Category Archives: Notes on Art History

My wife and I are standing in San Francisco’s de Young Museum about to enter an art exhibit. The man looking out at us from the short film we are watching is Richard Diebenkorn. I want you to think of Salvadore Dali, his extravagance, the wild mustache, the publicity seeking; now think of Dali’s exact opposite. That man is Richard Diebenkorn. He is tall, lanky, well-spoken in a quiet voice, a voice that is somewhat shy. He is in his studio dressed in a button down shirt and corduroy slacks. He is wary of the fixed gaze of the camera. His voice often pauses as he carefully chooses his words. There is sometimes a hint of a shy smile. He is a quiet man. A man who does not desire the public eye, a man of regular habits who seeks his adventure with each painting he makes. And there is one other thing to mention. Despite the lack of showmanship or self aggrandizement he is one of the premier American painters of the second half of the twentieth century. A painter whose works evoke the light and spaces of California. He is an artist who remained true to his vision regardless of where it took him.

Beside us, printed on the wall, is the following note found among his papers after his death:

Notes to myself on beginning a painting

1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued — except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don’t “discover” a subject — of any kind.
6. Somehow don’t be bored — but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

Sad to say, it is almost an accident that we are there at all and I cringe to think we might have missed such a wonderful presentation of this artists early work.

Our visit to the de Young was something of a consolation prize. We’d planned on visiting The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but found it was closed for renovation. Okay, we thought, the de Young has an excellent collection of American Art, so why not have a look at some of the iconic paintings from American art history. It was a vague plan but it was a plan. There was, of course, that Diebenkorn exhibit going on, we’d read about that, but it covered his time in Berkeley and ended before the great Ocean Park paintings he made in Santa Monica. I was inclined to take a pass. Deb was inclined to see it. We bought tickets and went in.

Richard Diebenkorn was artistically restless and was always very much his own man. He’d briefly tried New York in the 1940’s where he was heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, but he soon fled west. “If you’re there,” he said, “you get all involved in the moment, in the issues that are always present but don’t really mean all that much. I like having had to rely on my own resources, although it seemed pretty desolate occasionally.”

Beginning as a committed Abstract Expressionist, the evolution of Diebenkorn’s work during the Berkeley years unfolds as one passes through the exhibition.

I find a representational element in the paintings of the 1950’s after the pure abstraction of the late 1940’s, as if the essence of the world around him is now being distilled for the canvas. “All paintings,” Diebenkorn said, “start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression.” The California light is there, the browns of the California landscape, and the pastel blues of the sky. In a similar way, I find an abstract element in even his much more representational work of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

Some critics thought Diebenkorn’s work was erratic, some called him a ‘traitor’ to Abstract Expressionism, and some simply dismissed him as no longer of being of interest. Diebenkorn had a much calmer view of the matter. “Abstract,” he said, “literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract… a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.” Timothy Burgard, the curator of the de Young, believes that Diebenkorn’s paintings always hovered between abstraction and depiction, a quality he called ‘oscillation’ and that he believes can be seen throughout the work in the exhibition. Diebenkorn has said that he turned his back on abstract painting because it became too easy for him. He needed the constraints that representation placed on him as something to struggle against.

After seeing the paintings for myself, I prefer to take Diebenkorn’s view of his evolution. “I was never throwing things away when I switched from one way of painting to another. You can see a continuum from representation to abstraction, although I must say it never felt like a smooth transition while I was in the middle of it.”

It is at this point in Diebenkorn’s career, 1966, that the exhibition at the de Young ends. In addition to the many paintings there are figure drawings. Diebenkorn worked from the live model for virtually his whole career, though he mainly saw it as a form of training. There are also various serigraphs and prints. It is wonderful work. For most artists it would have made a grand career. When Deb came out of the exhibition she was so moved by what she had seen she simply went off to take some time for reflection.

“I was never throwing things away when I switched from one way of painting to another. You can see a continuum from representation to abstraction, although I must say it never felt like a smooth transition while I was in the middle of it.”

