Chamberlain and his work focus of Chinati Weekend 2012

By JOHN DANIEL GARCIA

MARFA – Chinati Foundation open house weekend 2012 begins at 6pm Friday with a cocktail reception in downtown Marfa at the namesake building of this year’s celebrated artist, the late sculptor and one-third of the holy trinity of Marfa minimalists, John Chamberlain.

John Chamberlain

An Indiana native, Chamberlain served in the U.S. Navy, followed by studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College, where he studied poetry under Charles Olsen, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan. Following his academic career, he moved to New York, where he would implement the use of scrap auto parts in his sculpture – a move that would later define his artistic career.

Chinati will follow up the cocktail reception with a benefit dinner at the Arena on the Chinati grounds. Reservations for the dinner are $500 per person, $350 Chinati members and area residents. Reservations can be made via the foundation’s website, www.chinati.org.

At 11am Saturday, visitors are welcomed to a champagne toast to commemorate the unveiling of the newly restored Claes Oldenburg sculpture, “Monument to the Last Horse,” at Chinati. The sculpture has undergone extensive restoration throughout the last year by Chinati’s head conservator, Bettina Landgrebe. Talks and music will also be featured on Saturday.

Lynne Cook, chief curator at Museo Reina Sophin in Madrid, Spain, will speak on Chamberlain’s process at 3pm in the Chamberlain Building. A round table discussion with Taos, New Mexico-based artist Larry Bell, Chamberlain’s step-daughter Alexandra Fairweather, The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez starlet Ultraviolet, and curator/writer Klaus Kertess will follow at 4pm at the Crowley Theater. Saturday night events end with music performed by local talent.

Marfa Book Company hosts a reading at 11am Sunday of Chamberlain’s poems. After the reading, John Chamberlain by Alexandra Fairweather, The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez by John Chamberlain, and John Chamberlain: Modern Sculpture by Paul Tschinkel will screen at The Crowley Theater starting at 2pm.

photograph by Alberto Halpern A lone art tourist absorbs the natural light and John Chamberlain sculptures in the Chinati Foundation’s Chamberlain Building in downtown Marfa. See additional stories for weekend events.

Special exhibitions this year include selected works from the collection by Donald Judd, Barnet Newman, and Carl Andre, as well as Photographs and Drawings in the Manner of Lithographs by Chamberlain. Robert Irwin’s Cool School and work by Chinati Foundation’s artist in residence, Ester Partegas will also be exhibited.

Tours of the Chinati Foundation’s permanent collection and the Judd Foundation will run from 10am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday, and all tours  are free of charge this weekend.