While I was looking at the Picasso cubist drawings in this exhibition a sweet little old lady standing next to me turned and with a look of rapture on her face said: “This one is famous! I know this one is famous.” Responding to her plea for my approval I looked at Woman Ironing, a blue period painting, which I have seen many times, and I smiled: “Yes, I believe it is famous.” I then indicated that I would not be doing anymore talking. Later, as I passed through the galleries, I saw her several more times and she seemed always bewildered, perplexed. (There were no other famous paintings.) The last I saw of her she was drifting out of the galleries…looking greatly disappointed.
This exhibition raises questions that were raised at the Picasso exhibition at the Frick, (scroll down to the next entry for those comments,) and which I believe are answered here: if an exhibition is too much directed to the connoisseurs and to the art world professionals does it run the risk of attracting smaller crowds now and in the future and is that a bad thing? This one does attract fewer visitors. I arrived at the museum late morning and spent about an hour and a half looking at these art works. Spotted here and there throughout the galleries were several clumps of the ladies who lunch most of whose conversations had to do with where exactly they could enjoy their chief pastime in life. After I had gone out to eat and returned for a second viewing in the early afternoon, I had the galleries almost to myself. Believe me, for myself that is not a bad thing. And it shouldn’t be a bad thing for others or for the museum but I’m sure there are those who would try to make it so. (Again, see the Picasso comments below.)
In this era of the museum blockbuster it might seem odd that the Met would mount such a large Stieglitz show. His is no longer a household name and most people probably don’t even know that he was other than a photographer if they know that much. Nor do his American artists have much of a fan base at this time. But I was anxious to see it…I have spent the last several years reading about him and his galleries and his artists. In fact when I saw the Picasso show at the Philadelphia Museum two years ago there was in an adjoining hallway an exhibition of their Alfred Stieglitz Collection (this blog, April, 2010.) and I wrote in my comments that I would love to see an exhibition of the best works of his artists. When I saw the announcement of this exhibition of course I felt that the Met had read and was responding favorably to my suggestion.
My curiosity about Stieglitz came from two sources: my growing interest in photography as a fine art and my growing appreciation for the work of Marsden Hartley. While I might have known the name Hartley for some time it was not until I saw his charcoal drawing, Madawaska-Acandian Light-Heavy, at the Morgan several years ago that his work commanded my attention. In 2005, seeing the painting that followed from that drawing, at the Art Institute in Chicago, I resolved to become more familiar with all of his work and in that endeavor the name Stieglitz is constant. As for photography as a fine art, in the United States the subject begins with the name Alfred Stieglitz.
Thus equipped with a little knowledge one could once have walked into the Lane Collection in Boston, where nine magnificent Arthur Dove paintings greeted you at the entrance, (that was before the museum was reconfigured and that space transformed for another purpose.) next to selections of paintings by Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Charles Demuth and photographs by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand and know that he was in the presence of a man who had known Mr. Stieglitz. The same occurs at the Phillips Collection in Washington. But there there is an interesting difference: with the exception of Hartley all of the Stieglitz group is in a gallery on the top, third, floor. Marsden Hartley’s works are on the main floor with the masters of modern art …Cézanne, Braque …as they should be.
Furthermore my Stieglitz studies were concomitant to my studies of the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Mr. Wright made it his business to create an American architecture, an architecture that he called organic architecture and by which he meant that like democracy it was a desire for freedom that emanated from the heart and grew out into the world. As a boy he had been inspired by Emerson’s essay, The American Scholar, and I would place a safe bet that Stieglitz, who made it his life work to promote an American modern art, had read the same essay at about the same time in his life…as I had done. (While that puts me in their company as a reader I am not claiming that it puts me on an otherwise equal footing.) I think it might also be possible that as Frank Lloyd Wright had been the subject of an important monograph in Germany in 1911, Stieglitz might have been influenced by his work when he turned from an emphasis on modern European art to modern American art. Thus far, however, I have not found any reference of a cross pollination between the two.