Though I meant to write only about this particular experience at the de Young Museum, I find it impossible to neglect what came next for this artist. The exhibition may end with the year 1966, but Diebenkorn’s work most certainly did not. In that year he and his wife, Phyllis, moved from San Francisco so he could take up a teaching position at UCLA. For the next twenty-five years he returned to nonrepresentational art, painting hundreds of abstractions, many of which comprise the sublime geometry of the “Ocean Park” series, so named because he maintained a studio for many years in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica. After the years away from pure abstract painting his return is that of an artist of consummate mastery. A comparison of “Sausalito #3” painted in all its frantic energy in 1948 with the equally abstract “Ocean Park #129” and its suppressed energy beneath an outward calm speaks volumes about the distance traveled by this great painter.

And finally, in the very last years of his life,

The New York Times wrote upon his death in 1993, “From the beginning of his career, in the late 1940’s, he won admirers and exhibited widely. But the distance, both physical and psychological, that he maintained from New York tended to put him out of step with art-world fashion, and it caused either consternation or indifference in many critics. When Abstract Expressionism was ascendant in New York in the 1950’s, Mr. Diebenkorn switched from abstraction to figuration. When Pop Art made figuration fashionable in the 1960’s, he switched back to abstraction.”

Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But I see a different story playing out. I see a restless quest by a quiet man for a purity of expression that few us even know exists. The Ocean Park paintings are the magnificent culmination of this quest begun so many years before. Perhaps it is best to give Mr. Diebenkorn himself the last words:

“If what a person makes is completely and profoundly right according to his lights then this work contains the whole man. A work which falls short of this content, is only of passing value and lends itself to arbitrariness and fragmentation.”

For an audio interview with Richard Diebenkorn, visit:  Diebenkorn Interview

It is a long interview and it gets off to a slow (boring) start but becomes very interesting as Diebenkorn explains his life and work in his own words. He was a precise and articulate man who was quite self aware. It’s worth the listening.

Other quotes from Richard Diebenkorn on the artistic process:

I don’t go into the studio with the idea of ‘saying’ something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.

I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture and supercharge it in some way… what is more important is a feeling of strength in reserve – tension beneath calm.

When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling… But it happens very rarely; usually it’s agony… I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It’s the invisible enemy.

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Copyright 2013  James Tucker

JMW Turner  (1775-1851)  Self-portrait (1799)

 Once some years ago, when I was roaming the stacks at the University of Georgia library, I was struck by the titles of two books shelved side by side. One was entitled The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy; its companion announced The Pre-Raphaelite Comedy. Though I read neither book, the juxtaposition suggested there was something gone wrong about the Pre-Raphaelite movement, or the “Brotherhood” as they called themselves. At least I’ve always seen it that way. There is too much mere illustration going on combined with a reverence for the myths and ballads of the medieval world. It is a “Pugin-esque” fantasy that has little resonance for me. Still, as my knowledge of their art was based on what I’d seen in books, I felt I owed them a first hand look. Art must be seen in the original as it was intended to be seen, or it’s really not seen at all. That is why, in the fall of 2012, being in London, I found myself in at the Tate Britain, patiently shuffling past paintings by Rossetti, Millais, and Waterhouse, drifting in a human current of school children, tourists, and pensioners. As I moved through the crowded rooms looking at the Pre-Raphaelites with their decisive colors, crisp drawing, and faux-medieval splendor, I could not escape the realization that my relationship with the Brotherhood was not improving.

Art must be seen in the original, as it was intended to be seen, or it’s really not seen at all.

Slipping out of the exhibition, I made my way through the general collection to arrive with relief at the Turner Rooms. The amazing Mr. Turner is always a tonic for the eye. Turner dazzles. Turner is unique and demanding and a joy.

