The second section, “The Cubist Impulse,” features artists such as Andrew Dasburg and Stuart Davis, who adopted the ideas and aesthetic of cubism to American subjects. Three monumental cubist still lifes by Davis, reunited publicly for the first time in decades, are the highlight of this section. The dynamic skyline of New York City, with its towering skyscrapers, as well as other aspects of life in the modern city are celebrated in the third section, “Man Made: Town and Country.” “Our Western Roots” explores how the American Southwest served as a spiritual and creative oasis for artists seeking a deeper connection to nature and a mythic past. Highlights of this section are works by Marsden Hartley and Stuart Davis, whose abstractions exemplified the movement’s “eagerness to break with the past, both in subject matter and in technique,” according to curator Hartley. Because the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is the largest single repository of O’Keeffe’s work in the world, the exhibition intermixes some of its permanent collection—“key works that respond to the thrust of the Vilcek collection,” Hartley says. In separate but companion exhibitions, the New Mexico Museum of Art is celebrating both O’Keeffe and American modernism, and the two museums are offering joint ticketing. “This is an amazing collaboration and gives art lovers the best of both worlds,” Hartley says. “The distance between our front doors is shorter than the distance from the front door of the Met to its American Gallery, and visitors can stroll back and forth between each museum.” The exhibition schedule is as follows: From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from The Vilcek Foundation Collection at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, September 25, 2015–January 10, 2016 O’Keeffe in Process at the New Mexico Museum of Art, September 11, 2015–January 17, 2016 An American Modernism: Painting and Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art, October 2, 2015–February 21, 2016 Ticket information: fallofmodernism.com
Arthur Dove, Penetration, 1924, oil on wood
“...the finest works from one of the country’s greatest collections of American modernism.”
Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Place II, 1945, oil on canvas Howard Cook, Complex City, ca. 1956, oil on canvas
october/november 2015
santa fean
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