Critics hailed the exhibition Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, recently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for offering a new understanding of Cubism. This exhibition of still life demonstrated the transhistorical connections between the tradition of visual deception and the meaning and method behind Cubist collages by Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso. Paradoxically, the Cubist dialogue with trompe l’oeil began just as these three artists began to dismantle the conventions of Western illusionism. Yet both trompe l’oeil and cubism engaged in issues of truth and falsehood, originality and authenticity — in art and in life. Please join us when Co-Curator of the exhibition Dr. Emily Braun (a fellow Or Zarua member) will give a talk on the exhibition, its themes, and the logistics involved in organizing an international loan exhibition.
Dr. Braun will present an overview of the exhibition with images and a talk that highlights the reception of the exhibition, as well as further thoughts about the movements she connected.
Emily (Mimi) Braun is Distinguished Professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY and the Curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection. She is known internationally as an expert in two fields: modern Italian art and Cubism. Braun has organized several award-winning exhibitions, among them Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy (The Jewish Museum, 1989); The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and their Salons (The Jewish Museum, 2005); Cubism: the Leonard A Lauder Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014) and Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2015). Her essays have been included in catalogues published by museums across North America and Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the MoMA, the Morgan Library, the Neue Galerie, the Tate Gallery, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Palazzo Reale Milan. Her research has been supported by Fellowships from the Getty Foundation and the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. In 2020 she held the Edmond J. Safra Professorship at CASVA, The National Gallery of Art Washington. Her lecture this evening relates to the recent exhibition, Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, which she co-curated with Elizabeth Cowling for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Join us for what will be a spectacular presentation. Refreshments to follow.
Art in the graphic credit: Juan Gris, The Table, 1914 Philadelphia Museum of Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection.