This
season the Whitney Museum of American Art presents The American
Century: Art and Culture 1900-1950. Part one, of a planned
double exhibition with part two of The American Century: Art
and Culture 1950-2000 scheduled to open in September. The exhibition
is both marvelous at times sometimes in spite of itself because
of so many works of art and utterly dreadful. We are presented
with a multilevel view of the first five decades of the century
and the show subdivides into distinct eras such as World War One,
The Great Depression, World War Two, etc. Longtime Whitney Museum
curator Barbara Haskell has taken on an enormous task and the show
is overburdened with too much story to tell and uneven material.
At
first view the exhibition seems complete and it takes a while to
realize that The Whitney Museum continues its long-term policy
of undermining American painting and sculpture in subtle ways and
in some not so subtle ways. This is about slick, sociological chicanery
and not about great art. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing this exhibition
pretends to be about art while it undermines American painting
and sculpture. The works in this exhibition depend upon literal
content not quality. Mass culture, glam, kitsch, commercial art,
and Hollywood, are glorified and revered and with a few exceptions
American painters and sculptors are showcased in a poor light.
Dozens of important American painters and sculptors some still
living and some dead are left out. Marcel Duchamp is represented
by two facsimile pieces from 1964, in spite of his spending most
of his professional career in Europe and not in America while Albert
Pinkham Ryder, Hans Hofmann, and Milton Avery are left out altogether.
The seeds of Pop Art and Conceptual Art have been carefully sown
in part one and the thoughtful viewer's logical conclusion about
what is to come in The American Century part two would be the new
academy, cool art, the new salon of Post-Dada, Minimalism, Conceptualism,
Pop, Video and Postmodern kitsch.
The
tip off to what the Whitney Museum is telling us - the art public
- is in the title of the show and what they say and what they don't
say about it. The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000,
is a pretty catchy title. Henry Luce the owner of Life and Time
magazines coined the phrase "The American Century" in
1941. Luce is credited for his catchy phrase as if those were salient
words from on high on the book jacket and at least four times in
the accompanying 408 page book. However Clement Greenberg who for
more than thirty years was known for his famous collection of essays
Art and Culture is ignored. Greenberg who supplies Haskell
with half of her title is not credited and he is generally dissed
whenever his name appears in this voluminous and informative text.
Perhaps because his ideas about art were so opposed to what this
show is all about.
Very
subtly the historical and traditional story of the development
of American art in this century has been changed. We are being
given a selected art history. American Dada is elevated to a more
important position than it held, while dozens of artists whose
works created the art of the thirties and forties are omitted.
The false impression created distorts the lineage of American art
as it exists today. This comes as no surprise because since 1973
this institution has suppressed its collection of abstract works
from the late sixties as well as other works from other decades.
This institution continues to suppress a generation of works by
living American artists which really is an outrage. I've written
before about the suppression of Lyrical Abstraction but even I
am appalled by the arrogant disrespect that The Whitney Museum
displays towards American artists and to the American art public.
I suspect that if she were alive Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney would
close them down-if she wasn't bowled over by the glitz and the
glamour and the media attention paid to her museum.
The
museum's annoying and ever present politically correct position
works in its favor in this ambitious show given what they're trying
to do in revealing every aspect of American artistic production
on every level. The only special interest group not properly represented
here are young children whose works are probably every bit as worthy
as some of the inclusions. Art of every type including painting,
sculpture, drawing, printmaking, posters, architecture, fine, commercial
and journalistic photography, commercial art, literature, furniture,
design, and film is presented to represent each distinct time period
in as broad a way as possible.
