Smithsonian American Art Museum: Artist to Artist Pairings

 While most of the museum space dedicated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum was closed, there were a couple of pleasant exceptions.  One was this corridor in which two works of art were hung in "conversation" with one another.  It's a wonderful idea.  A chance to ask the viewer with a modicum of information to enter themselves into a dialogue with the Art and, in a way, the Artists themselves.  I love this sort of thing!

Here are 4 of the pairings for your consideration.  I've included both images of the two works, and an excerpt from the wall placard that provides some of the context for the selection.

The pairings are:

• #1 - Alma Thomas and Felrath Hines.  
• #2 - Fritz Scholder and Allan Houser
• #3 - Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara
• #4 - Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

Of the artists I know well the works of Alma Thomas a local celeb of Abstract Expressionism.  Her paintings are easily recognizable and I have had the pleasure of discovering them beyond the local Museums in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.  I was introduced to Frits Scholder's ouvre at the National Museum of the American Indian which hosted a retrospective of his work "Indian/Not Indian" back in 2009.  I bought a T-shirt.  Both Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara ran with a group of NYC based artist, writers, poets that were very influential in the mid to latter half of the 20th century.  Grace left New York  in 1960 around the height of their influence for Baltimore.  She set up her studio there and for many years was Director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art).  I have friend who applied there and met her.  That's 2-degrees of separation, if you keeping track, which is 3-degrees of separation from Frank O'Hara.  An American original, and longtime beloved poet of moi.  Finally, I had no freaking idea that Thomas Hart Benton (a leader in the Regionalism Art Movement) who railed against the East Coast elitist art establishment with their bias against all things Realism knew, let alone "mentored" Jackson Pollock who what the very definition of this east coast artist cabal!  How bizarre is that?  God, I love art!

ONE

"Autumn Leaves Fluttering In The Breeze"

1973

Alma Thomas (1891 - 1978)

"Yellow and Gray"

1976

Felrath Hines (1913 - 1993)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

TWO

"He'll Be Home"

1983

Allan Houser (1914 - 1994)

"Indian In The Snow"

1972

Fritz Scholder (1937 - 2005)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

THREE

"Frank O'Hara, 1926 - 1966"

1966

Grace Hartigan (1922 - 2008)

"For Grace, After a Party"

n.d.

Frank O'Hara (1926 - 1966)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

FOUR

"WHEAT"

1967

Thomas Hart Benton (1889 - 1975)

"Going West"

c. 1934 - 1935

Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

My Little Garden Zoo Closes Early

Every Zoo has its rules.  Mine are simple.  Don't touch the animals.  Unfortunately, Raccoons don't find the rules humans concoct very useful to their agenda.  Hence, this has been a year of constant battle.  Every few days, some part of the zoo has been tampered with.  Then an area of habitats gets ravaged!  Animals strewn about "helter skelter".  Plants torn out. Pottery tipped over and on occasion shattered.

It's been so disheartening.  No space is safe.  Two figurines remain missing.  One no longer available for sale.  I've invested too much into this little joy to allow a rambunctious critter to steal away with my little animal figurines.  

SAAM: Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (parting shots)

 I will close this series of reviews with a couple of odds and ends after thoughts.  

One, what did it mean to live for over a century between 1860 and 1961?  She died on December 13, 1962.  I was all of 319 DAYS old!  What if I somehow lived to 2062?  It's incomprehensible.  All the things that she saw.  Some of them are also captured in her paintings and I want to toss two of them in here.

Two, who were all those little people?  Were they just "manikins" plopped into a moment in time like some child's diorama project for school?  Or were they real people?  It's easy to think of them as anonymous characters.  By and large, Moses didn't give them detailed specific qualities--she was not a portraitist.  But still, there are many that hold some aspect of gesture or placement or attire that make you want to ask--who was this?  I'll share two examples.

