Monday, September 12, 2016

American Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art through the Eye of Duncan Phillips


 Orange County Museum of Art
August 6 - December 4, 2016

On August 6th the Orange County Museum of Art opens American  Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art through the Eye of Duncan Phillips. A collection of American art  from the late 1800s through the mid 1900s, the exhibition reveals the nature of art during the  formation and heyday of modern art in the United States and reflects a culture of independence,  diversity, and experimentation. Included are important works by Richard Diebenkorn, Arthur  Dove, Thomas Eakins, Helen Frankenthaler, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, Edward  Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Horace Pippin, and Clyfford Still. (A complete list is below.) 

The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum dedicated to modern art, was opened in 1921 in  the nation’s capital by Duncan Phillips (1886–1966), who was determined to lift the work of  American artists out of obscurity at a time when museums and collectors were primarily  interested in European old masters. With an emphasis on the work of living artists, he  assembled a collection of American painting when there were no roadmaps for what would  stand the test of time. Phillips’s collecting interests were broad-ranging. He promoted diversity—  as seen in the works by self-taught artists, artists of color, foreign-born artists, and recently  naturalized Americans—resulting in a rich assembly of independent-minded artists. 

He also  believed his collection needed to reflect the continuity of art across time. He reached back into  the 19th century to collect artists that he considered America’s first modern masters, particularly  Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, in order to demonstrate the  connections between past and present in American modernism.  

 Phillips dedicated his life to finding, fostering, and celebrating the very best of American art,  particularly the work of America’s living artists and especially those guided by their  independence and individualism, rather than popular trends. He collected his favorite artists in  depth, committed to purchasing “many examples of the work of artists he admired, instead of  having one example of each of the standardized celebrities.” 

He also adopted a practice  associated with commercial galleries and unprecedented in the museum setting: Phillips gave  living artists solo exhibitions. He believed that these were an important source of  encouragement for artists, especially at the beginning of their careers.   

American Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art through the Eye of Duncan Phillips, presented in six  thematic sections, demonstrates not only the changes in American art from the late nineteenth  through the mid-twentieth centuries, it also celebrates Phillips’s lifetime commitment to an  extraordinary vision and how this focus created one of the finest collections of American  art.


ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS HIGHLIGHTED IN THE EXHIBITION   

ROMANTICISM AND REALISM

  By the second half of the 19th century, young American  painters were seeking alternatives to the sentimentality of  American genre painting and with the work of independent- minded artists such as George Inness, Winslow Homer,  Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder (all represented in  this exhibition), American art came of age. Considered  America’s ‘modern’ old masters by Duncan Phillips, these  artists relied more on an artistic inner vision and an exploration  of the emerging interest in psychology.   


Romanticism and Realism


 1. Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917)

Moonlit Cove, early to mid-1880s

Oil on canvas

14 1/8 x 17 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1924



2. Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

To the Rescue, 1886

Oil on canvas

24 x 30 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1926



3. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)

Miss Amelia Van Buren, c. 1891

Oil on canvas

45 x 32 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1927


4. George Inness (1825-1894)

Lake Albano, 1869

Oil on canvas

30 3/8 x 45 3/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920



5. Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)

Along the Erie Canal, 1890

Oil on canvas

18 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920

6. Louis Michel Eilshemius (1864-1941)

Adirondacks: Bridge for Fishing, 1897

Oil on canvas

18 x 34 7/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1933


In 1886, work by the French impressionists made it to New York and transformed American  painters who took to painting outdoors, adopting a brighter palette and applying pure unmixed  color on the canvas in dabs and broken brushstrokes to create a sense—an impression—of  reflected light, air, and atmosphere. American Mosaic includes artworks by  Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, and Julian  Alden Weir, who were among the first American painters to assimilate these   principals.