The
American character is presented as materialistic, optimistic, industrial,
democratic, venal and entertainment oriented but the soul and the
spirit of America is missing at the core as is the sense in the
end that America produced important painting and sculpture of the
best quality in the world. The problem with this show is that our
attention is diverted through forty years of billboards, book jackets,
bombast and a lot of derivative painting and sculpture. With a
few exceptions like Calder, Stuart Davis, Hartley and a few others
America didn't consistently produce the best paintings and sculptures
in the world until the Abstract Expressionists of the forties finally
did. Suffice it to say then that the Whitney Museum tells the story
of American Art 1900-1950 with a surprisingly thin representation
of Abstract Expressionism. Hans Hofmann, Milton Avery, James Brooks,
Jack Tworkov, and the artist of whom Jackson Pollock said "was
the only American master that interests me" Albert Pinkham
Ryder, are left out altogether. I would have liked to have seen
a Ralph Blakelock, a Karl Knaths, a Myron Stout, a George McNiel,
an Esteban Vincente and a Will Barnet painting as well as dozens
of others.
Our
time and attention are diverted by all mannerism's of American
commercialism, movie posters, film clips, book jackets, souvenirs,
comic books, propaganda posters, Tiffany glass, vases, craft, sociological
display boards, journalism, literature, advertising photography,
illustration, social realism, third rate cubism and third rate
geometric abstractions. Charles Demuth, Stuart Davis, Patrick Henry
Bruce, and Gerald Murphy are disabused when they are presented
as prophets of Pop Culture and I question why facsimiles of Marcel
Duchamp's urinal Fountain, signed r. mutt 1917, but actually
made in 1964 and his shovel In Advance of a Broken Arm,
1915, also recreated in 1964 are presented as indispensable examples
of American Dada. Duchamp's presence in America began when he was
twenty-eight years old and he fled France in 1915 to escape World
War One and I would have hoped the Whitney Museum could of come
up with the genuine articles.
The
highlight of the exhibition comes in the very beginning. Paintings
by Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, the Ashcan
School - William Glackens, George Luks, Everitt Shinn, John Sloan,
Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies and Robert
Henri are solid and lend credibility and weight to the early days
of the American Century even though the paintings are stifling
and conventional. Robert Henri's portrait of the Whitney Museum's
founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney is particularly appropriate
and enjoyable to see in this context. Paintings by George Bellows,
several early drawings by Joseph Stella and the accompanying photography
of immigrants and urban life by Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Strand,
Lewis Hine and others are also interesting and provocative. The
last remaining residue of Art Nouveau is exemplified by a stunning
Louis Comfort Tiffany glass window. Photographs by Edward Curtis,
Edward Steichen, Imogen Cunningham, and others create an historical
record and the setting for the first decade of the century.
However
as soon as the Synchromists like Morgan Russell and other American
abstractionists appear the show goes awry. Something very important
and very necessarily American is missing from this period. Perhaps
it's the presence of Duchamp or the poor quality of the paintings,
or the total dependence on Cubism that dominated American art until
the forties - but I suspect it is the absence of the work of Albert
Pinkham Ryder.
In
the wake of Ryder's absence there is a hollow contrivance to this
exhibition. Ryder's work brought originality, substance and style
to American painting at a time when most American artists went
abroad to escape the stifling conventionality of American art.
Ryder's work for all of its eccentricities is at the very soul
of the American consciousness. Independent, romantic, mysterious,
poetic, and as raw as the wind. Ryder's paintings created a real
basis for a Twentieth Century American art. Marsden Hartley in
particular was inspired by Ryder. Hartley commented that when he
saw Ryder's painting for the first time in 1909 it was like seeing
a page from the Bible. Of the dozen or so paintings of Ryder's
in the 1913 Armory Show it was said by critic Charles Caffin: In
his unobtrusive sincerity he, in fact, anticipated that abstract
expression toward which painting is returning and may almost be
said to take his place as an old master in the modern movement.
The visual basis of the works of the most interesting of this
group of American painters like Georgia O'Keefe, John Marin, Arthur
Dove and the great Marsden Hartley ultimately depended upon the
work of the Cubists, the Fauves and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Most
of those artists went to Europe and although their dependence on
Cubism and Fauvism is apparent, the importance of Ryder is not
acknowledged.
During
the teens and twenties the aforementioned Charles Demuth, Stuart
Davis, Patrick Henry Bruce, and Gerald Murphy produced marvelous
hard edged paintings mostly in Europe that I suspect were intended
as American ironies at the time and in Davis' case were not his
best works. Joseph Stella, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Hopper weigh
in with powerful and haunting pictures of New York and Cape Cod.
