Topic: The Emily Files

The Challenge of Fragility: Piet Mondrian’s Victory Boogie-Woogie

It was the small pieces of colored tape applied experimentally at the last moment that made Piet Mondrian’s monumental Victory Boogie-Woogie fragile. They also presented a huge headache for Emily Hall Tremaine who purchased Victory Boogie-Woogie in 1945. “Almost from the day it arrived, this collage began to tremble and I realized that even losing… Read more »

The Return of the Zuni War God

Somewhere on a mesa in New Mexico on land belonging to the Zuni resides a powerful war god that once stood—more an exile than a piece of art—in the New York apartment of Emily Hall Tremaine. In solitude, visited by the wind, it looks out at the vastness of the land known as the Middle… Read more »

Painting Toward Architecture: Bringing Art to Industry and Industry to Art

When the eminent art historian Robert Rosenblum was a graduate student at Yale in the late 1940s, he accidentally stumbled upon what seemed to be a catalog titled Painting Toward Architecture for a major exhibition of the same name then touring museums and galleries throughout the United States. He was stunned by what the book… Read more »

The Black Rose: When Art Extends Beyond the Walls

The first major painting that Emily Hall Tremaine bought was The Black Rose by Georges Braque. It opened to Emily the possibility of making art more available to the public, in essence, sharing it. She came to believe that art should not be limited to the walls of a gallery, museum, or a collector’s home…. Read more »

Louise Lawler and Emily Hall Tremaine: Site-Unspecific Art

In the fall of 1983, Louise Lawler was given the opportunity to photograph the art in the New York apartment and the Connecticut home of the Tremaines. The results included a photograph of the bottom edge of Jackson Pollock’s Frieze and a soup tureen on a sideboard. Another showed Léger’s painting of three huge women,… Read more »

Christo’s Art of the Hidden and Transient

On the wall in the headquarters of the Tremaine Foundation hangs a lithograph by Christo of a little red wagon. A Radio Flyer, it is the iconic type of wagon children all across the nation have owned and treasured for one hundred years, pulling all manner of things in it, be it a friend, a… Read more »

When Curatorial and Artistic Visions Clash

It is not unusual for there to be clashes between artists, curators, and collectors who loan works for exhibitions. Sparks can fly for many reasons including: differing understanding of an exhibition’s theme; fragility of the artwork; and difficulty in displaying it effectively and safely. A unique example of such a clash occurred between Emily Hall… Read more »

A Cosmic Earthwork

Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine had part ownership of Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, a vast impact crater that in a visceral way underscored the obvious—the Earth, for all its beauty, is a planet vulnerable to powerful blows from space. Adjacent to the Bar T Bar Ranch, the crater is a mile wide and 550… Read more »

Departure of the Ghost by Paul Klee: Technology and Intuition

Emily Hall Tremaine (1906-88) was attracted to art in which theory and technology served as conduits for intuition. “You see a prophetic vision, especially if you train yourself to see it,” she explained. “You almost see what’s coming through the artist.” In her stellar art collection that eventually surpassed 400 works, one of the best… Read more »