art in ruinstwentieth-century avant-garde artist olga rozanova advocated violent revolution to...

Art in RuinsDes Moines Art Center

septeMber 11, 2009–JAnuAry 3, 2010

Art in Ruins

September 11, 2009–January 3, 2010

Print Gallery of the Des Moines Art Center

Organized by Amy N. Worthen, Curator of Prints

and Drawings.

© Des Moines Art Center 2009. All rights reserved.

Art in Ruins is supported in part by the International

Fine Print Dealers Association.

Gallery Guide Design

Annabel Wimer

Photography

Rozanova, Weirotter: Rich Sanders, West Des Moines

Callot: Michael Tropea, Chicago

Mendieta: Kent Clawson, Des Moines

Exhibition Programs

Sunday, September 20, 1:30 pm

Des Moines Art Center Print Club program

Thursday, September 24, 6:30 pm

Amy Worthen gallery talk. Free and open to the public.

Cover Image

(detail) Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Italian, 1720-1778.

The Fountain of the Julian Aqueduct from “The Views of

Rome,” 1753. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center

Permanent Collections; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert

Lubetkin, 1978.11.

1. Charles Simonds, American, born 1945. Brick Blossom, 1981. Mixed media (clay, sand, and sticks). Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Gardner and Florence Call Cowles Foundation, 1982.1

Art in Ru ins 1

4700 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50312-2099

515.277.4405 www.desmoinesartcenter.org

verturned columns, broken lintels,

fractured carvings, and piles of

stone testify to the magnificence

of once-powerful civilizations

brought down by war, calamity, corruption, and

decline. Ruins are proof that even the grandest

architectural achievements are transitory. All

things must pass. All will be ruin in the future.

How did great temples, palaces, and fortresses

become picturesque ruins? Enemies attacked them

with fire and bombs, or dismantled them as

punishment. Earthquakes, floods, or volcanoes

destroyed them. The societies that built them

became impoverished, and their inhabitants

neglected or abandoned them. Soldiers and mobs

pillaged them. Builders stripped their valuable

building materials, preferring them to quarries.

They became dumping grounds for trash and

rubble. Open to the weather, they became the

dens of animals. Roots and vines insinuated into

every crack and overwhelmed them.

Many world religions teach that the destruction of

the world is a prelude to final salvation. Medieval

Christian artists used images of ruined Classical

Roman monuments to represent the triumph of

Christianity over paganism. Fifteenth- and

16th-century artists, inspired by the beauty and

proportions of Classical ruins, revived Classical

forms to create the architecture of the Italian

Renaissance (literally, the rebirth of Classicism).

Seventeenth-century artists used images of

Classical ruins as vanitas symbols to remind

viewers that even the mightiest earthly power

will eventually decline and fall.

Artists found beauty in ruins, but what beauty

meant changed over time. For artists of the

Renaissance and Baroque periods, Roman ruins

provided the tangible evidence of Classical art’s

codified proportions and objective standards for

beauty. But for artists of the 18th century, beauty

was subjective, discovered in the broken forms,

shapes, and textures of ruins. For poets and

philosophers, vegetation-engulfed ruins were

tranquil places of inspiration where the individual

human spirit could expand and merge into the

universal. Artists produced paintings, etchings,

interior decoration, and landscape designs of ruins

to feed the public’s mania for real, imaginary, and

even fake, ruins. Represented in the exhibition are

a number of 18th-century artists who specialized

in depicting ruins, including Giovanni Battista

Piranesi (cover and fig. 8), Giovanni Battista

Tiepolo (fig. 2), Antonio Canaletto (fig. 6), Jean-

Baptiste LePrince (fig. 7), Charles-Louis

Clerisseau, Christian Dietrich, and Franz Edmund

Weirotter (fig. 9). For 18th- and 19th-century

practitioners of the new science of archaeology, the

attraction of ruins consisted in discovering, clearing,

documenting, and studying what remained, and

recreating what was missing. When 19th-century

explorers and artists such as John Lloyd Stephens

2 Art in Ru ins

O

Art in Ru ins 3

2. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian, 1696–1770. Death Giving Audience, from “Vari Capricci (Various Caprices),” ca. 1743–49. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 1950.158

and Frederick Catherwood went to Egypt, Mexico,

and South America, they recorded the astonishing

ruins of the ancient Egyptians, the Maya (fig. 10

and detail), and the Inca, displacing Classical

Roman art as the default paradigm of ruins.

In his book, In Ruins, Christopher Woodward

contended that for melancholic 19th-century

Romantic poets and artists such as Gustave Doré,

ruin was inevitable but the final annihilation of

the world held no promise of salvation.1

Woodward told of a late 19th-century explorer of

ruins and refugee from the new metropolis of

bureaucratic Rome, who, in “this green kingdom

of spirits...experienced the momentary euphoria

which came with the dissolution of individual

identity into a flow of humanity and Time.”2

Twentieth-century avant-garde artist Olga

Rozanova advocated violent revolution to

overturn the old corrupt order of society and saw

ruins as a necessary result of social apocalypse (fig.

11). During World War II, Russian photographer

Dmitri Baltermants showed the human cost of that

destruction (fig. 3).

Modern artists have been less philosophical. Philip

Pearlstein etched ruins as tourist destinations

(fig. 13); sculptor Charles Simonds invented

archeological histories for imagined peoples

(fig. 1); Cai Guo-Qiang proposed to create a ruin

as an art event (fig. 14); and Christian Jankowski’s

video drama of a film projection causing a

skyscraper to fall drew inspiration from one of the

worst terrorist attacks in history.

Today, television, cell phones, and the Internet

instantly transmit images of the horrific ruins of

our time around the globe and indelibly sear them

into our collective consciousness. What can the

visions of ruins in this exhibition teach us? They do

not merely prompt us to meditate on what is past

and what will come to pass in the future: they shed

a light on our contemporary reality. They offer old

and new ways of considering the destruction that

has always taken place and continues to take place,

through human violence, greed, natural cataclysms,

environmental pollution, and the work of time.

The Des Moines Art Center is grateful to Kay

Ward for her recent gift of 26 etchings by Franz

Edmund Weirotter, whose subject matter inspired

the idea for this exhibition. All works included in

the exhibition are from the Des Moines Art

Center’s Permanent Collections.

Amy N. Worthen

Curator of Prints and Drawings

3. Dmitri Baltermants, Russian, 1912–1990. Downed German Plane, Breslau, Spring 1945, from “The Great Patriotic War Portfolio I,” published in 2003. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Jeff Perry in honor of Myron and Jacqueline Blank, 2008.1.11

Art in Ru ins 54 Art in Ru ins

1 Christopher Woodward, In Ruins, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001), 1-2, 193.2 Woodward, 80

6 Art in Ru ins

4. Jacques Callot, French, 1592–1635. The Temptation of Saint Anthony, ca. 1634, published 1635. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield, 1978.21

5. Sebastien Leclerc, French, 1637–1714. Démolition du Temple du Charenton (Demolition of the Temple of Charenton), from “Les Petites Conquêtes du Roi (The Small Conquests of the King),” 1702. John C. Huseby Print Collection of the Des Moines Art Center through Bequest; 1994.233.1

Art in Ru ins 7

6. Antonio Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canale), Italian, 1697–1768. Imaginary View of San Giacomo di Rialto, with a Classical Colonnade at the Left, from “Vedute altre prese da i luoghi altre ideate da Antonio Canal (Views, some drawn on site, others imagined, by Antonio Canal),” 1735–45. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Benjamin A. Younker, 1942.22

7. Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non, French, 1727–1791 (etcher) after Jean-Baptiste LePrince, French, 1734–1831 (designer). Tempio di Pola in Istria (The Temple of Augustus at Pola in Istria), 1756. Etching on paper. John C. Huseby Print Collection of the Des Moines Art Center through Bequest; 1994.299