On the whole the photography is much more interesting than the
painting while Art Deco became the prevailing design and architectural
style. Perhaps the dominance of photography was Alfred Stieglitz'
revenge. The works of Steiglitz, Edward Steichen, Margaret Bourke-White
and the elegant nudes of Edward Weston, Man Ray, Imogen Cunningham
and Charles Sheeler are a highlight of this part of the exhibition.
During
the early thirties the Great Depression took its toll. The photography
of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn, Berenice
Abbott, and others recorded the lives, suffering, surroundings
and hardships Americans endured so movingly and on such a high
aesthetic level that the best of these works transcends time.
The
Great Depression defined the thirties as American Art entered the
dark ages with social realism and genre painting leading the way.
The dreadfulness of this period for American artists is beyond
description. Socially aware and socially conscious novels, films,
music, mural painting, social realist painting, addressed the ills
of American society. The profound relevance and sociopolitical
importance of this terrible time to the well being of the American
character and future were incalculable. There is a special romantic
nobility to this era in American art. Painters and muralists addressed
racism, poverty and injustice. The Roosevelt Administration created
the WPA (Works Project Administration) to create work for impoverished
artists to help them survive. Neglected artists such as Milton
Avery worked through their obscurity with quiet dignity. Avery
in particular was an enormous influence on the young painters Mark
Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb who would become prominent in the forties
and fifties. It's a shame that Milton Avery and others were overlooked
by the Whitney curators. The American Surrealist movement of the
thirties seems to have missed the point altogether while developing
the worst of Surrealism's innovations by turning toward Super Realism.
The
best art of the thirties includes the works of Edward Hopper, Thomas
Hart Benton, Alexander Calder, Ralston Crawford, Burgoyne Diller
and Arshile Gorky. Gorky is the first and the only American abstract
painter of genuine originality to emerge at this point. The gentle
intensity and force of The Artist and His Mother is one
of the great early masterpieces of Abstract Expressionist Painting.
The Gorky painting entitled Painting 1936-37 owes much to
Miró but it transcends European Surrealism and his magnificent
Liver is the Cock's Comb, from 1944 begins the era that
culminates in classical American Abstract Expressionism.
Although
unfortunately Hans Hofmann was left out of this exhibition, his
arrival in America in 1930 was one of the most hopeful highlights
of the early thirties for the American art world. When the artist
and teacher Hans Hofmann arrived in the United States from Germany
to teach an art class at The University of California at Berkeley
a new era of American artistic achievement began. Hofmann who was
born in Bavaria in 1880 lived and painted in Paris from 1904 until
1914. He knew Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Kandinsky and he was
close friends with Robert Delaunay. Hans Hofmann had firsthand
knowledge of the advent of Fauvism, Cubism and other important
European Modernist movements and with his unique ability to teach
what he knew he had much to offer to young American artists. His
teaching was a catalyst that allowed American artists to approach
Modernism in new and personal ways.
In
1932 with the aid of Art Students League instructor Vaclav Vytlacil
a former Hans Hofmann student in Germany, Hofmann came to New York
and taught briefly at the Art Students League. By 1933 the fifty-three
years old Hans Hofmann opened his own art school in Manhattan.
Hofmann permanently moved to New York and in 1941 he became an
American citizen. The Hans Hofmann School in New York City and
his summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts became one of
the most successful art schools in America attracting scores of
young artists who went on to successful careers in painting and
sculpture. Lee Krasner who later married Jackson Pollock was one
of Hofmann's students.
Hans
Hofmann became known as a great teacher and later as a great Abstract
Expressionist painter. Influential and articulate Hofmann introduced
European Modernism to his students and with his unique interpretation
of Cubism changed the face of American art in the thirties and
forties. Hofmann wrote In Search Of The Real a collection
of essays outlining his lectures, teaching philosophy and theories
about art - some of which were originally published by the Art
Students League.