Impressionism 



7. Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)

Giverny, c. 1889

Oil on canvas

16 x 22 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920



8. John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902)

The Emerald Pool, c. 1895

Oil on canvas

25 x 25 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1921


9. Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919)

The High Pasture, 1899–1902

Oil on canvas

24 1/8 x 33 1/2 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920



10. Childe Hassam (1859-1935)

Washington Arch, Spring, c. 1893 (inscribed 1890)

Oil on canvas

26 1/8 x 21 5/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1921



11. Ernest Lawson (1873-1939)

Spring Night, Harlem River, 1913

Oil on canvas, mounted on panel

25 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920



12. Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)

Two in a Boat, 1891

Oil on canvas adhered to cardboard

9 3/8 x 13 3/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1920



13. Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

Fantasy, c. 1917

Oil on canvas

22 5/8 x 31 5/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1921

At the turn of the 20th century, a new generation of artists including Rockwell  Kent, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin—who were dissatisfied with  impressionism’s emphasis on domesticated landscape views rendered in soft, atmospheric  light—sought to reinterpret nature in a bold, expressive manner. In 1928 Phillips wrote of Kent  that his painting captured “The dramatic, the elemental...and the cosmic,” and later referred to  Hartley as “powerful and personal and wholly American.”   

NATURE AND ABSTRACTION   

After World War I when American artists struggled to define the country’s modern identity,  Phillips was among the most adventurous collectors and museum directors, embracing bold,  original works that signaled a uniquely American style. Through the circle of artists championed  by photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, Phillips met and collected works by Arthur Dove,  John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe, who believed the experience of the natural world was a  spiritual one in which nature’s essence could be made visible in abstract elements—color, form,  and line—divorced from representation.  

Forces in Nature




14. John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902)

My Summer Studio, c. 1900

Oil on canvas

30 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1919






15. Paul Dougherty (1877-1947)

Storm Voices, 1912

Oil on canvas

36 x 48 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1912






16. Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)

The Road Roller, 1909

Oil on canvas

34 1/8 x 44 1/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1918





17. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)

Mountain Lake—Autumn, c. 1910

Oil on academy board

12 x 12 inches

Collection of The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Rockwell Kent, 1926





18. Harold Weston (1894-1972)

Winds, Upper Ausable Lake, 1922

Oil on canvas

16 x 22 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Mrs. Harold Weston, 1981





19. John Marin (1870-1953)

The Sea, Cape Split, Maine, 1939

Oil on canvas

24 1/4 x 29 1/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1940


Nature and Abstraction



20. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

Large Dark Red Leaves on White, 1925

Oil on canvas

32 x 21 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1943




21. Arthur Dove (1880-1946)

Sun Drawing Water, 1933

Oil on canvas

24 3/8 x 33 5/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1933

22. Augustus V. Tack (1870-1949)

Canyon, c. 1923-24

Oil on canvas on plywood panel

29 x 40 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1924

23. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

Ranchos Church, No. II, NM, 1929

Oil on canvas

24 1/8 x 36 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1930




24. Arthur Dove (1880-1946)

Red Sun, 1935

Oil on canvas

20 1/4 x 28 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1935


 MODERN LIFE   

Moving away from its roots as an agrarian culture, America at the turn  of the 20th century grew fascinated by the emergence of the city and  its newly developing energy. The first wave of American painters  interested in the grit and grim of the city became known as the  Ashcan School while a second wave of artists were more interested in  the effects of the city on the American psyche. Phillips found these  artists, such as John Sloan and later Edward Hopper, to embody all of  the complexity and contradictions of the new urban scene. Drawn to  the work of John Sloan, Phillips noted that the artist “points out not  only the crowd but the lonely individual caught in the maelstrom;” and  similarly, after acquiring Hopper’s Sunday (1926) in 1926, Phillips  described how Hopper balanced the abstraction of architectural  spaces against the psychological isolation of modern life.  The renewed sense of nationalism that settled over the country at the end of World War I  coupled with engineering advances found expression in the new ways to express pictorially the  structures of the city. 