8 Art in Ru ins Art in Ru ins 9

8. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Italian, 1720–1778. The Fountain of the Julian Aqueduct from “The Views of Rome,” 1753. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lubetkin, 1978.11

10 Art in Ru ins

9. Franz Edmund Weirotter, Austrian, 1730–1771. Men Conversing in the Ruins of a Temple, plate 13 from “Suite de XVIII paysages (Suite of 18 Landscapes),” ca. 1766. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Richard L. and Kay E. Ward Collection, 2009.42

Art in Ru ins 1 1

10. Frederick Catherwood, British, 1799–1854 (designer). Casa del Gobernador, Uxmal (House of the Governor, Uxmal), frontispiece of Vol. 1 of John L. Stephens, “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” New York, 1848. Etching on paper. Des Moines Art Center Library; Gift of Louise Noun.

12 Art in Ru ins

10. (detail)

11. Olga Rozanova, Russian, 1886–1918 (lithographer) and Aleksei Kruchenykh, Russian, 1886–1969 (watercolorist). Untitled, from “A Duck’s Nest of Bad Words,” 1913–14. Lithograph with watercolor on paper. Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection of Art by Women; 1991.44.4

14 Art in Ru ins

12. Ana Mendieta, American, born Cuba, 1948–1985. Untitled, ca. 1978. Blank book burnt with handprint. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield and the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 1997.76

Art in Ru ins 15

13. Philip Pearlstein, American, born 1924. Stonehenge, from “Ruins and Landscapes,” 1979. Three-color sugar-lift aquatint with roulette work on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Arthur Brody, San Diego, 1981.48.1

16 Art in Ru ins

14. Cai Guo-Qiang, Chinese, born 1957. So What if We Bomb a Museum?, 1999, from “Art for Art’s Sake Calendar, 2000 ( January).” Mixed media on paper. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Zoe and Joel Dictrow, 2005.15.3

Art in Ru ins 17

ChECklIst

Works are listed in alphabetical order.

Dmitri Baltermants

Russian, 1912–1990

(Fig. 3) Downed German Plane, Breslau,

spring 1945, from “The Great Patriotic War Portfolio I,” published in 2003

Silver gelatin print on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Jeff Perry in honor of Myron and Jacqueline Blank, 2008.1.11

In Dmitri Baltermants’ photograph of soldiers looking at the wreckage of a downed German fighter plane, the soldier’s pointing gesture is hardly necessary. This soldier belongs to the pictorial tradition of the pointing figure in depictions of ruins, as seen in etchings by 18th-century etchers Sebastien Leclerc, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Franz Edmund Weirotter in this exhibition (see figs. 5, 8, and 9). Did the soldier in Baltermants’ photograph gesture unconsciously? Or did the photographer tell the soldier to point? A photographer whose World War II battlefield images were used by the Soviet government for anti-German propaganda, Baltermants shot photographs for his own purposes as well. In 2003, two portfolios, consisting of recent prints of forty of his finest images, were issued posthumously. In image after image, Baltermants showed how the 20th century created ruins.

Battle for kamenka Village, Near

Moscow, 1941, from “The Great Patriotic War Portfolio I,” published in 2003


After tchaikovsky, 1945, from “The Great Patriotic War Portfolio II,” published in 2003


Jacques callot

French, 1592–1635

(Fig. 4) the temptation of saint Anthony, ca. 1634, published 1635

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield, 1978.21.

