ISCP 2022 Limited Edition: En-tout-cas by Michael Rakowitz
Michael Rakowitz, En-tout-cas, 2022, printed umbrella with paper tag signed by the artist, arc: 62 in., diameter: 51 in. , length when closed: 39 in. Artwork courtesy of the artist and ISCP. Photographs by Manuel Molina Martagon
En-tout-cas, a limited edition of 30 customized golf umbrellas created by Michael Rakowitz exclusively to benefit ISCP, is now available for purchase!
SELECT AN OPTION BELOW TO PURCHASE A LIMITED EDITION:
— Pick up at ISCP (1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11211)
Price: Edition 1-15: $500 | Edition 16-30: $750
All proceeds will go directly to supporting ISCP’s mission to build and sustain a vibrant community of contemporary art practitioners and audiences.
About the edition:
Under the umbrella’s white canopy, Rakowitz’s black printed handwriting appears. The artist recounts the story of MoMA’s founding director Alfred Barr’s smuggling of the abstract painting Suprematist Composition: White on White, by artist Kazimir Malevich, from Nazi Germany.
The title is a French term for an umbrella to be used in the sun, rain or snow. It also means “In any case” implies preparation for any event, or colloquially to make reference to whatever may have happened or will happen.
Michael Rakowitz, En-tout-cas, 2022, printed umbrella with paper tag signed by the artist, arc: 62 in. (157.5 cm), diameter: 51 in. (129.5 cm), length when closed: 39 in. (99 cm).
Narrative text of En-tout-cas, handwritten by Michael Rakowitz
In 1935, Alfred Barr, the director of MoMA met with Alexander Dorner, director of the Provinzialmuseum in Hannover, Germany. Dorner showed Barr a group of drawings, paintings, and charts by Polish-Ukrainian painter Kazimir Malevich who died earlier that same year, and whose works were being hidden in the basement of the Provinzialmuseum to keep them safe from the Nazis who had declared such work of abstraction as “degenerate art.”
The works had traveled with Malevich from the USSR to Germany in 1927 for an exhibition in Berlin. By this time, his art had been condemned in the Soviet Union as being “anti-proletarian” and once his exhibition closed, he decided to leave his works in Germany as they were likely to be destroyed if they were returned to the USSR.
Dorner sold several of Malevich’s works to Barr for MoMA’s collection, including a painting of a white square on a white field titled Suprematist Composition: White on White. Barr rolled up the painting inside his umbrella and smuggled it out of Germany, safely hidden from Nazi authorities who would have surely confiscated and destroyed the work. Barr carried the drawings and charts in a suitcase which he described as “study materials” to the German border guards.
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13); MoMA P.S.1; MassMOCA; Palais de Tokyo; the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, Transmediale 05, FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, and CURRENT:LA Public Art Triennial. He has had solo projects and exhibitions with Creative Time, Tate Modern in London, MCA Chicago, SITE Santa Fe, and Malmö Konsthall, among others. He was awarded the 2018-2020 Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. In 2019-20, a survey of Rakowitz’s work traveled from Whitechapel Gallery in London, to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Torino, to the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. Rakowitz is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Jane Lombard Gallery, New York; and Barbara Wien Galerie, Berlin; Pi Artworks, Istanbul; and Green Art Gallery, Dubai. He lives and works in Chicago.
ISCP is immensely grateful to Michael Rakowitz for his generosity. Special thanks to Jane Lombard Gallery, New York.
For sales or other inquiries, contact Houda Lazrak at hlazrak@iscp-nyc.org or 646-671-0391.
Photographs by Manuel Molina Martagon.