Three and finally, I share a painting that just delighted the child in me so much.  And then when I connected the dots, it was even more meaningful.  "So Long Til Next Year" is one of her many Christmas themed paintings.  It is based in part on the ubiquitous "T'was The Night Before Christmas" (originally titled "A Visit From St. Nicholas") by Clement-Clarke Moore (1779 - 1863).  Moses painted this work in December of 1960.  She missed the mark by 12 days.  Yet, she clearly set her sights on another Christmas.  How magical.

"The First Automobile"

1939 (or earlier)

"Balloon"

1957

"Cambridge Valley"

1942

"Cambridge Valley" detail.  Who are these young women?  Standing at the left corner observing the landscape spreading out before them?  The clothing would suggest that it isn't Mary Anna Robertson herself, but surely she knew who they were intended to be?  You can imagine as I have, two friends at a fence row watch the sheep below and sharing confidences.  

"A Beautiful World"

1948

We swap genders in this painting and are drawn toward a strapping young man in the foreground.  Unencumbered by any human intercourse, he stands with a bold confidence that seems to scream out, "Hey, look at me!"  His form is uncharacteristically sensual exhibiting the pure strength and confidence of youthful vigor.  And he's a ginger!  That alone would suggest that he is not an anonymous figure filling in some archetypal space, but a person she once knew.  And like the young ladies in the previous painting, now, in a way, so do we.

"So Long Til Next Year"

1960

SAAM: Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (What a Grand Doodler!)

 When you visit art, start a dialogue.  Let your mind roam.  Just see what pops up?  Then don't be afraid to connect the dots.  Grandma Moses offers so many intriguing details.  She's often been compared to Renaissance masters like Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch.  The former for his portrayal of the common man's life and the latter for commitment to details that fascinate the imagination.  Ever since I was given a copy of Dr. Seuss' "Go Dog Go," I've loved getting lost in images depicting multiple activities and many stories.  This is very much a component of Moses' paintings.  They are as much stories as they are images.  Here are 5 that illustrate my point.

"The Fight Between Carnival and Lent," 1559

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1527 - 1569)

"Sugaring Off"

1943

"The Quilting Bee"

1950

"July Fourth"

1951

"The Checkered House"

1955

"Eagle Bridge Hotel"

1959

SAAM: Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (On Memory and Themes)

 One of the most interesting things about the paintings of Grandma Moses is just how they represent a by-gone era.  She's not painting the middle of the 20th Century.  She's recreating a nostalgic mid- to late- 19th Century.  And given her resilient life from that time, it is perhaps a wonder that she also made those times feel mostly safe, mostly full of warmth and family and belonging.  Three ideas that are narcotic in their appeal.  

But there is another sublime theme that finds itself arising time and again in her paintings.  That of the pending storm.  A moment when everything must stop and move into "batten down the hatches" mode.  It's a curious juxtaposition.  But not one without a fundamental cognitive footing.  

For years I had my students create an Autobiography by answering a series of questions about their lives.  The first question was "What is your first memory?"  90% of the time, it was a negative recollection:  A broken bone, a death in the family, an accident, a mistake, a punishment.  This taught me how powerful hurtful things are in determining who we are as adults.  How, when our lives are interrupted by forces beyond our control we remember.  We all remember the storms.

Grandma Moses also recalled the Rainbows...

"A Fire In The Woods," 1947

"The Thunderstorm," 1948

"Taking In The Laundry," 1951

"Windstorm," 1956

"The Rainbow," 1951

SAAM: Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (Training for the un-trained)

 Much is made of the fact that Grandma Moses had no formal training.  She was said to be a Primitive painter by those who both admired in innate design sense and those who abhorred her simplistic forms.  One way of another, most people have an opinion.   On her journey to originality, Grandma Moses did a lot of copying, or borrowing, or mimicking other works of art.

The exhibit provides many examples like these: #1 is from sometime prior to 1938.  Moses first took a lithograph entitled "In The Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts" by artist Andrew W. Melrose (1836 - 1901) and she painted over it.  Like paint by the numbers or a coloring book.  Then she made her own version which she called "Autumn In The Berkshires," again circa 1935 (?).  

"In The Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts" by artist Andrew W. Melrose (1836 - 1901) with Moses over-painting.