In
1938 The Hans Hofmann school was located on 8th St. in Greenwich
Village and it was a close neighbor to the fledgling Whitney Museum
that was also located on 8th St. then. One of those people who
regularly attended Hans Hofmann's lectures and was inspired by
them was a man who would become the most controversial and influential
voice in American Art in this century.
In
1939 Clement Greenberg wrote Avant-garde and Kitsch the
brilliant essay that catapulted the then somewhat obscure Greenberg
to the vanguard of American art criticism. In that essay Greenberg
dissects American art and culture; and he suggests that high and
low art can exist simultaneously at any given moment in our civilization.
He goes on to define what he means by high and low art and as an
example he draws the contrast between a poem by T. S. Eliot and
a Tin Pan Alley song; or a painting by Georges Braque and a Saturday
Evening Post cover; all being examples of contemporaneous culture.
Greenberg
clearly preferred high art and he goes on to outline why America
as a culture needed to create and value high art. Art for its own
sake, art that's content is art, art that only serves to create
quality in art. Greenberg goes on to define high art by the degree
to which the content of the art is in the meaning of the art itself.
He says Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, Miró, Cézanne,
Klee, Matisse, Mondrian, Kandinsky derived their chief inspiration
from the medium they worked in. (In his footnotes Greenberg credits
this idea to a lecture by Hans Hofmann that he attended.)
Greenberg
said that subject matter and content per se doesn't distinguish
or define quality in high art. For Greenberg the degree of pure
aesthetic content found in T.S. Eliot's poem as contrasted with
the aesthetic content found in the Tin Pan Alley song defined quality
in high art and created a scale of aesthetic values. In his definition
of the avant-garde Greenberg discounted the value of popularity
or monetary success in the market place as a valid barometer of
quality in high art. Mindful of the need for the fine arts of patronage
since it tends to receive its support from an economic elite -
which Greenberg feared was disappearing - he prophetically predicted
a classless society brought about by the coming age of industrialization
and a broad leisure class.
By
kitsch Greenberg meant all of those popular and often commercial
products and art forms that tended to appeal to the broadest possible
audience. In music it might mean a popular showtune, in the visual
arts perhaps a poster or an illustrative scene, in poetry the lyrics
to a popular song. Greenberg outlined why high art threatened the
status quo and promoted intellectual independence and aesthetic
individuality. He points to Hitler's preference for kitsch and
both Stalin and Hitler's abhorrence of modern art as an example
of those totalitarian dictator's fears of freedom and independent
thought.
Both
Clement Greenberg as a writer and colleague of artists and Hans
Hofmann as a prestigious teacher, theorist and practicing artist
had an enormous impact and influence on the development of new
American art of the late thirties and the early forties. Greenberg
developed many of his Formalist ideas from what he learned from
Hofmann. John Graham was another figure similar to Hofmann in New
York then. Graham who came from Russia wrote a treatise on modern
art, painted, lectured on Modernism, and mentored younger artists
with tales of his personal experiences with figures such as Picasso
and Matisse in Paris and his other adventures in modern art circles
in Europe. Among some of the younger artists that were close to
John Graham were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Arshile
Gorky. While a John Graham painting is included in the exhibition,
I'd like to know why Hans Hofmann was excluded from the exhibition
especially because the Whitney Museum owns Magenta and Blue
a great picture from 1949-50.
The
accompanying book pays short shrift to Greenberg briefly acknowledging
his viewpoint, essays and his Formalist theories and informs us
that his ideas have been repudiated and dismissed by the art world.
Perhaps the current dictators in the art world are still threatened
by the notion of intellectual independence, aesthetic individuality,
artistic excellence, and High Art? Personally I'm not of the same
era of Clem Greenberg-I knew him and we agreed about some things
and we disagreed a lot. We held different viewpoints about many
things but I always respected what he did for American art in the
forties and he was a great writer about art.
The
early forties saw the end of American Social Realism and although
American Mannerism survived in the work of Thomas Hart Benton,
Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, John Steuart Curry, Ben Shahn, Yasuo
Kuniyoshi, and a few others, and American Geometric Abstraction
survived in the hands of Stuart Davis, Fritz Glarner, Alexander
Calder, Burgoyne Diller, Joseph Albers and a few others; the dominating
influence of Surrealism became paramount to the fledgling American
artistic vanguard. Artists like David Hare, Ibram Lassaw, Adolph
Gottlieb, David Smith, Willem de Kooning and several other artists
are represented by Surrealist inspired works.
