AN UNBLEMISHED MIRROR OF TRUTH
Kyohei Inukai, Robert Brackman, and Portraits of American Tragedy
On view March 18–September 28, 2014
This special installation brings together the work of New York–based portrait painters Kyohei Inukai (1886–1954) and Robert Brackman (1898–1980), both foreign-born artists who found great success painting high-society men and women before World War II. Commissioned portraits, their works were meant to celebrate their blue-blooded sitters through flattering and stylish depictions, but, as these portraits reveal, a life of wealth and privilege was not without its share of heartache and misery.
The display features the Mead Art Museum’s famed portraits of Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and works by Kyohei Inukai from the collection of John and Miyoko Unno Davey, including a self-portrait of the artist and his monumental Javanese Coat (1932), neither of which has been displayed publicly for over fifty years.
On Friday, April 11, at 6:00 p.m., Bradley Bailey, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Postdoctoral Curatorial Teaching Fellow in Japanese Prints, will give a gallery talk about the exhibition, followed by a reception. The event is free and open to the public.
Made possible with generous support from the Amherst Art Series and the Hall and Kate Peterson Fund.