J. M. W. Turner was born in 1775 and had a long career ending only with his death in 1851. His production was continuous and prodigious. Beginning as a Romantic, he painted dramatically and even wrote a long epic (unfinished) poem entitled, “The Fallacy of Hope”. His work during this period would have established him as a great artist, but Turner continued to change, to grow, and finally challenged the very notion of what art was about. Like Beethoven, he was lauded in his own day, but came in time to make many of his contemporaries uncomfortable. Pushing the envelope year after year, pressing his use of color, dramatic gesture, tonality, and unconventional composition ever farther, his work evolved beyond the point where many of his time could comprehend it. His late works, done after he turned 60, are revolutionary even today. And being a decent sort of chap, he bequeathed a great deal of his art to the British government so it might be freely displayed. Much of it now resides in the Tate Britain.

As I arrived, I met the young Turner just coming of age in the twilight of the 18th century, filled with the dramatic sensibilities of Romanticism. He was a young man on the rise, gaining recognition early, and was quickly accepted into the Royal Academy. My eye rested on Fishermen at Sea. Exhibited in 1796 to much acclaim, it was his ‘Academy’ piece, or the painting that gained him admission to that body’s august ranks at the unripe age of 27.

1796 Fishermen at Sea

Certainly this painting expresses the Romantic temperament; we have moonlight, swirling clouds and sea, and dramatic tonality. There is no question of the artist’s talent, yet a whiff of the self-conscious is present.

Turning to my left, I saw The Shipwreck. Nine years have passed. Turner shows the confidence of an assured and mature artist. The composition is brilliant, the narrative drama reaches a fever pitch, and the brushwork is virtuosic even by Turner’s standards. Little wonder the critics found it a tour de force.

1805 The Shipwreck

Over the ensuing years, Turner painted many subjects—natural, historical, and allegorical—often combining genres. Nearby is Hannibal Crossing the Alps in a Snow Storm. As I walk over, I move forward another seven years in Turner’s life to 1812. He began sketching the foreground figures in 1804, but a snowstorm he observed while visiting Yorkshire was his true inspiration. The painting was well received by the public, being thought ‘magnificent and sublime’, but something new is at work here. Turner is changing and this painting is suggestive of what is to come. For instance, despite the fact that he is depicting the trials of an army, the human figures are marginalized. Nature is the star player. To allow the natural phenomena to burst forth on his canvas, Turner resorts to an unconventional composition, one without any geometric order and one that throws over the traditional rules. Turner’s skill with complex compositions was the stuff of legend even then, and he taught that subject as well as perspective at the Academy. Now, as he found himself moving toward his own special vision, his old ways of thinking about painting were expanding. The battle between the idea of order and his sense of the raw power inherent in his experience of light and movement had begun. In 1817 he resigned from teaching.

1812 Hannibal Crossing the Alps in a Snow Storm

To see where his quest would take him, I walked over to one of my favorite paintings: Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth. Turner painted innumerable subjects in his long career, but he was especially fascinated by the sea and its many, often times violent, moods. He returned to the sea as a subject again and again, his vision steadily evolving. The year is 1842. Turner is 67 years old and solidly in his finest period of painting. Laden with honors and financially secure, he is painting for himself, following his vision, an increasingly isolated and eccentric figure that all except his remaining friends suspect is mad. But he is no longer painting for his own time. He isn’t giving his audience what it wants; he is giving it what his eye demands he paint.

1842 Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth

Obviously,Turner is not concerned with the ship; he is expressing the experience itself. Hannibal Crossing the Alps in a Snow Storm showed the tension growing in him between the presentation of what is seen and what is experienced. Here experience has won out. Indeed, the ship as a subject barely exists. The swirling, maddening power of light and snow and wind is the subject. Knowing from the title that a ship is present, one guesses that the dark line is a mast and the dark passage at the top is smoke from the engines, but these suggestions are irrelevant to experiencing the image.

What most viewers saw was simply incomprehensible. Subject matter as they understood it had disappeared.

Turner claimed he asked the captain of the steamer Ariel lash him to the mast for four hours so he could study these atmospheric effects. The story is untrue. The tale merely reflects Turner’s desire for the viewer to understand that such a moment when light, motion, and color swirl into one is real. So desirous was Turner for the viewer to understand the truth of what he had experienced, his actual title of the painting is Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbours’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Authour was in this Storm on the Night the ‘Ariel’ left Harwich. Turner was presenting an experience to the viewer. What most viewers saw was simply incomprehensible. Subject matter as they understood it had disappeared. Turner’s painting was ridiculed as, “a mass of soapsuds and whitewash”. To understand how shocking such a picture would be at the time, one needs only to compare this painting to one by John Constable, Turner’s great contemporary, painted just five years earlier in 1837, the last year of Constable’s life.

