Visit the home of American Abstract Artists George L.K. Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen, set on a 46-acre estate in the heart of Lenox, Massachusetts. View their paintings, frescoes, and sculpture; experience their exquisite collection of American and European Cubist Art.
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.
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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.
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"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."
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