Columbus Museum of Art » American Early Modernism

A Knockout

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:25:05 +0000

The Columbus Museum of Art holds the largest public collection of paintings and a very significant collection of lithographs (including the boxing pictures) by Columbus native George Bellows. Bellows became the premier realist painter of his generation and the most accomplished American lithographer of the first half of the twentieth century. He attended the Ohio State University, where he played varsity basketball and baseball and illustrated the yearbook. In 1904, he moved to New York City to study art. Bellows was known for his bold and energetic brushwork. He was closely associated with members of a loosely defined group that critics—not very accurately— named the Ashcan school. These artists were committed to painting contemporary urban life, and Bellows painted subjects that ranged from the life and struggles of the poor to the sporting events and fashionable parks of the rich. His work was widely appreciated, and in 1913 he was simultaneously elected to the conservative National Academy of Design and chosen to exhibit in the revolutionary Armory Show of modern art.

Polo at Lakewood

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:53:52 +0000

After moving to New York City, Bellows found sporting subjects to paint in locales as diverse as the brutal boxing rings of the city’s men’s clubs and the genteel tennis clubs of Newport, Rhode Island. Invited by one of his patrons to attend a polo match at the estate of Jay Gould, in Lakewood, New Jersey, Bellows was fascinated by the contrast between the rush and violence of the game’s action and the carefully groomed appearance of the riders, ponies, and spectators. In this work, he has conveyed the turbulent movement of the sport using powerful diagonals, slashing brushstrokes, and freely applied paint.

Twilight Moon

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:51:33 +0000

Ohio artist Charles Burchfield transformed watercolor into a major medium of expression to rival oil painting in breadth, power, and variety of effects. This work is from the highly esteemed early part of Burchfield’s career. Its setting was inspired by the backyard of the Burchfield family home in Salem, Ohio. The artist’s journals from this time reveal a very introspective personality and a growing sensitivity to the many moods of nature. Burchfield is regarded as one of the key figures in early American Modernism and one of America’s masters of watercolor.

The Confused Process of Becoming (Portrait of Roman Johnson)

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:45:20 +0000

The Confused Process of Becoming (Portrait of Roman Johnson) is a master portrait from the height of the career of Ohio artist Emerson Burkhart in the 1940s. A dedicated painter of the American Scene, Burkhart captured his friend and fellow artist in a contemplative and personal moment. Burkhart believed that all the world could be painted in Columbus, and he once declared, “I don’t need to go anywhere, it’s all here.” On the back of the canvas, Burkhart painted fifty-four slashes, each one denoting a session when he worked on the painting.

Smoldering Fires

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:41:13 +0000

A leading American Scene painter during the 1930s and 1940s, Clarence Carter was also a landscape and portrait painter who was accomplished in both oil and watercolor. He belonged to a generation of American artists deeply influenced by George Bellows and the artists of the Ashcan school and by their passion for painting the America they knew personally. Carter painted this monument-like image of an Appalachian mother and child outside Pittsburgh in 1941. The title refers to the burning slag heaps in the background.

Portrait of a Young Woman

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:38:49 +0000

Mary Cassatt was the only American ever invited to participate in the groundbreaking French Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. A proégé of Degas, from whom she learned important pastel techniques, Cassatt lived in Paris most of her adult life, with occasional visits to her hometown of Philadelphia. She exhibited widely on both sides of the Atlantic, becoming best known for her tender but unsentimental images of mothers and their children. This pastel on paper depicts an unidentified model who appears in a number of works created by Cassatt around 1898. Cassatt has portrayed the woman reading, her pose thoughtful, her hand resting lightly on her cheek, her gaze downward.

Paquebot “Paris”

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:34:16 +0000

Charles Demuth found an austere beauty in industrial objects, and he made their hard-edged, angular shapes a principal subject of his Precisionist style. A visit by Demuth to France coincided with the beginning of a new direction in French Cubism, in the course of which industrial objects were declared to have especially evocative and poetic powers. Returning from Europe on the steamer Paris, Demuth made preliminary pencil sketches of the ship’s deck and funnels. In this painting, he has emphasized the shape of the funnel and the flatness of the painting, while strengthening the presence of the funnel by repeating its shape and adding the radiating lines.

Thunderstorm

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:30:02 +0000

Arthur Dove, a central figure in the first generation of Modernist painters, sought refuge from the materialism of American culture by looking for his forms in nature. Thunderstorm is an example of Dove’s philosophical style of “extraction,” by which he sought to represent the essence of a thing, a style he distinguished from “abstraction.” This painting also reflects Dove’s interest in synesthesia—the visualization of sounds and vibrations expressed as shapes and colors. Here, the viewer can almost hear the “crack” as the lightning pierces the thunderclouds.

Beach Scene, New London

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:27:39 +0000

William Glackens was one of a group of New York painters of the early twentieth century who frequently painted scenes of the urban middle class at work and play. The festive, colorful seaside crowd was a favorite subject of the French Impressionists and was one Glackens often painted when he took his family to the public beach. Here, he used decorative color to convey the gaiety and squirming activity of a Connecticut beach. Glackens’s brushstrokes are reminiscent of those of Renoir, and both painters portrayed the middle class with a romantic elegance and grace.

Men and Mountains

scott — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:12:26 +0000

Rockwell Kent was fond of rugged and remote places and physical challenges. The setting of the work was inspired by the Berkshire Mountains, which, the painter said, reminded him of ancient Greece, where Hercules wrestled with Antæus. The title of this painting appears in a couplet by William Blake: “Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet / This is not Done by Jostling in the Street.” The hills, partially shrouded in the shadow of massive cloudbanks, are meant to seem timeless and mythical. The painting’s depiction of male nudity shocked many. When it was first exhibited in Columbus in 1911, the painting was hung in a room reserved for “Men Only.”