The exhibition Terra Incognita (The Unknown Land) explores the creative terrain
occupied by artist-couples. Sometimes such couples collaborate on the same project.
More likely, they work alone. Often, they provide inspiration for each other though
shared adventures, traveling thousands of miles together to develop ideas for new work,
typically interpreting the experience in completely different ways. Artist-couples learn to
communicate their critiques in dulcet tones or suffer the consequences. In the history of
modern art there are wonderful examples of artist couples, such as Frida Kahlo and
Diego Rivera, Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Stieglitz, Eric Fishl and April Gronik,
Marina Abramovic and Ulay — not to mention Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner, or
Elaine and William de Kooning. No two artist couples are alike. During the Dark Ages, it
was not uncommon for the wife of an artist to sacrifice her artistic ambitions in favor of
her husband’s career. Relationships are more egalitarian now. We admire the fecundity,
the collaborative productivity, of a Christo and Jean-Claude, or an Edward and Nancy
Keinholz.
Terra Incognita takes us behind closed doors into the private studios of several
significant local artist-couples. It is true, an “unknown land” exists in every relationship,
but for artist-couples, it’s vast — and it calls to them unceasingly. http://www.occca.org/EXHIBITIONS.html
