Docent Dateline
SPRING 2020
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The wind came back with triple fury and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. — ZORA NEALE HURSTON
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George Inness, The Storm, 1885, oil on canvas. Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse.
For a number of years, I have written a piece for a journal, Notes on American Letters, that is designed for teachers of the humanities. The journal comes out quarterly, but I do only two pieces a year. I choose a piece of art and a poem to correlate, usually focusing on some central idea. The spring issue features George Inness’s The Storm (1885) and Adrienne Rich’s “Storm Warnings” (1951). The editor gave The Docent Dateline permission to use it.
An Art/Poetry Correlation
by Becky Brown
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Lately, whenever I check the weather forecast on my computer, I get a pop-up ad that encourages me to pay $9.99 for a year of pin-point accuracy about where and when storms will come. Along with that, there are several other benefits. I would get, for example, the number of lightning strikes in my area. The pop-up implies that greater knowledge would mean greater control. Adrienne Rich dealt with the prospect of a storm in her poem “Storm Warnings.” Written while she was in her twenties, the poem contains an idea that might have come from an older, wiser person: People are contained and defined in situations over which they have little control. Against that poem, I am placing The Storm, a painting by George Inness from the late nineteenth century. (Reynolda House Museum of American Art > George Inness > The Storm). His portrayal of a storm is more enigmatic than Rich’s, but they share similarities. The painting is an oil on canvas. One “enters” it from slightly above the action. In the foreground are trees that have been blasted by prior storms. Dark clouds overshadow the rocky hillside. Whether the storm is coming or leaving is hard to tell. The eye moves from that foreground toward a lone figure on the rise of the hill. The figure may, like the storm, be either coming or going. If he is moving away from us, he is headed toward some buildings farther down the hill that are catching a bit of light through a break in the clouds. If he is moving toward us, he may be coming
up the hill to assess the devastation from the storm. The landscape is dark except for a break in the clouds that lets that light through. The painting is obscure, a fact that draws us to it and asks the viewer to pause and contemplate its meaning. Its vagueness is a little like a dream that is not quite in focus. Since the painting defies narrative, we turn to metaphor. The storm, the figure, the trees, and the bit of sun may have meaning other than their physical representation. The sole figure becomes, for example, Christian in Pilgrims Progress, or the bit of sun might represent hope. Inness painted from memory. He would sit for hours looking at a vista. It was as if he was capturing the essence of the scene instead of its details. Toward the end of his career, Inness wrote, “In the beginning of my career, I would sit down before nature and under the impulse of a sympathetic feeling put something on canvas more or less like what I was aiming at. It would not be a correct portrait of the scene, perhaps, but it would have a charm . . . I then thought we saw physically and with the physical eye only.” (DeLue, p.20). His ideas about art evolved alongside his reading of Emanuel Swedenborg. He came to see nature as a manifestation of the Divine. The year before he did The Storm, he wrote that “elaborateness in detail did not gain me meaning.” (DeLue, p. 24). It was meaning he sought. The obscurity of his paintings, then, asks us to read them differently. The question we ask changes from “Where is that figure going?” to “Why do I identify with that figure?” We stop “seeing with the physical eye only.” SP R I N G
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One revealing story that Inness’s son tells about his father is that a buyer came to his studio and chose a painting, paid for it, and arranged its delivery. When the painting arrived, the buyer protested that the painting was not the one he had bought. He thought it better than the one he had bought. Inness informed him that it was the same painting. He had just worked on it some more after meeting him. (Inness, Jr., pp. 141147). From that appropriately cloudy summation of Inness, we turn to Adrienne Rich’s word picture of a coming storm: The glass has been falling all the afternoon, And knowing better than the instrument What winds are walking overhead, what zone Of grey unrest is moving across the land, I leave the book upon a pillowed chair And walk from window to closed window, watching Boughs strain against the sky And think again, as often when the air Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting, How with a single purpose time has traveled By secret currents of the undiscerned Into this polar region. Weather abroad And weather in the heart alike come on Regardless of prediction. Between foreseeing and averting change Lies all the mastery of elements Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. Time in the hand is not control of time, Nor shattered fragments of an instrument A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, We can only close the shutters. I draw the curtains as the sky goes black And set a match to candles sheathed in glass Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine Of weather through the unsealed aperture. This is our sole defense again the season; These are the things we have learned to do Who live in troubled regions.