1837 Arundel Mill and Castle

A few years later subject matter as his Victorian audience would have expected has disappeared from his work as is seen in 1845’s painting, Venetian Festival. It’s a festival all right, but a festival of color harmonies floating as if on light itself.

1845 Venetian Festival

Within a few years after Turner’s death in 1851, art was to take a significant change from the traditional Realism of Turner’s contemporaries. Monet and his Impressionist colleagues would soon be at work. Cezanne would be pointing the way to Cubism. Western artists would discover and be invigorated by Japanese art and then African art. The continued development of the camera would change the way artists saw their mission. Kandinsky would finally abandon any pretense to literal subject matter. Unquestionably, the intellectual and creative turmoil of the next seventy-five years is hard to overestimate. In many ways we are still working out the implications of ideas spawned during that time. Given the immensity of the intellectual and aesthetic changes that occurred, it is perhaps a fool’s errand to look for a point of origin where these momentous changes started. Indeed, contemporary painting has had many progenitors. Still, even with that said, I would urge that The Amazing Mr. Turner not be overlooked as one of the great sources of modern art.

In 1870 the France of Napoleon III engaged in an unnecessary, foolish, and unsuccessful war against Bismarck’s Prussia. It was a short sharp conflict in which the painter Bazille, friend of Monet and Renoir, was killed. Monet and Pissarro made the eminently sensible decision to relocate to London for the duration. There they were unimpressed by the dreary surroundings, painted some pictures that reflected those surroundings, and discovered Turner. Turner was not an Impressionist but he was an amazing colorist, a very daring artist, and his late work was pregnant with the future. The dramatic possibilities he poured forth were not lost on the two great French artists. I find it hard to look at Monet’s magnificent ‘Waterlilies’ series and not think of Turner.

And I’ll go even further out on the limb. If Cezanne is generally accepted as the spiritual father of the Cubists and the other ‘structural’ movements in modern art, perhaps it wouldn’t be entirely amiss to say that Turner was the spiritual father of the ‘action’ and ‘colorist’ schools that would follow. Looking at the swirling intense colors of his canvases, where color and movement and form and subject melt to become one, it is possible to see the beginnings of abstract expressionism and such artists as Pollock, Twombly, Mitchell, and Frankenthaler among many others. And in Turner’s free fusing of the subject in a swirl of emotion and movement, can the vision of De Kooning be so far away? But enough. It’s easy to say too much and influences are indirect and much mutated as they filter through time and the talents of others.

Perhaps it is best for us to return to that October day at the Tate Britain. It’s a curious thing, but there is a place where one can stand and see The Fishermen and Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off Harbor’s Mouth at very nearly the same time, just by slightly shifting one’s eyes between them. The effect is startling, almost disorienting. What a very great way Turner traveled and what an amazing new world he found.

Or in the words of Jerry Garcia, “…what a long strange trip it’s been.”

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Copyright 2013  James Tucker

The Seine, Outside Paris by Frank Boggs caught my eye on my first visit to the Hunter Museum about fifteen years ago. Since then, I go see it on most of my visits, and, like an old friend who never fails to charm, I always come away thrilled at its mastery of means and usually vow, with varying degrees of success, to emulate its immediacy in my own artwork.

When I first discovered this work I knew nothing about the artist but that mattered little. I avoid reading the information card next to a painting when viewing it for the first time, trying instead to let the artwork tell me all it can about itself, or at least as much as I can understand on a first viewing. So what can be deduced from this small canvas?