 

"Autumn In The Berkshires," c. 1935

#2 features the Currier and Ives lithograph "Home To Thanksgiving" and basically copied it for her painting "Home For Thanksgiving," which she produced sometime in latter 1930's.

The Currier & Ives Lithograph "Home To Thanksgiving"

"Home For Thanksgiving," circa 1938

#3 Shows how another Currier and Ives Lithograph "Central - Park Winter" formed the basis for an inspiration, and provided elements to a portion of the work that became "First Skating," in 1945.

The Currier & Ives Lithograph "Central - Park Winter"

"First Skating," 1945

Finally, #4 in what is really a progression of learning leading to greater independence as an artist is a work where she used several clippings of other works and reassembled them into various aspects of a more complex design.

"In Harvest Time," 1945

Snippets from other works incorporated in the composition.

Now, lest you think I'm sharing this to someone downgrade Grandma Moses, I assure you I am not.  Here is an example for 1981 of my own use of another artist's painting to make a copy, but also learn something of the techniques involved.  In my case I was going from an oil pointed of a Church in New Hampshire by Eric Sloane (1905 - 1985) to copy it using my preferred medium of watercolor.  Far be it from to cast aspersions!  

"New Hampshire Church"

Eric Sloane

My watercolor copy!  I screwed the pooch on the clouds...

SAAM: Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (Intro: the Artist's Background)

 Some background on the life of Anna Mary Robertson will be helpful in understanding her choices as an artist.  She was born in 1860 in Greenwich, New York.  Not to be confused with Greenwich Village in New York City, Greenwich is located in Washington County close to the border of Southern Vermont.  In 1860, it was about as far away from the Civil War as one could reasonably get.  It was likely a bucolic haven from the turmoil roiling the nation.

She was born the third of ten children.  At the age of 12, she left home to live with a more prosperous family where she began an adolescence as a house servant.  She participated in various chores in a series of households including cleaning, cooking, sewing, child rearing until she was 27.  That year she formed a relationship with a man who was also working for the same family.  She married Thomas Moses and they moved to Augusta County Virginia where they helped to establish successful farming practices with locals and on their own property during the Reconstruction Era.  In this time she gave birth to 10 children, 5 of whom died in infancy and were buried in Virginia.

In 1905, after many years of hard work and little of substance to show for it, the Moses returned to New York.  Thomas bought a farm in Eagle Bridge.  The farm was located in Renssselaer County just south of where they at first met and near the Massachusetts' border.  This was home.  This was were Thomas Moses, at the age of 67, died of a heart attack in 1927.  Alone as a widow, but surrounded by her children and extended family, she continued to live on Eagle Bridge farmstead with the help of her son, Forrest.  In 1936, at the age of 76, she retired and moved in with one of her daughters. 

In this period she explored ways to focus her time and explore her creative energies.  She had long ago dabbled in painting, and through her youthful employment, learned how to sew, which led her to practice the art of needle point.  She also participated in Quilting Bees.

Around 1936, she returned her creative focus to painting after struggling with needlework due to arthritic pain.  Thus began her productive years as a painter on the road to the fame she eventually acquired.

In 24 prolific years as a serious artist, Mary Anna Robertson-Moses became one of the first Superstars whose fame extended beyond the contemporary Art World at the time to capture the National Imagination.  

The Smithsonian American Art Museum states in an introduction to the exhibition that its goal is to possess the largest collect of Moses' works.

This is the oldest known example of a painting by Grandma Moses.  It's a work executed on a wooden hearth cover which would be used in warm weather to seal the fireplace when not in use.  It was painted in 1918, when she was approximately 58 years old.

An alcove dedicated to the years spent living in Virginia offers a map with text identifying the various locals in which she lived.

L: "Shenandoah Valley South Branch," 1938

R: "Shenandoah Valley (1861 News Of The Battle)," 1938

This pair of paintings were among the only ones depicted memories from the years spent living in Augusta County, Virginia and environs.  It was originally painted as a single work for a benefactor.  When she realized the woman had requested two paintings, she cut it in half and made it into two!