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The speaker in the poem is preparing for a storm that is certainly coming. She has been watching the barometer, and she knows to get ready for it. Unlike the figure in Inness’s painting, she is inside a room that feels almost cozy. All the reader knows about the room is that it has a book and a pillowed chair. There is comfort here even though it is an anxious comfort. She has experienced storms before, and she does what she can to prepare. She draws the curtains and lights a sheathed candle. The windows are closed and shuttered. She, too, is sheathed in glass. Like the lighted candle, her existence is fragile. She does what she can to protect herself because “These are the things we have learned to do / Who live in troubled regions.” Rich makes two major statements in the poem. The first comes after she reflects in her “inner core” as the storm approaches. The boughs strain against the sky, and she feels the chill (polar regions) of being out of control. “Weather abroad /And Weather in the heart alike come on / Regardless of prediction.” With Rich’s introducing the “heart,” the storm becomes about more than the weather. She reverts, though, to the coming storm, musing on time and space a little. She wonders if there might have been something that could have averted the storm which “clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.” She makes, then, her second major statement, “Time in the hand is not control of time.” Susceptibility, however, doesn’t make her a victim. The powers that predict the storm—glasses falling, wind walking, grey unrest moving, wind rising (all active voice statements)—are counterbalanced by her action (also active voice)—"I” leave and walk and think and close shutters and draw curtains and light candles. Somehow without any control at all, she still claims control. Some of that control comes, of course, from her knowledge of the instruments. Her unflinching recognition of reality causes her to prepare as much as she can. Like the cloudiness of Inness’s painting, the language of the poem is replete with dark images. Words like “falling,” “grey unrest,” “strain,” “silent core,” “secret,” “polar realm,” “shattered,” “shutters,” and “troubled
regions” are also words that could describe the painting. The solitude of both the figure in the painting and the speaker in the poem is straightforward and unsentimental. Solitude is, simply, the way it is. The artist and the poet do what English teachers admonish their students to do: show, don’t tell. The storm has the upper hand in both works. In his essay on the Sublime that claims that our primary emotion is fear, Edmund Burke mentions storms in nearly every section of his description of what moves us at our deepest levels. The cracks of thunder, the blinding flashes of lightning, the loss of control, the confusion and obscurity of fog, pouring rain, hail, or sleet elicit our fears. (Burke, pp. 35-73) Lear’s insanity during the storm on the heath, God’s speaking to Job from out of the whirlwind (and taking Elijah up into the heavens in a whirlwind), storms that blow everything off track in Shakespeare, Hurston’s hurricane—the storms in literature are numerous. We puny (Hurston’s word captures it!) humans can only close the shutters. It’s what we “who live in troubled regions” have learned to do. Our art and literature show us we are not alone in our solitude.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin
she wrote “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” Aunt Jennifer’s hands in
of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. New York: P. F.
death are still“ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.” In
Collier and Son, Harvard Classics, 1969.
1973, “Diving into the Wreck” was published and the
DeLue, Rachael Ziady. George Inness and the Science of Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper and Row, 1937. p. 151. Inness, Jr., George. Life, Art, and Letters of George Inness. New York: The Century Company and Da Capo Press, 1917. Rich, Adrienne. Poems, Selected and New 1950-1974. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974. p. 3. (“Storm
speaker in the poem is still confined and alone: I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.
Warnings” was first published in Rich’s A Change of World in 1951. Rich was twenty-two at the time.) The idea that people (especially women) are confined in restricting circumstances runs from early to late in her career. In 1951
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Turning Inward
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C U R A T O R I A L F E L L O W, J U L I A N N E M I A O
The largest paintings that we and our visitors see in Reynolda House present the outdoors—a log cabin and family in the wilderness, the mountains of the Andes. But the current Curatorial Fellow, Julianne Maio, realized that plenty goes on in physical and emotional interiors. She curated the intriguing show Private Life: Domestic and Interior Spaces in Twentieth-Century Art, which will hang in the Northwest Bedroom Gallery through September 26. Julianne is from Atlanta and is a 2019 graduate of the University of Georgia, where she double-majored in art history and marketing. She said she is pursuing a career as a curator; toward that end, she will enter graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall to go for a Master’s degree in art history. In February, she began Interpreter Training for her exhibition by first going to the Gentlemen’s Guest Room and asking, “What makes this space a bedroom?” “A bed” didn’t quite cut it as a full answer. So there ensued a fuller discussion about private and interior spaces, and our reactions to them. Her suggestion was that starting there on a tour would also help our visitors connect to the interior and domestic spaces they would see displayed throughout the house.
by Genie Carr
Among Reynolda’s offerings is John Sloan’s 1906 Memory (or Family Group). It shows, as she wrote in her Interpretive Guide, “Sloan smoking a pipe across from Robert Henri…Dolly, Sloan’s wife, looks out, while Linda, Henri’s wife, sits in the foreground reading a book aloud. Sloan etched this plate after Linda’s early death. It is an expression of mourning for the loss of a close friend and a memorial to an intimate moment….” A painting from the Wake Forest University Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art is Julie Heffernan’s 1996 Self-Portrait as Explosion. Julianne said that this still-life, an example of a Western genre often associated with male painters, shows “an array of randomness and fantastical imagery that appeared to the artist in dreams.” Although there is no “cohesive narrative,” she observed, “Apples serve as a symbol of women’s burden, referencing Adam and Eve’s original sin.” Julianne led a thorough tour of the exhibition, including questions that docents can ask on the topic, and compare-and-contrast topics. Docents and tour members alike will enjoy seeing it all.