Knowing that the work of these men and these artists was a search for the essential character of the American experience, I think you can understand my dismay when I see that the corporate world has taken over this country, and art museums specifically, with its trading of artworks as a commodity, the emphasis on the success of blockbuster exhibitions, and, in short, Making Money. If, in America, there is nothing but Making Money, it is indeed a decadent society and we don’t need an American art: German expressionism will do us quite well.
American art in the early 20th Century manifest itself in a broad spectrum of styles. There were the American Impressionists in Connecticut, California, and the Southwest still working in the French manner. There were still large numbers of academic painters doing landscapes, portraits, etc, working in the European manner, there were other early moderns, the primitives, the realists, and later in the thirties the regionalists and the early American abstractionist led by George G.K. Morris. During the first forty years of the century Alfred Stieglitz took a particular position and represented artists of a like mind. His position was not always the dominant position. Then with the rise to celebrity of the abstract expressionists after his death in 1946, his work was almost totally eclipsed.
As to why this collection is being shown for the first time, according to the catalogue essay by curator Lisa Mintz Messinger this project has been in process for decades. It was given to the museum in 1949 but this is the first fully illustrated and documented catalogue of the over 400 artworks in its entirety. And while there were thoughts about exhibitions using this material in many different configurations, it was finally decided to show as much of the Metropolitan’s Stieglitz Collection exclusively as was possible. This decision was motivated by the museum’s present concentration on the holdings in their collection. I recall that as the motivation as well behind the Picasso exhibition two years ago. That would seem to indicate that a number of other similar exhibitions might be in the planning stages.
I don’t know that this motivation is sufficient, with this collection, to engender a record breaking museum crowd, or even, considering the lack of famous paintings, that it will generate positive word of mouth. But if it is a process of re-evaluating the museum holdings and of re-evaluating American art, then it would have some value beyond the limited appeal as stated and should probably draw a large audience of art world professionals who could involve themselves in an ongoing process.
One of my fascinations with museums is the character of the collector as evidenced through his collection. Because these art works were sometimes purchased individually, sometimes gifted from the artists, and sometimes purchased to avoid returning work to the artist, this collection is not so much a collection as it is an accumulation. It is only a collection in the usual sense in that each of the works was chosen by Stieglitz for exhibition in galleries under his aegises.It is a very large exhibition and circles through the space with individual galleries devoted to specific artists. It begins with modern European artists as a group …Stieglitz was the first to show Picasso and Matisse in this country although this begins with Rodin and Lautrec. Except for the Woman Ironing, the Picasso works are all cubist drawings and when my would-be friend in the gallery informed me that the painting was famous, I was amused because I was looking at Standing Female Nude, 1910, which I had seen two years ago in the Picasso in the Met, and which will be travelling to Washington to join the Picasso Drawings, Reinventing Tradition, currently at the Frick. Now that is really famous!
In gallery two which the catalogue describes as avant garde works of sexually liberation I saw instead a group of turn of the century French works that depict the female as sexual object. I was enamored of the Rodin Satryess which likely defines Erotic …one can feel the heat of the body. I am always up for more Rodin …drawings or sculptures. However, the great discovery in this group was the etchings of Gordon Craig. Having studied set design his is a name I have known for many years but I suddenly realized that I had never seen his work face to face. And while I dislike etchings, I found these fascinating. In sum there are 16 European artists.
Following the 1913 Armory Show the concentration was limited to American artists. Of his American artists, Stieglitz usually spoke of “the seven” meaning that the core group was Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and an alternate from amongst others added in group shows. In all there are 11 “other” American artists in the collection.
It is intriguing that there is no biography of Strand in the catalogue and in retrospect I don’t recall a Paul Strand photograph in the exhibition. There are Stieglitz photographs in the introduction to the exhibition but there are neither catalogue photographs by Stieglitz nor a catalogue biography except as the impresario of the various galleries. These are glaring omissions: were there no Strand and Stieglitz photographs in the bequest? I thought that Stieglitz had given the museum some of his work at other times? Or does the Met make a distinction between art and photography? Are these two separate departments? There is a Stieglitz exhibition in the Gilman Gallery down the hall but it seems coincidental rather than an extension of this one and it is found only by accident.
