Conceived as a series of journeys akin to those of saints or shamans,
Negotiating Rapture brings together the work of Francis Bacon,
Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars, Lucio Fontana, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anselm
Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and
Bill Viola. These artists are exhibited together in order to reveal
their diverse expressions of a shared longing: the basic and enduring
human urge to transcend the ordinary and experience the
sublime.Juxtaposed with a range of works by Old Masters and examples
from architecture, literature, and anthropology, the works in
Negotiating Rapture show how artists, as creators, move beyond
common experience to a state approaching religious ecstasy and how we,
as viewers, can in turn discover a deeper involvement in our own
humanity.
Major essays by Homi K. Bhabha, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Morgan, and
Lee Siegel, as well as a series of focused contributions by Yve-Alain
Bois, Wendy Doniger, Kenneth Frampton, Martin E. Marty, John Hallmark
Neff, Annemarie Schimmel, and Helen Tworkov, consider how rapture
resonates both in a cultural context and within the experience of a
single human being. A "Travel Guide to Negotiating Rapture,"
written by curators Richard Francis and Sophia Shaw, explores how each
artist in the exhibition has sought to define rapture and, by guiding
the viewer/reader, initiates scrutiny of transformative experiences.
