James Cagle: A Final Meditation on Art

Name: Shilpa Gupta I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt
Start: 2024-06-28T12:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-01-12T18:00:00+00:00
Location: State Street Gallery

Exhibition

February 29, 2020 – January 31, 2021

James Cagle, Aurora, 2019. Archival pigment print, 6 x 5 inches. Courtesy of the artist. — James Cagle, *Aurora*, 2019. Archival pigment print, 6 x 5 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

About

James Cagle was a Wisconsin-based artist who drew on the formalist language of modernist photography to transform familiar objects and overlooked spaces into elegant compositions. The exhibition A Final Meditation on Art, represents the culmination of Cagle’s creative vision: a quietly powerful photographic installation he conceived while confronting terminal illness. The fifteen photographs in this exhibition range from the purely abstract to the pointedly figurative. Presented together in a tight grid, the images can be observed singularly or in relationship to each other, thereby allowing for visual connections and narrative associations to ricochet off each other.

Cagle, in considering the end of his own life, delighted in the expansiveness of potential meanings this body of work will undoubtedly engender among museum visitors. Imbuing the everyday with an aura of mystery, A Final Meditation on Art serves as Cagle’s final act of generosity: a lyrical eulogy to the creativity and profundity of daily life.

Gallery

James Cagle, Eyes, 2019. Archival pigment print, 6 x 5 inches. Courtesy of the artist. — James, Cagle, *Domestic Image (Diamond)*, 2015. Archival pigment print, 12 x 18 inches (20 x 26 inches). Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the artist.

James Cagle, Green Painting with Afternoon Shadows, 2016. Archival pigment print, 12 x 18 inches (20 x 26 inches). Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the artist. — James, Cagle, *Domestic Image (Diamond)*, 2015. Archival pigment print, 12 x 18 inches (20 x 26 inches). Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the artist.

Videos

Gallery Talk with Richard H. Axsom

Quarry Rock Face, Door County, Wisconsin

2015

James Cagle

Semblance

James Cagle

Press

Press Release

James Cagle: A Final Meditation on Art Press Release

MMoCA Makes Exhibition Film Available Online During Closure Press Release

Press Coverage

Final vision: James Cagle faces his own immortality in MMoCA exhibit
– Isthmus

James Cagle’s terminal illness informed his final art show
– Madison Magazine

Support

Major Sponsorship for James Cagle: A Final Meditation on Art has been provided by the Rona B. Malofsky Trust. Additional support has been provided by Dane County Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, the Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of the Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation; Jan Marshall Fox; Bill White; and a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Current Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

Programming

Events

James Cagle: A Final Meditation on Art

About

Gallery

Videos

Gallery Talk with Richard H. Axsom

Programming & Events

Artwork

Aurora

Waltz

Film

Coda

Equinox

Nascence

Transposition

Tracer

White

Touch

Talisman

Premonition

Zoology

Crepusule

Eyes

Crepuscule (for Massenet)

Stairway Walls and Ceiling in Soft Light

Green Painting with Afternoon Shadows

Domestic Image (Kleenex)

1895

Industrial Still Life (Denderah)

Industrial Still Life (separated tube)

Domestic Image (Jar with Edge)

Open Cylinder Color Version

Blue Crevice, Rim and Chance Markings

Vacated Mall, Manitowoc, Wisconsin

Discarded Amazon Invoice (Louise Lawler)