art
BURTON WASSERMAN
American Masters
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THE DELAWARE ART MUSEUM has long enjoyed a respected reputation for its holdings in the area of 20th century American art. Complementing this favorable circumstance, the Museum will soon play host to an outstanding traveling exhibition of painting and sculpture from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection of American art dating from 1910 to 1960. The show, titled American Moderns, 1910 – 1960: From O’Keeffe to Rockwell, is scheduled to be on public view from October 12, 2013 to January 5, 2014. The 50-year span covered by these works witnessed such globe-shaking events as two massive world wars, a devastating economic depression and phenomenal advances in the fields of science and technology. Understandably, many examples in the exhibition, partly reflecting on these developments, give expression to resultant changes that took place in art and life. At the same time, other approaches to making art held fast, perpetuating mannerisms of style that have become tradition-bound. Various pieces of work in the exhibition demonstrate both of these facts. Typically, they mirror the invention of modernism, the concentrated pursuit of expressionist form and a variety of approaches that cling to naturalistic representation. The cubist style, initially formulated by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in France early in the 1900s, impacted the avant garde with great intensity. The influence of what is called their “synthetic” manner, is evident in a 1936 composition by George L. K. Morris, titled “Wall Painting.” Consisting of a group of flat shapes in bright hues and lively patterns, the overall arrangement is elegantly balanced and harmoniously unified. However, most of all, the painting is aesthetically vibrant with the pulse-beat of a highly creative approach, one that rejected making expressive form with obsolete mannerisms inherited from yesteryear. For many years Morris had lived in Paris. Because he was very much in touch with the new progressive developments, he was no longer willing to make art that he felt was devoted to looking backwards. Stanton MacDonald-Wright is represented in the show by a different variety of cubist inspired abstraction. Called “Synchromy Number 3,” it is a striking organization of bright reds, yellow, brown and green. With an integrity very much its own, it projects a rhythmic purity and depth of tone, one might just as well find in a selection of profoundly serious, modern music. Some of the most interesting pieces in the exhibition are still-life compositions. Sensitively stylized interpretations of fruit, flowers and other silent subjects, they generate feelings in colors that come together with a character and an identity, distinctly their own. The combined existence of Mother Nature and Father Time deeply affected the perceptive awareness and creative drive of Georgia O’Keeffe. To date, no other artist has given expression more successfully to the rich organic essence of all living form than this mother of American modernism. Her picture titled “2 Yellow Leaves,” captures the reality of the passing seasons and the brilliance of color that takes place in biological transformations that are ever ongoing in the natural scheme of things. Artistically, moving along even further, in an entirely pure, abstract configuration titled “Green, Yellow and Orange,” O’Keeffe illuminates a universal sense of eternal being with the spirit of kinetic energies in flux. Bathed in bright hues, it has been endowed with a presence that is unique in both its mystical and physical existence. A fourth source of inspiration for several artworks in the show is the conspicuous appearance of urban structures that have been erected in the contemporary era. They include representations of apartment towers, factories and office buildings by such painters as George Ault and Glenn Coleman. For example, Ault’s “Manhattan Mosaic,” is somewhat akin to a checkerboard pattern of city forms. In their own special way, they describe a group of rectangleshaped architectural structures rising in space. It must surely have been inevitable for such surroundings to have deeply affected the lives of the people who were destined to move about within their midst. Visitors who are especially partial to art that is easily accessible, will delight in the pictures by Norman Rockwell and Newell Converse Wyeth. Today, of course, their pictures of people
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“2 Yellow Leaves,” 1928. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 1/8” Brooklyn Museum.
seem stiffly frozen to viewers accustomed to the dynamic appearance of figures in motion on TV and in the movies. There is also an absorbing study of a lady, alone at a table in a café, by the social realist, Raphael Soyer and a bronze sculpture of two boxers fighting with each other titled “Right to the Jaw,” by Mahonri Young. Sadly, it’s fascinating to realize that many of the artists represented in the show once had reputations that have since lapsed into near-obscurity. This provides an interesting reminder for the connoisseur that many big names that once may have stood tall in the art world, have not managed to successfully stand the test of time. Consequently, we are lead to wonder how many of today’s hot properties in the exhibition scene will eventually fall by the wayside. Maybe, even more important, is the question, “Who will survive?” ■
Dr. Burton Wasserman is a professor emeritus of Art at Rowan University, and a serious artist of long standing. His program, Art From Near and Far, is on WWFM in NJ and Bucks County and WGLS in South Jersey.
W W W. FA C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V