Modern Life

 

25. John Sloan (1871-1951)

Clown Making Up, 1910

Oil on canvas

32 1/8 x 26 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1919



26. George Bellows (1882-1925)

Emma at a Window, 1920

Oil on canvas

41 1/4 x 34 3/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1924




27. Walt Kuhn (1877-1949)

Girl with Mirror, 1928

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1929

 



28. Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)

Blue Armchair, 1923

Oil on plywood panel

25 x 20 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1927

 



29. Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

Sunday, 1926

Oil on canvas

29 x 34 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1926



The City




30. John Sloan (1871-1951)

Six O’Clock, Winter, 1912

Oil on canvas

26 1/8 x 32 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1922

 


31. Stefan Hirsch (1899-1964)

New York, Lower Manhattan, 1921

Oil on canvas

29 x 34 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1925



32. Charles Sheeler (1883-1965)

Skyscrapers, 1922

Oil on canvas

20 x 13 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1926

 



33. Ralston Crawford (1906-1978)

Boat and Grain Elevators, No. 2, 1942

Oil on hardboard

20 1/8 x 16 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1943



34. Stefan Hirsch (1899-1964)

Mill Town, c. 1925

Oil on canvas

30 x 40 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1925

 



35. Edward Bruce (1879-1943)

Power, c. 1933

Oil on canvas

30 x 45 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Mrs. Edward Bruce, 1957





36. Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

Approaching a City, 1946

Oil on canvas

27 1/8 x 36 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1947


An early supporter of Charles Sheeler and his interpretations of the city  with abstract patterns of light and dark, Phillips believed his pictures expressed the impersonal  character of the time with dreamlike precision.  Millions of immigrants from Europe, Latin American, and Asia began arriving in the United  States in the late 19th century. African Americans from the rural South moved to the cities of the  North seeking freedom from oppression between 1910 and 1940. 

Phillips—who believed a  diversity of voices was an essential part of American life—was particularly attracted to work by  artists of color, including Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin; and the self-taught Grandma  Moses, who painted the rural life in upstate New York that she knew intimately.   

Memory and Identity

 



37. Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1893-1953)

Maine Family, c. 1922-23

Oil on canvas

30 1/4 x 24 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1940

 




38. John Kane (1860-1934)

Across the Strip, 1929

Oil on canvas

32 1/4 x 34 1/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1930

 



39. Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)

Parade on Hammond Street, 1935

Oil on canvas board

18 x 24 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1942



40. Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)

Toussaint L'Ouverture series, No. 17: The Capture, 1987

Silkscreen

28 x 18 1/2 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Amistad Research Center, 1987

 



41. Jacob Lawrence(1917-2000)

Toussaint L'Ouverture series: Contemplation, 1993

Silkscreen on two ply rag paper

32 1/8 x 22 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Jacob Lawrence, 1993

 



42. Horace Pippin (1888-1946)

Domino Players, 1943

Oil on composition board

12 3/4 x 22 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1943

 



43. Grandma Moses (1860-1961)

Hoosick Falls in Winter, 1944

Oil on hardboard

19 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1949

 



44. Doris Lee (1905-1983)

Illinois River Town, c. 1938

Oil on canvas

32 x 50 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1939


LEGACY OF CUBISM   

Cubism, which developed in France around 1907, burst onto the American  scene in 1913. In the 1920s and 1930s, some American modernists tried to  Americanize cubism, both in style and subject matter. Russian-born Ilya  Bolotowsky, co-founder of the American Abstract Artists advocated for  order and balance through pure geometric abstraction. Karl Knaths  developed what critic Ralph Flint called a “very American, very masculine”  cubist style. Working independently, Knaths developed a highly original  style that used expressive line and planar arrangements of color to  interpret his environment, which Phillips valued for its ‘humanizing  abstraction.’   