The inclusion of Classical ruins in Christian narrative images could symbolize the triumph of Christianity over pagan religion in medieval and Renaissance art. But when Jacques Callot set his remarkable etching of Saint Anthony’s temptation in a landscape of ruins, he based the location on an event recorded in the saint’s biography. Saint Anthony Abbot, also known as Saint Anthony of Egypt (3rd century AD), was one of the first Christian monks to practice extreme asceticism. According to the story of his life, Anthony left his monastic community near Alexandria and went to live in the ruins of an abandoned Roman fort in the desert. Devils came repeatedly to tempt him, appearing in the form of wild beasts and serpents. The ruins in this print are a composite. They consist of an underlying foundation built of rugged stone arches with keystones. The ruined medieval church built on top resembles the church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. When Callot was a young man, he worked in Rome, where he saw such Classical ruins firsthand. While working in Florence for the Medici court in 1620, he etched architectural illustrations, including a plate of the interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for Fra Bernardino Amico da Gallipoli’s De Sacri Edifizi di Terra Santa (On Sacred Buildings of the Holy Land).

antonio canaletto

(Giovanni antonio canale)

Italian, 1697–1768

(Fig. 6) Imaginary View of san Giacomo di

Rialto, with a Classical Colonnade at

the left, from “Vedute altre prese da i luoghi altre ideate da Antonio Canal (Views, some drawn on site, others imagined, by Antonio Canal),” 1735–45

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Benjamin A. Younker, 1942.22

Eighteenth-century Venetian artists specialized in fantasy images known as capricci (caprices). Around 1740, Antonio Canaletto etched a set of straightforward views and imagined depictions of Venice and its mainland territories. The Imaginary View of San Giacomo di Rialto depicts the campo, or square, in front of San Giacomo, one of Venice’s oldest and most recognizable churches. Located in the heart of the market district, it is directly adjacent to the Rialto Bridge. Canaletto altered the church’s façade by adding a tiny Classical temple front. The fragmentary ruin of Roman columns and the sculpture on a round base with lions’ heads holding garlands are imaginary too, and he has set the scene by the sea.

FreDerick catherwooD

British, 1799–1854 (designer)

(Fig. 10 and detail) Casa del Gobernador, Uxmal (house

of the Governor, Uxmal), frontispiece of Vol. 1 of John L. Stephens, “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” New York, 1848

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Library; Gift of Louise Noun

John L. Stephens (1805–1852) had visited ruins in Egypt and South America before he went in 1839–1840 to explore pre-Colombian sites in Belize, and in Chiapas and Yucatan, Mexico. Accompanying Stephens was the artist Frederick Catherwood, who made careful sketches of the sites. In 1848, Stephens published his account of his explorations in “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” a two-volume work illustrated with 120 prints etched by New York etcher Joseph Napoleon Gimbrede after Catherwood’s drawings, and after daguerreotypes made on site. Stephen’s pages described ...the most extensive journey ever made by a stranger in that peninsula, and contain the account of visits to forty-four ruined cities, or places in which remains or vestiges of ancient population were found. The existence of most of these ruins was entirely unknown to the residents of the capital; —but few had ever been visited by white inhabitants; —they were desolate, and overgrown with trees. For a brief space the stillness that reigned around them was broken, and they were again left to solitude and silence.

18 Art in Ru ins

Time and the elements are hastening them to utter destruction. In a few generations, great edifices, their façades covered with sculptured ornaments, already cracked and yawning, must fall, and become mere shapeless mounds. It has been the fortune of the author to step between them and the entire destruction to which they are destined; and it is his hope to snatch from oblivion these perishing, but still gigantic memorials of a mysterious people.

Domenico cuneGo

Italian, 1727–1794

After charles-louis

clerisseau

French, 1721–1820

Arch of trajan, Benevento, from “Views of Naples,” ca. 1765–1780

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Charles W. Bergstrom, Oxon Hill, Maryland, 1976.87.7

An archaeologist, draughtsman, and painter in Italy from 1749 through 1767, Clerisseau was one of the leading artists to promote the use of images of ruins in interior decoration. Much admired by the English, Clerisseau’s archaeological drawings were etched by Domenico Cunego and published in deluxe publications, such as this set of “Views of Naples.”