I hope I am not too subjective when I say that the best works in this exhibition, as a group and as a representative sample of the Stieglitz Circle, are the eleven paintings by Marsden Hartley. Over the course of his lifetime Hartley’s work took on many different stylistic approaches. (I prefer this to the work of someone who has created a signature image and churned out product for America’s collectors and museums.) Except for his late Maine work, he and Stieglitz parted company in 1937, all of his various stylistic turns are included here. What is always consistent in his work is his expression of his naked emotional life felt as an undertone in the work. In that regard I would say that he is to painting what O’Neill is to the drama. In accomplishment I believe they are equals.
Each of these illustrate why I think he achieves greatness: when seen face to face one can see in the difference between the work and reproductions of the work that he was not a picture maker but a painter. Banquet in Silence, in reproduction, seems no more than one of Hartley’s sometimes bizarre subjects, but seen face to face it is a luminous experience. Landscape New Mexico has the dryness AND the feel of the desert.
As a group Hartley’s early work in Germany, seen here in Portrait of a German Officer, 1914, is among his best. Those paintings were made with the limited colors carefully placed within each design motif over an under painting of black. Each of them is perfectly executed …they are the kind of paintings where one false move would require the remaking of the whole of the work. From that perspective they have a wonderful tension. But of the group I prefer Himmel, in the Kansas City Art Museum, which is packed with homosexual coding. That I think is essential to understanding Hartley and this period of his life.
Two Paintings, Dark Mountain Nos. One and Two, 1909, are a direct reference to Albert Pinkham Ryder. In his early days in New York, Hartley befriended his neighbor, the elderly Ryder, and as Hartley was always poor and in need of materials I would not be surprised to learn that Ryder might have advised him; “Materials be dammed. Just get the painting done.” Whatever the source, Hartley consistently used inexpensive grounds for his work.
It can also be seen in all of these paintings that throughout Hartley’s career there is a persistence of black and I believe that one could follow the thread of that persistence in the work of Courbet, Manet, Cézanne, and Braque to understand Hartley’s achievement and his place within that tradition.
When I was last at the National Gallery the one Hartley painting on view, Mount Katahdin, 1942, was in the West Building hanging with the old masters, not because he is not modern but because he is more properly placed in that environment.
The Georgia O’Keeffe works, 3 drawings and 14 paintings, are a curious group. As I understand it, they were not a part of the Stieglitz accumulation but work that she added to the bequest. I would not say that she chose her best work. (I must be honest and say that she is not one of my favorites.) I see no difference between her work face to face and in reproduction. In this exhibition the visitor can compare the painting Cow’s Head, Red, white, and Blue, to the photographic blow up (on vinyl?) and try to determine which is which. Although she was an excellent draughtsman and mastered the craft of painting with flawless brush work, she was a picture maker, as opposed to a painter. If you don’t care for her picture, there’s little more to hold your attention: she lacks Hartley’s deep, rich undertone of emotional expression. Seen in groups her work seems almost gimmicky: it cloys very quickly. The best here is The Black Iris with its wonderfully lyrical and rhythmic line and its advancing and receding forms held in perfect balance. The most perplexing, as a gift, is Ranchos Church: it struck me as poorly executed.
John Marin is represented by 65 watercolors and 72 etchings. I do not like watercolors and I do not like etchings. Marin is best known for his watercolors, which I do like somewhat, and while most of these are up to snuff many of them are marred by a too specific reference to “things” that diminish their abstract quality. Marin seems never to have developed a shorthand iconography in which a shape is understood to represent a specific reference. I like that because it eliminates a manufactured quality when the work is seen in groups but I always feel that I don’t know where I am when I look at his work, and, further, because of the thinness of the water-color, that I don’t really care to know.
Basically I like his work only in oil…the late oils and the early Weehawken series (see this blog, March 2011.). But I must say that I was unprepared to discover the etchings Notre Dame, Paris and Near the Quai Orfevres and that discovery could cause me to revisit all of his work. His watercolors are so loose and free I would never have suspected that he was able to work as he does in these prints.