World
War Two brought massive upheavals to the world and many European
artists sought refuge in New York. Henry Luce the owner of Time
and Life magazines coined the expression "The American Century"
in 1941. Much of the incredible photographic record of the war
by Robert Capa, W. Eugene Smith, Alfred Eisenstaedt and others
that graced the pages of Luce's publications and other newspapers
and magazines still defines for us today that chilling and calamitous
era.
Photography
is one of the overall joys of this exhibition mostly for its unique
ability to convey fascinating and valuable historical information.
Lisette Model and Weegee provided an unconventional and sometimes
outright weird view of nightlife on the homefront while Robert
Frank presented a wide ranging cross section of America and Aaron
Siskind's work approached the abstraction of his friends' paintings
like those of Franz Kline. The forties ushered in the first great
era of American painting and sculpture as Abstract Expressionism
came of age and finally removed the yoke of European domination.
The
final rooms of the exhibition fall flat. The expected explosion
of Abstract Expressionism never comes. That heroic era is ushered
in with a whimper and with a thin group of almost token paintings
and sculptures. The curators seem to be sending us a message here
- either it's just wait until part two opens in September or watch
out all of you abstract painters and sculptors out there we are
going to get you - we are changing history; politics is all and
aesthetics are passé. Root, hog or die to quote Donald
Judd. Perhaps the real message is a little bit of both.
Single
works by Yves Tanguy, Mark Tobey, Robert Motherwell, Clifford Still,
Adolph Gottlieb, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Franz
Kline, Willem de Kooning, Richard Pousette-Dart, Lee Mullican (whose
inclusion is a welcome surprise), Lee Krasner, a couple of Mark
Rothko's, a couple of Barnet Newman's - one from the mid forties
and a nice yellow zip painting from 1949, another great Arshile
Gorky painting Betrothal ll, 1947 and sculptures
by David Smith, Herbert Ferber, Theodore Roszak, and Isamu Noguchi
finish the show with a disappointing anticlimax. The final painting
in the exhibition is the silver, yellow and pink, Number 27, 1950,
by Jackson Pollock.
It's
like they had this titanic of a big party and they reluctantly
invited the Abstract Expressionists to hold open the door. The
guests of honor, the underlying powerhouse of American Art is left
waiting in the wings. Would there have ever been a show like this
in New York City if it wasn't for Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, Hofmann,
Gorky, Still, Tomlin, Brooks, Rothko, Newman, Gottlieb, Motherwell,
Avery, David Smith and Clement Greenberg? Or would we all be going
to Paris and Berlin?
When
all is said and done this enormous exhibition at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-1950
falls far short of any expectations of experiencing the true greatness
of American Art. The exhibition is too long, and the curators tell
us that American art has triumphed but they don't really deliver
the high quality goods. The Abstract Expressionists put American
Art on the map and The Whitney Museum seems to take them for granted.
This part of the exhibition is thin and is unfortunately also typical
of how contemporary abstract painting has been treated by The Whitney
since 1973. The museum often seems to resent good abstract painting
and they resist showing it to the public - a public that I suspect
really wants to see it if only they knew it existed.
The
Whitney Museum has a new director and apparently he is building
a new curatorial staff that hopefully will begin a new era and
clear the air for this often beleaguered institution. Perhaps the
new director and his fresh team at the Whitney Museum can set a
better course for what once was a great institution. Optimism which
is so vital to the American character consistently desires a happy
ending. I hope the need to satisfy a political will and agenda
will modify to satisfy a real appetite for great works of painting
and sculpture that are aesthetic and sound. If not then I shudder
to think what this institution will bring us in part two of their
politically correct, dumbed down, all things being equal, kitsch
filled celebration of The American Century: Art and Culture
1950-2000.
Ronnie
Landfield NYC May 1999.
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e-mail: rlandfield@nyc.rr.com