Ancient sepulchre, from “Views of Naples,” 1765

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Charles W. Bergstrom, Oxon Hill, Maryland, 1976.87.2

This print records a time before scientific archaeology subjected Classical monuments to systematic study and theoretical reconstruction. Workers are excavating an ancient tomb with massive walls, niches, and a coffered dome filled with nearly two thousand years of rubble. During most of the 18th century, although ruins were prey to random antiquarian depredations made in the name of collecting, they were still places of mystery.

christian wilhelm ernst

Dietrich

German, 1712–1774

Italian Ruins, ca. 1743

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 1950.26

A precocious young artist, Christian Dietrich studied painting and etching in Dresden before becoming court painter to the king of Poland at age 17. In 1743, Dietrich travelled to Italy. He drew this humble farmhouse constructed within the ruins of a once-grand Roman building. Now, an ass rests in the shade of its broken walls and chickens scratch for food.

Gustave Doré

French, 1832–1883

the New Zealander, from Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold, “London: A Pilgrimage,” published in “Harper’s Weekly,” May 31, 1873

Electrotype from wood engraving and typographic textDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Richard L. and Kay E. Ward, 1999.14.78

Ruins do not only symbolize the past: they can also remind us of what will happen inevitably in the future. One of the final wood engravings in Gustave Doré’s pictorial journey through London depicts a man from the far-off colony of New Zealand. Like the artists and travelers contemplating ruins in 18th-century etchings, Doré’s imagined representative of the future sits and gazes across the Thames at the ruins of the once-great city of London. The view includes the dome of Saint Paul’s cathedral. London would indeed be destroyed again during the German blitz during World War II.

cai Guo-qianG

Chinese, born 1957

(Fig. 14) so What if We Bomb a Museum?, 1999, from “Art for Art’s Sake Calendar, 2000

( January)”Mixed media on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Zoe and Joel Dictrow, 2005.15.3

Cai Guo-Qiang, who grew up in China at the time of the Cultural Revolution, produces work of an almost unimaginably-vast scale and complexity. He requires many assistants to help him execute his art. One of Cai Guo-Qiang’s favorite media is gunpowder. Frequently, museums and cultural organizations commission this artist to design fireworks and explosions as art events. The artist included his proposal to bomb the Taiwan Museum of Art in a calendar of original art work produced for Bard College. The actual “bombing” of the museum took place in 1998; photographer Hiro Ihara documented the event.

christian Jankowski

German, born 1968

16mm Mystery, 2004

35 mm. film transferred to DVD (4:06 minutes)Purchased with funds from the Coffin Fine Arts Trust; Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the Des Moines Art Center; 2005.6

Although pictures of ruins traditionally lead the viewer to contemplate time and decay, these images omit the death, destruction, and terror that accompanied the creation of ruins. Images of places becoming ruins are rare. In Christian Jankowski’s film, a man walks down a city street carrying a large case. He ascends to the roof of a parking garage, unpacks a 16 mm. movie projector and screen, and projects a film (of which we see only the beam of light). A glass-and-steel skyscraper collapses. What is the power of this mysterious film? The image of a skyscraper collapsing cannot help but elicit painful memories of the terrorist attacks and the collapse of New York’s World Trade Center’s twin towers on September 11, 2001. We remember where we were when we first heard the news and saw

Art in Ru ins 19

the airplanes, fire, smoke, destroyed buildings, debris, and death. The ruins at Ground Zero became the iconic image of our time. What were Jankowski’s intentions in creating this film that plays on one of the most traumatic events of our or any time?

seBastien leclerc

French, 1637–1714

(Fig. 5) Démolition du temple du Charenton

(Demolition of the temple of

Charenton), from “Les Petites Conquêtes du Roi (The Small Conquests of the King),” 1702

John C. Huseby Print Collection of the Des Moines Art Center through Bequest; 1994.233.1

