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UB Anderson Gallery to present "Open Wide"
By KRISTIN E.M. RIEMER
Reporter Contributor
The relationship between dentists and their patients is the subject of "Open Wide: 500 Years of Dentistry in Art," an exhibition in the UB Anderson Gallery featuring more than 75 prints, drawings, photographs and books selected from the collection of UB alumnus Morton G. Rivo.
Organized by Sandra H. Olsen, director of the UB Art Galleries, and interns and students in the university's museum studies graduate seminar, the exhibition will open with a reception from 7-9 p.m. on Oct. 11 in the Anderson Gallery, Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo. It is free of charge and open to the public, and will remain on view through Jan. 11, 2004.
This work by artist Leo Meissner is among the pieces in "Open Wide: 500 Years of Dentistry in Art," an exhibition in the UB Anderson Gallery.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sunday.
Rivo, a 1957 graduate of the School of Dental Medicine, has been collecting art for most of his adult life and works on paper related to the practice of dentistry for several years. The result is an incomparable collection of prints and drawings that focus on the relationship between dentists and their patients. With only two prints from important early encyclopedic medical publications, the collection ranges from serious and academic to downright humorous.
Visitors to "Open Wide" will recognize and empathize with the graphic and frequently humorous images, which date from the early 1500s to the present. Throughout the ages, each generation has dealt with the dentist who often is "in your face" and associated with pain, fear and trepidation.
The earliest image in the exhibition is a 16th century German woodcut of Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentistry, whom patients can call upon for pain relief. Several important prints date from the 17th century, a period when genre paintings depicting scenes from everyday life were fairly common. A 17th century hand-colored etching by French artist Andre Paul reproduces a version of a painting in Madrid's Prado Museum by Flemish artist Theodor Rombouts (1597-1637), "Charlatan Tooth Puller," c. 1620-25.
The majority of the prints on view are from the 19th century, a period rich in print production that served as illustrations in daily newspapers and as works of art affordable to the emerging middle class. Famous caricaturists of the period are represented, including English artists George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. Six of the seven prints on dentistry by the "father of modern caricature," Honoré-Victorin Daumier, also are part of the exhibition. Two beautiful hand-colored Japanese woodcuts—Ukiyo-e prints by Utagawa Kunisada and Utagawa Kuniyoshi—demonstrate the universality and popularity of the dental theme.
In addition, a special group of prints by artists Francisco Goya (1746-1828), Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and Enrique Chagoya (b. 1953) compare the treatment of a single subject by succeeding generations of artists.
A large group of works by such modern and contemporary artists as Peggy Bacon, Art Hazelwood, Leo Meissner and Matt Phillips, as well as drawings by Fred Shane, Edward Hagedorn and Jeff Leedy illustrate an ongoing fascination with the subject of dentistry. Descriptions of teeth and pain are creatively depicted by Chagall and Clemente. A group of rarely seen preparatory drawings by Harvey Breverman, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the UB Department of Art, for a print commissioned by the UB School of Dental Medicine on the occasion of the Sept. 20, 1986 opening of Squire Hall, the newly acquired and remodeled clinical education site, completes the exhibition.
A selection of rare and unique books and objects relating to the practice of dentistry from the UB Health Sciences Library and the UB Dental Museum also is part of the exhibition.
The exhibition received generous support from the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Dental Medicine, and an anonymous private donor.