VERSUS

An exhibition at Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden juxtaposes concepts of Modernism and modernity

- James D. Balestrieri

As part of its 50th anniversary, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will mount a new exhibition, Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860-1960, featuring some 208 artworks by 117 artists, all from the permanent collection, and including works by 19 contemporary practitioners such as Torkwase Dyson, Rashid Johnson, Annette Lemieux, Dyani White Hawk and Flora Yukhnovich.

Organized by Hirshhorn associate curator Marina Isgro and assistant curator Betsy Johnson, the thrust of the exhibition presents the rise of Modernism and the movement in art from realism to abstraction and from an emphasis on the revelations in surface appearances to a new interest in representing apparitions, dreams and visions distilled from the imagination. Overarching all, the artists and works in the exhibition remind us that Modernism, in a very real way, pitted itself against modernity, against our “modern world” as defined by the dominance of the machine. Even as humans seemed (and seem) ever more reduced to mechanisms, art insisted (and still insists) on some irreducible humanity.

Modernism versus modernity—where “versus” derives in its tortured way from the Latin word for “turn,” even as “revolution” does—it’s a heavyweight bout in infinite rounds, a bout in which art often takes a pounding but ultimately turns the tables and has its moment. So we hope, and bet.