Born in Metz in eastern France, Sebastien Leclerc learned to engrave from his goldsmith father. He also studied physics and perspective, and became a military engineer. In 1665, Leclerc moved to Paris where he was appointed etcher and engraver to the king. Leclerc’s Destruction of the Temple of Charenton is from a series of thirteen prints he etched to celebrate military and diplomatic triumphs of Louis XIV. It seems strange that this act of intolerance resulting in the deliberate creation of a ruin should be included among the king’s triumphs. In 1598, the Edict of Nantes gave French Protestants permission to practice their faith. In 1606, Henri IV allowed Protestants to construct a temple near Paris at Charenton, but this house of worship became the focus of anti-heretical riots. It was burned by a mob in 1621. The temple was rebuilt in 1623 in a Classical style. The second temple of Charenton was an enormous basilica with twenty massive columns that could hold up to 4,000 worshippers. In 1685, the French government revoked the Edict of Nantes. Later that year the temple of Charenton was demolished. Leclerc’s etching shows workers pulling the structure down. Above the etched frame, a seated personification of Faith is burning heretical books. Speaking at the Académie Française in 1687, the Abbot Paul Tallemand le Jeune said, Blessed ruins, the most beautiful trophy France has ever seen. Arches of triumph and statues honoring the king will not elevate him above this heretic temple brought down by his piety.

ana menDieta

American, born Cuba, 1948–1985

(Fig. 12) Untitled, ca. 1978

Blank book burnt with handprintDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield and the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 1997.76

When performed by authorities, the burning of books is a deliberate attack on a persecuted group’s beliefs and history. (In this exhibition, Sebastien Leclerc’s etching, the Destruction of the Temple of Charenton, (fig. 5) shows the personification of Faith burning heretical Protestant books). How potent then, is Ana Mendieta’s ruined book, which evokes memories of burned flesh and banned ideas. Mendieta often used her own body as a means of and site for making art. She frequently used fire as a medium and bearer of meaning. But how did the artist create the illusion that searingly-hot hands charred the paper?

PhiliP Pearlstein

American, born 1924

Ruins and landscapes, 1979

Sugar-lift aquatint with roulette work, each print printed with three color plates, on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Arthur Brody, San Diego, 1981.48.1-5

In 1979, Philip Pearlstein, a painter best known for his paintings of studio nudes, created a series of five color aquatints of archaeological sites and ruins from around the world. Pearlstein depicted stone with the same cold directness that he habitually used to render human flesh. Since the 19th century, ruins and archaeological sites such as Stonehenge and the Temple of Hatshepsut have become major tourist destinations. Cleared of vegetation, restored by archaeologists, and managed by government agencies, these ancient sites are now stripped of their holiness and mystery. Pearlstein’s images function in a similar way, cleaning up the ruins and purging them of the signs, the guides and tour groups, the litter and the souvenir shops. His relentlessly objective style seems appropriate to communicate the way archaeological sites and ruins are presented today. Could any 18th-century

philosopher or artist dream in such places?

(Fig. 13) stonehenge

Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Arthur Brody, San Diego, 1981.48.1

temple of hatshepsut


sacsahuaman


Dating perhaps to the 15th century AD, Sacsahuaman was the citadel that guarded Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire in Peru. Located at over 12,000 feet above sea level, the fortress is notable for the extraordinarily precise cutting of its massive stone blocks, which were quarried and transported to the site from over twenty miles away.

temples at Abu simbel


Carved in the living rock, the temple of Abu Simbel was completed in 1265 BC. Had not an international rescue effort been carried out between 1964 and 1968, the temple would have been inundated by the lake formed by damming the Nile at Aswan. Pearlstein’s etching shows the temple after its façade had been cut in pieces and moved to higher ground.

tintern Abbey


One of the largest Cistercian monasteries in Britain, Tintern Abbey, Wales, was founded in 1131. The abbey’s church was completed in 1301. Between 1536 and 1540, Henry VIII suppressed over 800 monasteries throughout Britain, including Tintern Abbey. These buildings were sacked and pillaged, primarily to obtain the valuable lead of their roofs, and the properties were sold to the local nobility to raise revenues for the crown. Pearlstein’s view of the ruined abbey church looks up past the gray stone arches of the roofless nave and transept to the sky.