Legacy of Cubism
 


46. Karl Knaths (1891-1971)

Maritime, 1931

Oil on canvas

40 x 32 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1931

 



47. John D. Graham (1887-1961)

Rue Brea, c. 1928

Oil on canvas

25 x 20 1/2 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Judith H. Miller, 1990
 



DEGREES OF ABSTRACTION   

By the end of the 1930s, artists in America were putting increasing emphasis on abstraction as  a universal visual language of pure form and color, whether divorced from nature or derived  from it. Moreover, many American abstract painters looked to philosophy, mathematics,  science, psychology, religion, and music to stimulate their visual reality and propel their art into  new directions; appealing to Phillips’s open mindedness in American art.  Morris Graves, steeped in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, believed in the subconscious as the  locus of creativity. Arthur Dove, while still looking to his surroundings for inspiration, eliminated  descriptive detail to concentrate exclusively on spatial, geometric, and color relationships.   

Degrees of Abstraction
 
 



51. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)

Wild Roses, 1942, 1942

Oil on hardboard

22 x 28 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1943

 



52. Karl Knaths (1891-1971)

Deer in Sunset, 1946

Oil on canvas

36 x 42 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1948

 



53. Arthur Dove (1880-1946)

Rose and Locust Stump, 1943

Wax emulsion on canvas

24 x 32 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1944

 



54. Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997)

World Tablet, 1948

Oil on hardboard

48 x 36 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1949

 



55. Morris Graves (1910-2001)

August Still Life. 1952

Oil on canvas mounted on hardboard

48 x 40 3/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1954

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM   

In the 1940s and 1950s, with the emergence of abstract expressionism,  the first truly international style to emerge in the United States, New York  City became the heart of avant-garde creativity and the art capital of the  world. Abstract expressionism turned American art into a global force.  The artists favored the ’authenticity’ of the individual gesture and although  they shared certain intellectual concerns and social connections, each of  the artists painted in his or her own style. Clyfford Still purged his  paintings of emblematic imagery, making dark canvases that expressed  his philosophical concerns. Younger artists Sam Francis and Richard  Diebenkorn favored expressive use of color. Helen Frankenthaler, Morris  Louis, and Kenneth Noland eliminated the use of thick pigment for a  soaking and staining technique.  

Abstract Expressionism

 



57. Clyfford Still (1904-1980)

1950 B, 1950

Oil on canvas

84 x 67 1/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1969





58. Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)

Berkeley No. 12, 1955

Oil on canvas 53 1/4 x 43 1/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Judith H. Miller, 1990





59. Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)

Interior with View of the Ocean, 1957

Oil on canvas

49 1⁄4 x 57 7/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1958





60. Philip Guston (1912-1980)

Native’s Return, 1957

Oil on canvas

64 7/8 x 75 7/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1958




61. Sam Francis (1923-1994)

Blue, 1958

Oil on canvas

48 1/4 x 34 3/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1958






62. Kenneth Noland (1924-2010)

April, 1960

Acrylic on canvas

16 x 16 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1960








63. Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

Canyon, 1965

Acrylic on canvas

44 x 52 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

The Dreier Fund for acquisitions and funds given by Gifford

Phillips, 2001





64. Milton Avery (1885-1965)

Black Sea, 1959

Oil on canvas

50 x 67 3/4 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Acquired 1965






65. Morris
Louis

Approach, 1962

Acrylic on canvas

83 1/4 x 28 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Gift of Judith H. Miller, 1990


American Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art through the Eye of Duncan Phillips showcases  extraordinary examples from these American art movements by some of the nation’s most  important artists. The 65 paintings and one sculpture, created between the 1860s and 1960s,  offer a thematic journey that reveals the breadth of America’s modernist vision. For more than  40 years, Duncan Phillips was a major force in promoting American modernism, through  acquisitions, exhibitions, and the presentation of American art in his museum, The Phillips.    

American Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art through the Eye of Duncan Phillips has been organized  by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.  The exhibition is presented by Visionaries.