In her presentation of Private Life, she noted that when the world seems turned upside-down, artists tend to turn inward, including showing how people live their private lives. Mary Cassatt painted domestic and female spaces; Vincent Van Gogh painted his bedroom several times.
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Art on the Move Who, you may well ask, goes to New York City in January for fun? Well, I did, to visit museums and look at art (and, you know, to have fun eating). Aside from a biting wind, the weather was great, and 10 degrees warmer than in Winston-Salem. And I got to see one of our works: Tree, Cactus, Moon, Joseph Stella’s gouache painting from 1928. The painting was in an exhibition, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art, that was showing at The Jewish Museum. (The exhibition closed in early February.) The museum is at 5th Avenue and 92nd Street, the early-20th century home of Edith Halpert, whom the museum calls “the first significant female gallerist in the United States.” With family money (from Macy’s), a good eye and a love for art, she focused on American art and influenced others to do the same. She helped bring attention to many young American artists, including Stella. There were plenty of other familiar names on the walls. Horace Pippin was there; although his Sunday Morning Breakfast (1943) shows a family obviously living in poor circumstances, it’s a warm scene that is a far sight easier to look at than the one in our collection, The Whipping (1941). There was Stuart Davis (and over there was Stuart Davis, and over that way, Stuart Davis). Our Lady of the Southwest, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence, Ben Shahn, and Charles Sheeler made appearances. It was a fine show by old friends!
D O C E N T DAT E L I N E
by Genie Carr
If you’re in New York, visit the museum. It has some fascinating regular exhibits—gorgeous menorahs in elegant silver and in angular modern design, for instance. And the restaurant has a variety of dishes and great service. It’s near the Guggenheim and on Museum Mile along with all the other must-see places.
Joseph Stella, Tree, Cactus, Moon, c. 1928, oil on canvas. Gift of Betsy Main Babcock.
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Reynolda at Home C A L L - A - C U R AT O R
OBJECT OF THE MONTH
POP-UP STUDIO
Click on the title to check out the first episode with Director of Archives & Library Bari Helms, “Katharine’s Healthy Habits.”
A P R I L : L.C. Tiffany, Favrile Glass
with Julia Hood. Available now for your learning! C L I C K HER E TO V IEW
To learn about our latest acquisition by Gilbert Stuart with Curator Allison Slaby, Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick.
MAY: Scrapbook of the Horse,
Curatorial Fellow Julianne Miao goes inside Betye Saar’s A Matter of Clarity on view in Private Life. Episodes will be posted on the following platforms: youtube.com/Reynolda facebook.com/rhmaa, and Instagram and Twitter (@CurateReynolda) D O C E N T DAT E L I N E
Mary Reynolds with Bari Helms Will be available to view the first week of May
Explore our history and collection through these tutorials you can do right at home! Projects include mail art, egg dyeing with natural materials, bird ornaments, and more! C LIC K HER E TO V IEW THE F U LL SERIES
FA C E B O O K L I V E
Every Wednesday afternoon, lookout for Facebook Live videos from the Gardens: #WednesdayWisdom/Home Gardening Tips facebook.com/reynolda.gardens
SALON SERIES
VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB
Inspired by Katharine Smith Reynolds’ “salons,” this weekly series of activities will keep you engaged with your friends and colleagues at Reynolda during the era of social distancing. Like the intellectual gatherings of Katharine’s time, each meeting will offer opportunities for creativity and social engagement. The Salon series is currently full. Please email albertac@wfu.edu to be added to the waiting list. The summer Salon series will begin Wednesday, June 10, 2020. P R EVIEW A SESSIO N HER E
We had so much fun discussing this book virtually, that we thought we’d try it again in person. After the Tiffany exhibition opens in August, we’ll find a date in early Fall and let you know. In the meantime, we want to host a Summer Virtual Book Club, and would love your suggestions on books to read. All ideas are welcome! Please make sure the book is accessible, and relates to Reynolda in some way. Share your ideas with us on the Reynolda Summer Book Club reading list, or email Amber Albert, manager of community and academic learning at albertac@wfu.edu.
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