20 Art in Ru ins

aDam Perelle

French, 1638–1695 (etcher)

After GaBriel Perelle

French, 1607–1677 (designer)

two travelers at Ruins Near a lake, ca. 1650


Towards the beginning of the 17th century, artists became increasingly interested in expressing the notion of Time through the use of light at different times of day. Instead of setting their scenes in the bright noontime of Renaissance art, Baroque artists painted and etched twilight and nocturnal scenes illuminated by moonlight or candle light. Rather than just an attractive view, Perelle’s landscape with travellers approaching a ruined arch as daylight fades expresses the idea that all things will come to an end.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Italian, 1720–1778

(Fig. 8) the Fountain of the Julian Aqueduct from “The Views of Rome,” 1753

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lubetkin, 1978.11

Once in a while, an artist creates such a powerful image of a place that it defines how everyone who comes afterwards thinks of it. Piranesi was such an artist: we imagine that Rome looks just like his etchings. Trained as a theatrical designer, Piranesi often exaggerated the differences in size between Classical ruins and the buildings that had grown up in, around, and over them. He populated the scenes with present-day people going about their mundane activities. In this etching of the Fountain of the Julian Aqueduct in Rome, the artist compared the shapes of the aqueduct ruins with the clothing hanging to dry. Piranesi communicates an important fact of life: empires build grand public works, and their buildings are ultimately destroyed or reused, but laundry is forever. Piranesi’s etched views were accompanied by lengthy annotations, such

as this caption: View of the remains of the reservoir, which, taking a portion of the water from the principal conduit of the Julian Aqueduct, poured some out in a magnificent fountain that was adjacent to it and decorated by Agrippa with—among other ornaments—the Trophies of Augustus that are now seen on the Campidoglio; and it transmitted part of the water through pipes to the Caelian Hill. 1. Place from which the said Trophies were taken. 2. Portion of the barbican, a modern rebuilding. 3. Branches of the internal chambers of the reservoir which sent the water into the fountain and towards the Caelian Hill. 4. Modern walls and villa. 5. Villa Palombara

olGa rozanova

Russian, 1886–1918 (lithographer)

And aleksei kruchenykh

Russian, 1886–1969 (watercolorist)

(Fig. 11) Untitled, from “A Duck’s Nest of Bad Words,” 1913–14

Lithograph with watercolor on paperDes Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection of Art by Women; 1991.44.4

Cubo-Futurist artist Olga Rozanova collaborated with poet Alexei Kruchenykh to create artists’ books of her lithographs and his hand-lettered Zaum (nonsense) poetry. In this lithograph, one of twenty-one lithographs drawn by Rozanova for their book, “A Duck’s Nest of Bad Words,” a city rocked by an unseen force seems to break apart. Along with many contemporary avant-garde artists at the time of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, Rozanova believed that the way to revolutionize society was to destroy it. Ruins were a necessary consequence.

Jean-clauDe richarD De

saint-non

French, 1727–1791 (etcher)

After Jean-BaPtiste lePrince


(Fig. 7) tempio di Pola in Istria (the temple

of Augustus at Pola in Istria), 1756

Etching on paperJohn C. Huseby Print Collection of the Des Moines Art Center through Bequest; 1994.299

This etching is an imaginative representation of a real place. Jean-Baptiste LePrince depicted the temple of Augustus in the ancient Roman city of Pola in Istria (now Pula, Croatia) as if the structure were a picturesque ruin that he had suddenly come upon in a woodland clearing. The temple is actually located in the central square of the city, next to the medieval town hall. The etching presents the temple as if it were a ruin, but at the time LePrince visited the temple it was actually not quite as overgrown and plundered as this image makes it appear. The 18th-century enthusiasm for ruins shaped the artist’s depiction of this ancient building. Archaeologists have determined that the Roman temple at Pola was constructed between 2 BC and 14 AD. Because the pagan temple was converted into a Christian church under Byzantine rule, the structure survived into the Middle Ages. From 1331 until 1797, Pola was ruled by the republic of Venice. During the 18th century, artists from all over Europe came to Venetian Pola to sketch its Classical ruins. In 1944, the temple of Augustus at Pola was highly damaged by Allied bombing. The temple was reconstructed after the war, and today this reconstructed ruin of a ruin is a museum of antiquities.