It was painted in the second half of the 19th century; the subject matter and the style make that clear enough. The relatively small size and the freedom of the brushwork suggests it was almost certainly done plein aire. Earlier in the century the development of paint packaged in tubes combined with the invention of the portable easel (still called a ‘French easel”) freed the artist from working exclusively in the studio. By the 1880’s it was a freedom that many younger artists increasingly relished and a common practice with painters such as Monet and Pissaro. Further suggesting its plein aire origins, this image has been painted on a tan colored ground, which can be seen in the foreground and behind the boats. Working directly on a toned ground, which is allowed to appear in the finished painting, both facilitates the visual cohesion of the image and speeds up the time necessary to capture the subject–not a small consideration when working outdoors with changing light conditions and environmental distractions. My guess is that this painting, almost an oil sketch, was 99% finished on the spot with very minor touches added in the studio. Great care has been taken by the artist to keep its spontaneity intact.

The economy of means and the freedom of technique are supported by a simple and effective composition. The darks are spotted judiciously, which, when combined with the swirl of the steam and clouds form lines, give the whole a vigorous rhythm and energy. Essentially, the darks along the horizon line are crossed by a second ‘line’ of visual energy that begins with the white of the river water on the lower left and moves into the picture plane to the lower clouds behind the boast. These compositional lines cross at the boats, and given the boat’s position in the painting and their dark tonality, make them the focus of the work. But Boggs goes further. By utilizing the swirl of steam and clouds above his primary subject, which he has placed on an unusually low horizon line, he gives the painting additional energy.

Of course I eventually read the information card and made the acquaintance of Frank Myers Boggs. I had not heard of him, but there are many fine artists who are not household names. When I got home an Internet search provided the following:

Frank Myers Boggs was born in Springfield, Ohio, but left Ohio in 1876 for study with Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He lived in Paris and New York, residing the last thirty years of his life in Paris. In Paris he won wide recognition for his atmospheric paintings of the ports of France and the quays along the Seine. His works were exhibited frequently in France. Between 1879 and 1916, his work was also shown in the United States, most often at the National Academy of Design, in New York, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia.

Known as a master of plein-air painting, Boggs delighted in capturing the fleeting effects of the constantly changing skies of northern France and southern England. With lush and broad brush strokes, Boggs created rich and spacious paintings, orchestrating a subtle and restrained palette of grays, deep and dusty blues, and earthy tans. Although his palette is more subtle and tonal than that of the French Impressionist Claude Monet, Boggs’ paintings demonstrate clear affinities with the early French Impressionist school. Like his fellow Impressionists, it was the transitory aspects of nature, as well as the documentation of everyday reality, to which Boggs was keenly sensitive.                                                                         –Keny Galleries- Columbus, OH)

So there you have it. The Seine Outside Paris is a small painting made by an American artist not much known today. Yet it contains much of value and, almost like a visual haiku, says much within the confines of its simplicity.

We are living in a time of increasing friction between law enforcement agencies and the citizens they serve. Violent confrontations between the police and members of minority communities have been recorded by bystanders. The resulting videos have quickly captured a national audience, causing the formation of groups such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ and leading to civil unrest. Though it was painted 32 years ago, Jack Levine’s painting “The Arrest” is more topical than ever.

Levine, who died in 2010 at the age of 95, has been described as a Social Realist, and his paintings, often crowded with satirically characterized figures, display his questioning of traditional authority and his uneasy relationship with contemporary culture. Openly hostile to the abstract styles of art dominant in the second half of the 20th century, Levine hearkened back to satirists such as Honoré Daumier and William Hogarth. “The Arrest”, while somewhat comical and obvious in its subject matter, is actually a tangle of questions about the nature and use of authority—questions that have been evolving with increasing urgency in the years after WWII.

