They're not eating off a presented menu. And fine dining is born as a business."

In the early 20th century,

Fried reindeer moss with cepe at Noma (Credit: Flickr user Adelcambre)

Fernand Point introduced elements that would become signatures of nouvelle cuisine--seasonal ingredients with a focus on natural flavors, an emphasis on service and hospitality, lighter fare, and, above all, simplicity and elegance. He even made the now-ubiquitous baby vegetables a regular addition to the plate.

Point's approach was solidified by his most famous protege, Paul Bocuse, whose "neat and detailed" food presentations became the iconic images of increasingly popular nouvelle cuisine in the 1960s. The next generation of chefs, like
Charlie Trotter and
Alice Waters, took minimalism in cooking and presentation even further. Today, you get Noma's fried reindeer moss with cepe, which appears as if the kitchen had simply pulled up a square foot from a Danish forest and transferred it to a flower-pot saucer.

"In the late 1800s, the sauce is used to hide some of the defects in the meat or the smells because of the treatment of the protein, which could be a little bizarre," Remolina says. "Today, the goal is to feature the ingredient as close as possible to the source. If we have very fresh microgreens, or a fresh fish, we put it right on the plate. When we have a fresh item, we don't need to do much to it. The freshness of the ingredients guides the presentation."

With that in mind, the science-fiction foam impossibilities of El Bulli or the 28-course marathons of Alinea might seem a throwback to the elaborate feasts of Careme or the inedible intellectual noodlings of the Italian Futurists (think linguini in motor-oil sauce with steel nuts and bolts). But in the case of molecular gastronomy, the fanciful presentations are a way of emphasizing, not masking, the flavors.

"They work on extracting the essence of the ingredient, and they play with the sense and textures," Remolina says. "All the senses are involved. Now food is a show."

But don't worry that an age is coming when you won't be able to tell whether something on your table is a fanastically delicious, criminally overpriced meal--or something you forgot to throw out after an afternoon weeding the garden. Evolving presentations or no, great-tasting things will always taste great. Even if they're not served on the branch of a freshly felled birch tree tenderly raised by Greek Orthodox monks atop a mountain retreat in Arcadia.

"A good taco al pastor is going stay around forever," Remolina says reassuringly. "It won't change."

Michael Y. Park is a writer based in Brooklyn. He has eaten scorpions and maggots in Manhattan, picnicked with the king and queen in Malaysia, and traded nuts and fruits in the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan while disguised as an Hazara tribesman. He also once recreated White Castle sliders with baby food.

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Source Bon Appétit

Yoko One, Artist