charles simonDs

American, born 1945

(Fig. 1) Brick Blossom, 1981

Mixed media (clay, sand, and sticks)Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Gardner and Florence Call Cowles Foundation, 1982.1

Charles Simonds’ sculptures of imaginary archaeological sites, constructed of tiny

Art in Ru ins 2 1

bricks, are among the most engaging works based on ruins by any artist. In Brick Blossom, the earth is rolled back to reveal the ruins of a structure that is simultaneously archaeological and organic. A stepped walkway spirals up to the top of a central tower that resembles the fleshy ovary of a flower. Brick Blossom is from a three-part series titled “House Plants.”

Giovanni Battista tiePolo

Italian, 1696–1770

A leading protagonist of 18th-century Venetian art, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo created airy frescos and paintings in which lively figures move with a dancer’s grace. A master draughtsman, Tiepolo translated his sparkling wash drawings into line etchings, building up light-eroded forms and pale shadows with sketchy scribbles. In two series of etchings, known as the “Capricci” and the “Scherzi di Fantasia,” that he made around 1740–49, Tiepolo elevated the theme of the exploration of ruins to visual poetry. He etched fantastical groups of figures looking at ancient columns, pyramids, and bas-reliefs scattered amidst marsh grasses and scrubby trees. These exploring parties are figures from art—soldiers, bearded magicians, ladies and gentlemen, nudes, children, and centaurs. They contemplate the past to look for meaning but find no answers.

(Fig. 2) Death Giving Audience, from “Vari Capricci (Various Caprices)”, ca. 1743–49


An image of a ruined building can serve as a metaphor for inevitable death, but a skeleton literally represents the death of the human body. In Tiepolo’s etching, a party of ruins-explorers have interrupted a genial skeleton wearing a hood and hat, who is sitting in the sun reading a book. They have

met Death, himself. While a dog barks in alarm, the figures gather round with great interest to learn what he has to say.

shepherd with two Magicians, from “Scherzi di Fantasia (Amusing Fantasies),” ca. 1749


Franz eDmunD weirotter

Austrian, 1730–1771

In the 1760s, Edmund Weirotter travelled to Italy to study Classical ruins. He delighted in contrasting the massive stone blocks and columns overwhelmed by centuries of vegetation with diminutive shepherds and travelers. He shows us how ruins looked until scientific archaeology cleaned up their wildness. Published in suites, a print collector could leaf through Weirotter’s intimately-scaled etchings on a table or resting in one’s lap, while musing on ruins, time, and travel to Italy.

Ruins with three Resting travelers, plate 12 from “Suite de XVIII paysages (Suite of 18 Landscapes),” ca. 1766

Etching on paperDes Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Richard L. and Kay E. Ward Collection, 2009.41

(Fig. 9) Men Conversing in the Ruins of a

temple, plate 13 from “Suite de XVIII paysages (Suite of 18 Landscapes),” ca. 1766


the Garden of the Villa d’Este in

tivoli with a statue of an Enthroned

Goddess, plate 11 from “Fifth Suite of Various Ruins of Ancient Buildings,” 1767


In 1560, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este began construction of a villa for himself with a terraced garden containing Classical fragments, fountains, and waterfalls at Tivoli, a town near Rome. When Weirotter drew there 200 years later, the garden of the Villa d’Este was overgrown and falling into ruin.

Roman Ruins, plate 3 from “Second Suite of Various Ruins of Ancient Buildings,” ca. 1766–67


Franz eDmunD weirotter

Austrian, 1730–1771 (etcher)

after honoré FraGonarD


In the ludovici Gardens, Rome, plate 17 from “Third Suite of Various Ruins of Ancient Buildings,” ca. 1766–67


22 Art in Ru ins

art in ruinstwentieth-century avant-garde artist olga rozanova advocated violent revolution to...

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