Max Weber: Art and Life Are Not Apart installation image, photography credit: Olivia Divecchia
Max Weber: Art and Life Are Not Apart presents 26 paintings and works on paper by Max Weber directly from the Max Weber Foundation spanning the full scope of the artist's career-long still life practice from 1907 to 1955. Informed by Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, Weber's still lifes occupy a pivotal position between the European avant-garde and American modernism. The exhibition, which encompasses a variety of materials including oil, gold leaf collage, pastel, gouache, and watercolor, investigates Weber’s important contributions and reactions to a range of twentieth-century movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism. In 1914, Weber claimed that “art and life are not apart,” positioning himself within a modernist tradition of painting quotidian life from lively Impressionist café scenes to hard-edge Pop depictions of mass-produced items. Weber distinguished himself through his deep belief that objects exist as symbols of culture and civilization and should be measured by their usefulness, spirituality, and intellect.