The Arthur Doves, whose work I like and who I recognize as a great painter, are likely of interest only to art world professionals and connoisseurs. The 31 watercolors are a record of Dove on his way to becoming Arthur Dove, which is interesting and valuable information. However, the pastels, Pagan Philosophy and Sentimental Music, are Dove at his best and of the two I would be willing to put up hard earned cash for the former. Excellent.
Demuth, often the Stieglitz 7th, is represented by 18 works including the stellar oil painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold. The others are watercolors. Nuf sed.
As for other famous or near famous pieces among the best is a wonderful series of charcoal caricatures by Zayas, specifically the double portrait of Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin. The initial impact of this is maintained by the lovely composition almost hidden in the overall blackness.
There are also several pieces of sculpture but I am tone deaf when it comes to sculpture and in an exhibition primarily of paintings they always seem to be something left in the center of the room that someone forgot to take away when they had finished hanging the show.
Over all there is a lot of wonderful work by many artists one rarely sees in museums, restricted as museums appear to be now to the Big Names, the box office stars. This in itself is a welcome change. As to what it tells us about the collector we can get a real sense that after the initial shock of the Picasso cubists drawings and the Matisse Fauve color experiments, works selected for the gallery by Edward Steichen and others, there was a cooling off, a stepping back. When the focus turned to the American artists Stieglitz was somewhat uncertain, cautious, and throughout the life of the galleries, essentially conservative. The works are always representational and the subject is always a motif for making a painting; there are no consistently abstract expressionist works such as the one Kandinsky…we can understand in the work seen here that Arthur Dove’s work was always derived from an observation of nature, of a subject. For each of the artists the palette is almost always local color. In the compositions there is always a sense of deep picture space: none of these artists’ works are a purely surface event, such as one can see in the work of Will Barnet (of the succeeding generation) currently on view just up the street. (See this blog, September, 2011.)
Lately I have decided that when twentieth century American art is re-evaluated, now or in the future, the artists in the Stieglitz circle will come to the fore and their works will be seen to have an importance that will inspire future generations of artists, more so than the late twentieth century New York artists who have raked in all the dough and have luxuriated in all the publicity. Not because I think the conservative experience is the more American sentiment, but because the work of these artists covers a broader range of the American experience than the insular New York art world dialogue, and because they successfully communicate that experience to a very much wider audience across the broad spectrum of twentieth century American painting. Picasso always worked with a subject in order to give the viewer something to hang onto, an anchor. Something that others can experience as a human experience is always expressed in his work. The Stieglitz painters followed his examples but retained a national character.
While this exhibition has its importance I think it is insufficient to alter public or professional opinion. But I would urge the Met to continue in this vein with their future exhibitions. If that results in fewer visitors in the galleries I for one could not be happier.
I do hope however, that they will exercise better care in lighting their shows.
Platinum prints are very rare objects and when they are placed in an exhibition it should be possible for the public to see the unique character of this work …the deep rich saturation of the tonal values and the care taken in the lighting and the composition: they can only be made as contact prints. In every one of the photographs in the first gallery here, and in the Gilman gallery, one sees his own reflections in the glass and the lights around the room and the reflections of the other photographs. Nothing can be seen of the details in the works nor can they be seen as a work as a whole. I have seen this before in the Gilman galleries: it is a consistent distraction at The Met (see this blog, April 2011). And there is no reason for it. One does not see it at the Photography Center on 43rd Street, nor at the Frick or at the Morgan. Photographs can be correctly and well lit. The Met simply doesn’t know how to do it or to take the time to do it if they do know how. Nobody seems to demand it. Without the correct lighting the exhibition of photographs is a waste of time all around.
I do not see these reflections in the glazed paintings. But that is another matter. I suppose they are using non-reflective museum glass. However, why anyone would glaze an oil painting is a mystery to me: it eliminates the direct experience of the painted surface and in creating an artificial picture plane it reduces the painting to an almost reproduction. Many museums now do this and I wish they would stop. If the exhibition of paintings is to be dumbed down like so many other things in this culture soon we can all limit our art viewing experiences to the museum web sites. I have a feeling that the corporate overlords, with their eyes ever on the box office, will not like that.
Excellent show. I for one was pleased. I hope I am not alone. Thank you, folks.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgl/hd_stgl.htm#slideshow16
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