Philadelphia Antiques Show 2018

44 Hilarie M. Sheets, “Chasing the Sublime in Forest Park,” in Virgil Marti: Forest Park (Philadelphia: Locks Gallery, 2015), 3. 45 Jennie Hirsh, “Virgil Marti, Philadelphia at Locks,” Art in America , November 29, 2014, https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/virgil-marti/. 46 Sheets, “Forest Park,” 4. 47 “Golden Hours,” Object Curatorial File, Contemporary Art Department, Philadelphia Museum of Art, accessed February 23, 2018. 48 Sheets, “Forest Park,” 3. 49 Claudia Gould et al., Set Pieces, curated by Virgil Marti from the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Institute of Con- temporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2009) ; “Virgil Marti/Matrix 167, Ode to a Hippie,” Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, accessed March 6, 2018, https://thewadsworth.org/exhibitions/past/matrix167/. 50 Sheets, “Forest Park,” 3. T he striking silhouette of Golden Hours by Virgil Marti (born 1962) reminds viewers of the continued influence and relevance of eighteenth-century design through its historic profile. Marti began making works of this type after being inspired by a Chippendale mirror in an antique store, perhaps one similar to the embellished eighteenth-century looking glasses found in the Museum’s collection. 44 Marti’s work, like that of Toshiko Takaezu and Emil Milan, blurs the line between functional and sculptural, occupying a space somewhere between the traditional divisions of fine and decorative arts. Golden Hours draws clear inspiration from the style and form of rococo looking glasses, bringing these pieces into conversation with trends, materials, and techniques of the twenty-first century. Marti made this piece by laser-cutting fiberglass board in a shape mimicking a looking glass. To create the surface, hemade urethane casts of the floorboards in his studio and coated them with chrome plating and tinted urethane. 45 The blurred and shiny surface is semireflective, presenting viewers with only a hint of shifting light rather than the true reflection seen in a functional mirror. The subtle shifts in color are a sublime expression of beauty, simultaneously evocative of the color palettes of German Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), of representations of the sky in works by artists of the Hudson River School, and of modern color field paintings by Mark Rothko (1903–1970). 46 The title of the work references the “golden hour,” a term used in photography and cinematography to indicate when light is perfect for filming, foregrounding Marti’s efforts to capture a particular impression of light. 47 This work was one of a series of looking glass sculptures that Marti began in 2010 with a group made in single colors. 48 Marti then worked on two major curatorial and artistic projects, “Set Pieces,” a 2010 exhibition he curated at the Institute of Contemporary Art using works from the the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection, and “Ode to a Hippie” at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in 2013, which allowed him to spend extended periods of time in both institutions’ collection storage areas. 49 Inspired by the dramatic representations of color in Hudson River School paintings, he began creating pieces in the series of looking glasses that use a range of colors. 50 This piece broadens the Museum’s existing holdings of Marti’s work, including several paintings, prints, wallpaper, printed textile, and a chandelier. Marti has studied, worked, taught, and shown in Philadelphia since 1990. His artistic practice cleverly blends high and low culture in a manner that can be viewed as its own reflection of something quintessentially Philadelphian. Virgil Marti, American, born 1962 Golden Hours 2013 Urethane, medium density fiberboard, and chrome plating 6 feet × 36 inches × 4 inches (182.9 × 91.4 × 10.2 cm) Purchased with funds contributed by John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, and Lynne and Harold Honickman, 2015 2015-21-1 Virgil Marti, Golden Hours W 129 W