This dramatic  painting contains three figures. On the left is an almost featureless white policeman whose powerful grip on the arrested person is both prominent and dominant in its determined act of control. Indeed, it is this figure’s muscular right arm, not his facial expression, that defines him. On the right a more shadowy policeman emerges from the background. He might or might not be African-American, and, though still an agent of the state, he exercises control in a less obvious way. Finally, and most prominently placed, is the faceless, genderless, raceless prisoner—a mysterious “everyperson” caught up in the net of social authority. This prisoner takes up almost half of the picture area and is thrust forward in the picture plane enhancing his or her visual prominence, but despite the compelling placement in the composition, this is a person controlled by powers that literally have grip on him or her. A difficult and emotional moment for anyone, but a bag with bizarrely shaped eye holes conceals the face. It is this bag, this mask covering the reality of feeling, that gives the prisoner a look of wry bemusement, as if saying, “of course this is happening to me, what did you expect?” It is a moment Franz Kafka would understand.

However in mid-century America, not too long before Levine painted “The Arrest”,  such questions about civic authority were restricted to left wing journals and “radical” publications. In 1958 Norman Rockwell painted a magazine illustration called “The Runaway”. It is far removed in its sentiments from “The Arrest”. In Rockwell’s image, the powers of society are responsible and understanding. Likely the man running the diner called his friend the policeman upon seeing the young runaway. The policeman, for his part, is using gentle persuasion to guide the boy into choosing to return home. And finally, the boy clearly accepts and respects the authority of the adults around him. The body language of all the participants is benign and caring. It’s a beautiful world in its innocence and social connectedness. No doubt it was also one that rarely existed outside the longings of the Saturday Evening Post readers, but one that Americans, at least most middle and upper class white Americans, chose to believe.  (For a recent satirical view of Rockwell’s iconic image see: Mad Magazine.)

If Levine’s painting presents a different world, perhaps it is because much happened between 1958 and 1983. The Vietnam War alienated many of America’s youth. The “police riot” at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was televised to a shocked nation as viewers watched Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine use its power to crush political protest. “Don’t trust anyone over 30” became a common refrain even before the Watergate hearings showed that criminal and self-serving behavior ran all  the way to the White House. In many quarters public authority became looked upon as mere social control at the beck and call of a political and financial elite that had little interest in administering evenhanded justice.

The country may have been surprised by the events of the 1960’s and 70’s, but they led us as a nation to a perspective on authority that Jack Levine had long held. Certainly his distrust manifested itself early enough. A half century before, in 1937, he painted “The Feast of Pure Reason”, which depicts a policeman, small businessman, and rich capitalist meeting to use their resources to their advantage. Their faces are well fed and complacent. Their selfish empowerment is banal and self-satisfied. Levine, who was born poor and whose first studio was in a slum neighborhood in Boston, had little reason to think that the game wasn’t rigged. In his world the rich and powerful have the law, the police, and the courts to enforce their will.

“The Feast of Pure Reason” tells us much about how we might view “The Arrest.” The police depicted in the painting use force (though by today’s standards it is quite restrained), but they are also rather neutral and detached in the process of doing so. They offer no sympathy and show no outrage. Who are these men? What do they think? What is their stake in this moment? It appears that they are merely agents of control, pure and simple. The three figures–the prisoner in the foreground, the policeman on the left, and the policeman on the right–each recedes further into the background, suggesting that somewhere in the darkness behind them, someone else is in control. Someone for whom this moment is a desired outcome. Someone not unlike the men in “The Feast of Pure Reason”.

But what of the anonymous prisoner? Has this person committed a heinous crime?  Could he or she be a violent criminal that society must lock up for its protection? Or someone much less dangerous, a petty thief perhaps? Or a political prisoner? Is the crime merely being who or what he or she is? We don’t know and the policemen don’t seem to care. They do what they do for the people who tell them to do it. This lack of feeling extends to the behavior of the prisoner. Regardless of the force in the policeman’s grip, the body language of the prisoner is completely neutral, too. There is no struggle. And because the bag masks any facial expression, we don’t see anger or resignation or, for that matter, any emotion. Indeed, the covered face suggests the mask we all wear when facing compelling and controlling authority. To reveal true feelings at such a moment would be to give away the little dignity you still possess.

In Jack Levine’s “The Arrest”, there is force and there is submission. That is all. Right and wrong are not present.

This essay is part of the Thinking About Paintings series.

