current | traveling | upcoming | previous 

Through the Looking Glass

Adamstein & Demetriou Architects: Untitled, multi-panel transparent collage, photography, and drawings, 30"x 30", 2001.

When I was asked to curate this exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of the Octagon, it presented the opportunity to explore new ways of seeing the museum. It also posed a complex problem: how to unify radically different spaces while ensuring that each artistic endeavor was presented independently. As I researched the Octagon’s history and its multitude of incarnations, it became clear that the essence of the building lay in its floor plan. The strength, beauty, and simplicity of the design are inescapable.

The documents, floor plans, and elevations in the Octagon’s Prints & Drawings Collection inspired a unifying theme for the exhibition: mirrors, reflections, windows, and apertures. Developing the breadth of this theme permitted the invited architects and artists to articulate their interpretations of the Octagon in particularly evocative forms. I have especially enjoyed the contributors’ enthusiasm for the Octagon, and our conversations about its past, present, and future. My sincere thanks to Eryl Wentworth, Director of the Octagon and Linnea Hamer, Curator of Exhibitions, who was invaluable as a touchstone of knowledge and advice. I wish to convey my deep appreciation to the artists and architects for their creativity and professionalism: Adamstein & Demetriou Architects, Graham Caldwell, Hsin-Hsi Chen, Richard Dana, John Dreyfuss, Sam Gilliam, E. Ethelbert Miller, Cesar Pelli, Annette Polan, Wendy Ross, Anne Slaughter, Peter Waddell, and F.L. Wall.

Annette Polan: Bed Talk: Self Portrait, ilfachrome print, 2000.

Col. John Tayloe III, the Octagon’s original occupant, was a risk-taker and a visionary. Were he alive today, I believe he would be at the forefront in politics, technology, and art collecting. At the request of his President, he built where no one else dared. He chose one of the best architects available, William Thornton, and he gave him the freedom to design a superb building. In 1801, Tayloe’s home, the Octagon, rose out of virtual wilderness – a lonely structure as imagined now in Cesar Pelli’s rendering. Through the Looking Glass examines the Octagon from many different perspectives. Like some manifestation from Lewis Carroll’s topsy-turvy world of fantasy, the building is an octagon that is not octagonal. We can perhaps understand this contradiction better when we learn that historians know that “octagon” was used in the 18th century to refer to a round room constructed by erecting eight angled walls and plastering them. (The Octagon has three such round rooms.)

The challenge for the visitor, however, is to perceive this exhibition in a personal context, whether through mirror reflections (F.L. Wall), a sculptural aperture (Dreyfuss), or paintings with apertures (Gilliam). We walk through a real doorway to encounter a constructed doorway (Dana), or we enter the intimacy of a boudoir (Polan). The viewer experiences these installations aurally, visually, and emotionally – and under the physical influences of two buildings that are centuries apart. The individual works gain context as we view them, walk through them, or find ourselves reflected in them. We also measure our relationship to the different scales of the two buildings, each with its own unique rooms and galleries. Our experience of the exhibition is constantly changing through motion, as we walk through the Octagon’s galleries, or stand in the garden and look at its façade, or move into the AIA building and look back out through the wall of glass toward the rear of the Octagon. This movement through space is mirrored in our imaginations, as we enjoy an abundance of associations, both historic and personal. Perceiving the similarities and differences among these associations also forces us to contemplate the intervening two centuries since the completion of the Octagon, and the vast changes in lifestyles.

Peter Waddell: Closing Up: Grandmother's House 1855, oil on canvas, 60" x 42", 2000

Evoking the 19th century, artist Peter Waddell has recreated an imaginary moment in time, introducing vibrant colors based on furnishings and wall coverings of the period. Anne Slaughter’s installation taps into collective and individual memories through painting and writing, implying the imperceptible passage of time. Poet E. Ethelbert Miller has chosen to call forth the ancestral voice of the African Americans who inhabited the downstairs of the house by recalling the Middle Passage and summoning the pain of transit and loss of identity in his story “Africans in Wonderland.” To enter the bedroom environment by Annette Polan is to be palpably engaged by a multiplicity of forms – painting, furniture, music, and video. Combining the centuries through the device of portraiture allows the artist to explore commonalities and differences of two women worlds apart.

Hsin-Hsi Chen: In the Gables, pencil on paper, 9 3/4"x 8"x 4", 2000

Throughout history, artists have used mirrors to create self-portraits. Their purposes varied: the artist may have wanted to show a particular facial expression, or to depict himself or herself as older or younger; perhaps the artist simply lacked a live model. French master Jacques-Louis David even employed a mirror as a device for viewing one of his works: when his large painting The Sabine Women was shown at the Louvre in 1799, a full-scale mirror was placed directly across from the canvas. Viewers found themselves reflected in the mirror as part of the painting, giving the artist’s work an entirely new context. Similarly, Richard Dana forces us to participate in his installation House/Home, as we walk through a doorway to face a mirror that reflects drawings on the structure behind us – drawings we could not see before walking through the doorway. This creates a double illusion and changes our perception of our relationship to the artwork. Providing a counterpoint, Hsin-Hsi Chen’s intimate black and white drawings reveal mysteriously lit rooms in complex house forms that function as vernacular objects evoking dolls’ houses in their scale but implying monumentality in their deft execution.

Wendy Ross: Millefiore, welded steel with powedercoat, 60"x 60" x 60", 1998.

Apertures are an integral component of Sam Gilliam’s paintings and the sculptures of John Dreyfuss, Wendy Ross, and Graham Caldwell – producing entirely different illusions in plywood, plaster, steel, and glass. Light and shadow play intricately through Gilliam’s three-dimensional paintings with their subtle colorations, revealing and concealing depths that disclose tantalizing landscapes – or perhaps moonscapes. Dreyfuss’ plaster stelae articulate mass using ancient forms with carefully honed edges. Alternatively, Ross’ spatial piercing of the circles and spheres create deceptively fragile, lacy patterns that belie the strength of the surrounding steel armature. Caldwell’s glass reminds us of an undulating curtain of translucent fabric, evoking organic sources. Adamstein & Demetriou Architects’ complex, multilayered collages of photographic segments and drawings allow the viewer to feel the history of the Octagon in a contemporary context that resonates in a juxtaposition of old and new images.

John L. Dreyfuss Cornwall, was, 57.5" x 57" x 12.5", 2000

The Collector’s Gallery on the Octagon’s second floor is a projection of what Col. Tayloe might select today to furnish and decorate his house – and an invitation to speculate on his progressive inclinations as a contemporary collector through loans from artists and private collections. F.L. Wall’s furniture is meticulously crafted, yet is substantial enough to endure abuse for years. The ultimate measure of furniture is its stability. These pieces – table, chairs, console, and lamps – are capable of meeting practical needs while giving pleasure through their whimsy and invention.

It is hoped that this innovative departure by the Octagon of welcoming contemporary artists and architects into its spaces will solicit fresh awareness of this jewel in our community and reach out to new audiences as it enters the twenty-first century.

Vivienne M. Lassman
Curator