Barbara Swan: Reflected Self Barbara Swan first came to my attention almost four years ago, while I was working on an exhibition entitled The Expressive Voice. The exhibition was an opportunity to explore Boston Expressionism, a movement that dominated the Boston art scene beginning in the late 1940s. However, due to the popularity of Abstract Expressionism and New York during the same period, and the Boston Expressionist’s commitment to figurative rather than pure abstraction, it remained a largely regional movement. By definition, the term expressionism can be interpreted widely, and those considered Boston Expressionists were certainly not carved from the same mold. Artists such as Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, and David Aronson looked to religion, spirituality, politics, and heritage to define their artistic identity. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and the instruction of Karl Zerbe, head of the Department of Painting, was highly influential as well. The mentoring relationship between students and teachers, and the resulting community of artists who formed at the Museum School, also contributed greatly to the development of a vibrant arts culture in Boston mid-century. There was another interesting signifier that came to my attention while working on The Expressive Voice—the number of women who appeared in the exhibition. Much has been written about the gendered culture and robust masculinity of mid-century movements such as Abstract Expressionism, but gender appeared to be a more fluid construction for the Boston Expressionists—something visible and felt, but not widely discussed. While not all of the women who trained at the Museum School moved on to careers as professional artists, some did, Barbara Swan among them, along with Esther Geller and Lois Tarlow—both subjects of Swan’s works. These women faced an uphill climb—trying to find success in a difficult field, while also being acutely aware of gendered societal expectations of home and family. Barbara Swan entered the Museum School in 1943. In Judith Bookbinder’s study of Boston Expressionism, Boston Modern, Swan recalled that she did not feel as if she was treated any differently from the male students, but acknowledged that she was fortunate that Karl Zerbe liked her; she was appointed as Zerbe’s teaching assistant in her fifth year1. The influence of Zerbe, and the direction he was taking the Museum School, are evident in Swan’s early work—seen in her vibrant use of color coating the canvas in strong blocks with wide visible brushstrokes. The broad blocks of colors juxtaposed against each other, yellows and reds and greens, seen in the Portrait of Pinkney Near (c. 1950) and Baby (Aaron at 4 Months)(1955), are jarring yet ultimately harmonious. Her interest in color and its manipulation—seen in many of her early works—is a mark of Boston Expressionism, although not surprisingly, Swan resisted labels and never saw herself as part of a movement—rather more of an outlier2. While Swan excelled at the Museum School and certainly gained from her experience, she was not eager to consider herself part of a group of artists, or define herself as a Boston Expressionist. There were elements of the movement she clearly embraced (the personal and highly emotional aspects of the works, a reluctance to abandon the figure), but others that she did not consider to be within the realm of her experience.Pamela Allara has described Swan as “a Boston Expressionist in spirit, if not in style,” and this seems to fit her well—a part of the group, but forging her own path3.
1 Judith Bookbinder, Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism. Durham, New Hampshire: University of New Hampshire Press, 221. 2 Conversation with Joanna Fink, October 21, 2013, Brookline, MA. Fink also noted that Swan’s gender, and that she was slightly older than her fellow students, having already earned a Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley, placed her outside the movement. 3 Pamela Allara in Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Nicholas Capasso, and Jennifer Uhrhane, Painting in Boston: 19502000, Lincoln, MA: DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 153.