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Edith Cockcroft, though not well known today, was an established and successful artist in her time. “The Circus is in Town”, part of the Hunter Museum of American Art’s permanent collection, is one of her paintings from 1912, done when she was 31 years old. In it, a circus has come to a small New York town and the locals have turned out to view the parade announcing its arrival. It is, no doubt, a regional circus, a mere shadow of the splendor of Ringling Bros. It’s probably been to this little town on more than one occasion. Still, though all but the youngest townsfolk know what to expect, it’s a bit of a novelty in its way and something to be welcomed. A cursory glance tells us we have a bit of Americana here, a display of the innocent joy of small town living.

Perhaps. But I think more is going on if one looks carefully and is aware of the context.

To begin with, Edith Cockcroft is painting in, what was for the time,  a modern and controversial style. The idea of a turn of the century circus arriving in a small town suggests sentimental nostalgia– a motif beloved by the illustrators of the time. She, however, approaches her subject objectively and with a technique that is rough, spontaneous, and dynamic.

Just four years earlier, in 1908, a now famous exhibition by eight artists, later dubbed by critics “The Ashcan School,” had been staged at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. At that time, it was the only gallery in the city that showed contemporary American art. Presented by the artists Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, Edward Shinn, William Glackens, Arthur Davies, Maurice Penderghast, and Ernest Lawson, the show was roundly condemned by critics for its  unacceptable and unpleasant subject matter (streetlife, tenements, etc.) and coarseness of style. Though massive changes in art had already occurred in Europe, most notably in France, the American art schools still clung steadfastly to a narrow academic style that one challenged at one’s peril. The academics set and maintained very conservative standards, and, as the twentieth century began, America was largely an artistic backwater.

The show mounted by the eight artists of the Ashcan School was a direct challenge to this state of affairs. Edith Cockcroft would  have understood and sympathized with their cause. Certainly, the young Ms. Cockcroft possessed artistic sophistication.  Born in 1881 in Brooklyn, NY,  she went to France in 1898, spending the next several years in the art colonies of Pont Aven and Concarneau. While living in Paris, she studied with Henri Matisse and exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d’Automme. Returning to the United States her work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design from 1910 to 1915, as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago, the International Art Union, the Salons of America, the Pennsylvania Academy and the Corcoran Gallery. Hardly someone with a narrow or provincial mindset, Edith Cockcroft was an artist who had her finger on the pulse of the avant garde.

So what is she up to in this painting of small town American life.

To my mind, this painting is a sly critique of contemporary American life and culture, somewhat akin to that in Sinclair Lewis’s 1920 novel, Main Street. Her use of such a rough, spontaneous technique would, to the viewer of the time, be a bit like our hearing the Rolling Stones do a cover of “A Bicycle Built for Two”. The paint surface contrasts with the subject in a way that underscores the provincialism of the setting.

And there is further evidence of her intent.

Look at how she uses her palette. All the color is centered on the circus. Cover the lower quarter of the canvas and the remainder goes utterly lifeless and bland. The orange figure on the elephant demands our eye’s attention. More color dances along along behind, but almost no color is given to the houses or the people in the small town. They may be the bedrock of the nation, but they are also empty, static, and drab. Color, movement, and excitement must come from elsewhere.

So is it too much of a stretch to go from there to wondering if the circus just might represent the new young artists and their work? Artists and ideas she knew were coming that would utterly change American art forever. Edith Cockcroft had been to Paris, had met the avant garde, had seen the future. Was she subtly telling the rest of her country that they would soon experience it, too? All of the speculations above are obviously my personal reaction to her painting. We will never know exactly what Edith Cockcroft’s intentions were, but I would like to think that is exactly what she was doing.

Edith Cockcroft spent her entire adult life as an artist, not giving up her career for her husband (very common at the time), though she married and lived in New York City and then in Sloatsburg, New York. Her husband, Charles Weyand, was a stock broker who was ruined by the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression. It was Edith who then supported them with her pottery, jewelry and fabric designs.

Let us savor that for a moment—an artist supporting a failed stockbroker! For that alone Edith Cockcroft deserves to be remembered.

She died in Ramapo, NY in 1962.

 

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