New Exhibitions Open at The Heckscher Museum

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Heckscher Museum of Art Presents

Cornucopia: Still Lifes from the Collection

Opening Saturday, May 21

Huntington, NY – The Heckscher Museum of Art is pleased to present the exhibition Cornucopia: Still Lifes from the Collection, opening Saturday, May 21. Cornucopia is a feast for the eyes, displaying the abundance and diversity of the visible world. The works are intimate and engaging, revealing the beauty found in familiar objects.

Cornucopia traces the development of still life painting from late 19th-century naturalism through the formalist concerns of early 20th-century modernism to the accuracy of photorealism in the 1970s. Still life elements from everyday life were depicted by artists dating back to antiquity. Still life continues to reflect our immediate surroundings with symbolic or moralistic messages, attitudes about national identity, or commentary on contemporary life. Artists include Carducius Plantagenet Ream, William Merritt Chase, Ilya Bolotowsky, Jan Matulka, Helen Torr, Joseph Stella, David Burliuk, Nicolai Cikovsky, Milton Avery, Miriam Dougenis, and Robert Kipniss. Cornucopia: Still Lifes from the Collection remains on view through August 21.

Also On View:

The exhibition Master of Illusion: The Magical Art of Gary Erbe is a retrospective tracing the artist’s career from early trompe l’oeil works executed in the artist’s self-styled “levitational realism,” in which objects seemingly float in space, to more recent paintings that combine trompe l’oeil realism with modernist tendencies. Erbe’s immaculate, self-taught skill transforms familiar items with a heightened sense of realism. His inspiration is drawn from popular culture and national pastimes, with subjects ranging from nostalgic images of childhood pursuits, to American jazz, radio, television, and film. Erbe’s postwar childhood is viewed as a golden age. However, some of his works are social commentary on the darker side of American history. Although Erbe is recognized both nationally and internationally, Master of Illusion marks his first Long Island exhibition, accompanied with a full-color catalogue. Master of Illusion: The Magical Art of Gary Erbe remains on view through August 28.

Master of Illusion: The Magical Art of Gary Erbe is generously sponsored in part by Astoria Bank, Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein, Pien and Hans Bosch, and Fern and Hersh Cohen.

Synapses: Threads for Thought presents over two dozen works from the Museum’s collection as a meandering thread of diverse connections. Paintings, prints, and photographs are arranged so that each work links to those that precede and follow it. The revealed associations highlight the interconnectedness of visual experience. Works range from a late 16th-century painting of the Annunciation and George Grosz’s Eclipse of the Sun to abstractions by Arthur Dove and photographs by Larry Fink. Synapses: Threads for Thought remains on view through April 9, 2017.

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Image Caption: David Burliuk, Fall Flowers in a Watering Can, 1949. Heckscher Museum of Art; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Burliuk.