September 26, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Maggie Estes, Director of
Marketing
mestes@cliburn.org
, 817.738.6536 (o), 817.739.0459 (c)
Fort Worth, Texas, September 26, 2011-This
evening the Van Cliburn Foundation unveiled the commissioned
artwork that will be the signature image representing the
Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition, to be held May 24-June 9,
2013.
The piece is a unique photograph by famed American artist
Ed Ruscha named Untitled (Cliburn
Competition), 2011. The image is that of ivory piano
keys viewed from the side and slightly above the keyboard. The
result is a dramatic, foreshortened image, highlighting the
distance a pianist's fingers travel as they play. It is a perfect
symbol of the piano as an open palette for each competitor.
(Download the image at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/vancliburnfoundation.)
Michael Auping, chief curator for the Modern Art Museum of Fort
Worth, was pivotal in negotiating the partnership. "Ruscha has
always approached his subjects, particularly architecture and
landscape, from unique angles, exaggerating them to appear grand in
an abstract and modern way," Auping said. "The Cliburn work is a
classic Ruscha image. It translates piano keys into a sweeping
abstract landscape that pulls us across its surface."
Carla Kemp Thompson, Cliburn board chairman, said: "We are
exceedingly grateful to Michael for lending his keen insight and
expertise to the Cliburn and connecting us with Ed Ruscha-an
American treasure, intrinsic to the cultural landscape of our
country. This stunning work gives exactly the right forward-looking
perspective for the Cliburn as we prepare for and produce our
Fourteenth Competition."
ED RUSCHA BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha was raised
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his family moved in 1941. In 1956
he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, and
had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery. In
1973, Ruscha began showing his work with the Leo Castelli Gallery
in New York City. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles, and
currently shows with Gagosian Gallery.
Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted
hometown of Los Angeles with vernacular language to communicate a
particular urban experience. Encompassing painting, drawing,
photography, and artist's books, Ruscha's work holds the mirror up
to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of
mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily.
Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly
influence his aesthetic and thematic approach.
Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives
that have traveled internationally, including those organized by
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1982, the Centre Georges
Pompidou in 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in
2000, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2002, and
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004. Also in 2004, The
Whitney Museum of American Art organized two simultaneous
exhibitions: "Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The
Drawings of Ed Ruscha," which traveled to the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.; and "Ed Ruscha and Photography." In 2005, Ruscha
was the U.S. representative at the 51st Venice Biennale. The
traveling exhibition "Ed Ruscha, Photographer" opened at the Jeu de
Paume in Paris in 2006. A major exhibition of his work entitled "Ed
Ruscha: Road Tested" was presented at the Modern Art Museum of Fort
Worth from January to April 2011.
In 2001, Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts and
Letters as a member of the Department of Art. Leave Any
Information at the Signal, a volume of his writings and
interviews, was published by MIT Press in 2002, and the first
comprehensive monograph on the artist, Richard Marshall's Ed
Ruscha, was published by Phaidon in 2003. A major
retrospective, "Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting," opened at the
Hayward Gallery in London in October 2009 and traveled to the Haus
der Kunst, Munich and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
ABOUT THE VAN CLIBURN INTERNATIONAL PIANO
COMPETITION
Van Cliburn's sensational victory at the First
Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958 heralded a
new confidence in the quality of American music-making, as well as
a new era in cultural relations between East and West. Celebrating
this remarkable achievement, a group of music teachers and citizens
from Fort Worth, Texas created the Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition. First held in 1962, the Competition has established
itself as a joyous festival dedicated to the discovery of the
world's finest young pianists.
The Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition will take place May 24-June 9,
2013 at Fort Worth's Bass Performance
Hall and willwelcome 30 of the world's finest young
pianists to Texas. From the beginning, the Competition has been
committed to showcasing both the extraordinary talent of its
competitors in recital performance as well as their ability to
successfully and beautifully collaborate with other musicians. The
Fourteenth Competition will mark the first Cliburn appearance by
the world renowned Brentano String Quartet
performing in chamber recitals with all semifinalists. The
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, which has joined
every finalist of every Cliburn Competition onstage, will again
perform concerti with each finalist, under the baton of
Maestro Leonard Slatkin for the first time.
Maestro John Giordano will serve as chairman of
the jury for his 11th straight Competition since assuming the post
in 1973.
In addition to receiving significant cash prizes, the winners of
each competition are awarded three years of career management and
artistic services, including the booking of national tours for all
six finalists and international engagements for the gold medalist,
in conjunction with IMG Europe. The winners of the Thirteenth
Competition held in 2009 are currently in their third year of
touring, having performed over 350 engagements, including concerts,
recitals, master classes, and education/outreach events before
thousands of people. These tours play a vital part in fulfilling
the Van Cliburn Foundation's purpose of bringing the highest
quality of music to audiences everywhere.
Since the Competition's inception, significant media projects have
been intrinsic to its organization and reach-including the national
and international distribution of CDs and DVDs, and the broadcast
of syndicated radio programs all over the country. The Foundation
has produced nine documentaries that have aired nationally on PBS
since the 1977 Cliburn Competition and have garnered acclaim and
numerous awards, including a Primetime Emmy® (1989) and a Peabody
Award (2001). A Surprise in Texas, the Peter Rosen film
chronicling the 2009 Competition, was well received at film
festivals across the country and in a Texas theatrical release,
then reached a potential audience of over 105 million households
with its prime time PBS airing on September 1, 2010. The film
recently won the 2011 ECHO Klassik Award for Best Music DVD
Recording of the Year (Documentation).
In 1997, the Cliburn began utilizing sophisticated Internet
resources to stream the Competition live online, extending its
outreach to every corner of the globe. In 2009, web viewers enjoyed
real-time access to Competition performances in their entirety, as
well as to a fully produced webcast offering hours of educational
and cultural content, backstage views of rehearsals, and the
International Cultural Diplomacy Symposia. Unique viewership of the
2009 live coverage and archived footage on Cliburn.tv now totals
well over 200,000.
The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has been the most
visible expression of the Van Cliburn Foundation's
commitment to the highest standards of musical achievement, but the
mission of the organization is actualized through the combination
of all of its core programs. For audiences in the Dallas/Fort Worth
Metroplex, the Foundation promotes great music and world-class
artists through the annual Cliburn Concerts series. It reaches over
30,000 elementary school students annually with the education
programs of Musical Awakenings®. In 1999, it established
the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs™,
which The Boston Globe proclaimed "a celebration of music,
and the people who have to make music, no matter what." The sixth
Amateur Competition was held in Fort Worth May 23-29, 2011 at Ed
Landreth Auditorium on the campus of TCU.
Visit Cliburn.org to learn more about the Cliburn as it approaches
the 50th anniversary of the First Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition.
ExxonMobil is the Principal Corporate Sponsor
of the Van Cliburn Foundation. American Airlines;
"Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust," Bank of America,
Trustee; The Pangburn Foundation, JPMorgan Chase,
N.A., Trustee; Steinway & Sons; and
XTO Energy Inc. are Official Corporate Sponsors.
Official Sponsors are the Amon G. Carter
Foundation, Arts Council of Fort Worth &
Tarrant County, the Burnett Foundation,
JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Sid W.
Richardson Foundation, and the T. Boone Pickens
Foundation. Star-Telegram is the
exclusive print media sponsor, and WRR 101.1 FM is
the official radio station of Cliburn Concerts.
