Book Review: Moments That Made the Movies

Moments that Made the Movies

By David Thomson Thames & Hudson/303 pages/$39.95

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In a life time of studying motion pictures, David Thomson has learned a lot about film lovers as well. Movie fans love to make lists. They classify and categorize films with relentless zeal - the one hundred greatest movies of all time, the top ten musicals, the funniest comedies, etc. This passion for films often devolves into motion picture taxidermy, as these inimitable works of art are pinned, butterfly-like, to a scrap-book page.

Thomson's new book sidesteps "list mania" by emphasizing the importance of the film scene as the truest measure of quality in film-making. Moments that Made the Movies reveals the "back story" of pivotal scenes from classic films. These turning points are brilliantly analyzed to show how the action or dialogue of a single scene can establish the theme or tone of an entire motion picture.

Some film scenes demanded to be included in Thomson's book. In a witty personal aside, Thomson notes that as he outlined the book he knew he would have to write about the "I'll have what she's having" restaurant encounter from When Harry Met Sally. And of course, the night club scene in Casablanca was a "must." Humphrey Bogart's heart-stricken response to Dooley Wilson playing "As Time Goes By" is "as corny as can be, yet like most clichés it's based on a universal knot of human behavior..."

Casablanca, 1942

 

Then there's my favorite scene from Roman Holiday when Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck ... But wait a minute! That's not in the book!

Thomson, always one-step ahead us, is quick to remind us that "the big moments don't always come in outstanding pictures." He asserts that the "movie moments" under consideration are not the "best" or greatest or even his personal favorites.

David Thomson

Thomson writes:

But these are moments that have stayed in my memory, and which leap onto the screen in my head if the title is mentioned ... doing something that could be managed in no other medium - the look, the pace, the movement, the texture, the context, all these things are vital. I can describe them, or I will try, but really you have to witness them and feel them.

Thomson here underscores the personal interface of a motion picture and the individual viewer. This happens every time someone watches a film. This is the true magic moment of the movies. Like Dana Andrews, the world-weary detective who becomes mesmerized by the portrait of Gene Tierney in Laura (1944), the film images get inside our heads. Once inside, these "moving" pictures become part of our own story and we are no longer just observers.

Sometimes we can spot a great film scene on the visual horizon, but often they take us by surprise. These "movie moments" trip us up, as Barbara Stanwyck did to Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve, and we plunge head-first into the action.

The Lady Eve, 1941

"Screwball" comedies like The Lady Eve reflected the turbulent times of their heyday, at the start of World War II. This wacky film genre presented their stars with unforeseen, astonishing story twists and expected them to climb their way back to sanity. The audience, too, was required to bring a considerable amount of mental agility and movie "smarts" to these "screwballs," for how else could these films be appreciated?

Movies, from the very beginning, even before the advent of "talkies" in 1927, entered into a deliberate dialogue with their audience. And in a very curious way, scenes from different films can communicate or relate to each other via the mind's eye of the movie beholder.

What constitutes a film scene and how do they communicate with us? How much pace, movement, texture and context need to be blended together to produce a "movie moment?"

There are no clear answers to these questions. But we don’t need a list of ingredients to know that the crop-dusting scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s North-by-Northwest is an iconic "movie moment."

Thomson regards North-by-Northwest as a "perverse comedy." He could just as accurately have described it as a "screwball" drama. North-by-Northwest, released in 1959, is in many ways a reprise of Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, an earlier political thriller with generous helpings of humor. Foreign Correspondent appeared in 1940, the year before The Lady Eve.

North-by-Northwest, 1959

North-by-Northwest and The Lady Eve both require the audience to suspend judgment and join in the story. All films do. In North-by-Northwest, the viewer is required not to raise the obvious question, as Thomson does, why a spy organization would try to kill Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) with a strafing biplane when a trained-assassin could do the job so much more economically with a stiletto or a silencer-gun. Once the audience agrees to suspend belief – an unconscious act - then the film director can get on with his or her job crafting scenes to suit the circumstances of the story line, however improbable that may be.

Thomson notes that some films are so taunt, so tightly focused that they "may be construed as an extended moment, a piece of unbroken duration, and a kind of narrative momentousness." High Noon, the gripping frontier drama starring Gary Cooper from 1952, is a case in point. The fast-paced action takes place in a single day, yielding no "case study" scenes for Thomson to analyze.

Two years earlier, Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. which took post-World War II film noir into the sacred precincts of the Hollywood "dream factories." Sunset Blvd., which the German-born Wilder also co-wrote, is replete with "movie moments." It almost defines the characteristic structure of American films which, "by and large, do look to have sensational events, knock-out set pieces." These, in turn call out for the kind of commentary of which Thomson is such a master.

In the case of Sunset Blvd. that is literally the case. As Thomson points out, the key to this film is its use of voice-over, a film technique that has gone out of favor. But in the capable hands of Billy Wilder and actor William Holden, voice-over was never used to better effect.

Thomson relates that the role of Joe Gillis, a down-at-the-heels Hollywood screen writer, was originally to have been played by Montgomery Clift. But Clift, a year after appearing in The Heiress, backed-out because he feared that he would be typecast if he starred in a similar role of a "kept man." This left the field to Holden, a master at portraying jaded cynics, who narrates his on-screen death in Sunset Blvd. with what Thomson describes as "one of the finest dry, ironic voices in American culture ..."

The central drama of Sunset Blvd., of course, is the relationship of Joe Gillis (Holden) and Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), the faded queen of the silent movie era. Thomson, a little surprisingly, selects few of the great silent films for consideration. The Passion of Joan of Arc and F.W. Murnau's Sunrise make the cut. But Thomson, in another personal aside, says that "I don't know that I would ever have fallen in love with silent cinema."

It is the singular "voice" of a motion picture that grabs our attention and deals us in. And when the story being told is set in an exotic realm, filled with menace and forbidden "allure," then we are really hooked.

One of the key insights of the great directors, Alfred Hitchcock especially, is that we, the audience, don't mind going to such dangerous, unsavory places at all. There is a visceral thrill to "being there" in a place of peril or horror, of witnessing a cheating wife like Miriam (Laura Elliott) in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train get her come-uppance. Justice will eventually be served and then we will leave the theater, safe and sound, to go home after a stop for a snack.

But that's just where we, observant movie viewers, have missed a vital point. These great film scenes draw us in and get us "to witness them and feel them" in Thomson's words. We are given an opportunity to visit our own dark side. And more and more films in the 1960’s and 70’s, following in the footsteps of Hitchcock’s Psycho, drew the chilling conclusion that justice is not always forthcoming by the time the credits role at the end of the picture. And explorations into the recesses of our inner selves may not have happy endings either.

Thomson is particularly impressive in his analysis of two of these unsettling dramas from the 1970’s, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) and Roman Polanski"s Chinatown (1974).

Both of these films take place in the 1930's, the golden-age of the Hollywood hero. Both films have male protagonists, smartly dressed-dressed and topped-off with fedora hats, like the attire that Humphrey Bogart wore in The Maltese Falcon. But there the similarities end.

Clerici, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, is not a hero at all in The Conformist. He is a fascist hit-man who seduces the wife of an opponent of Mussolini and then orchestrates his assassination. The murder of the liberal professor is an appalling act and Clerici, as Thomson writes, is "one of the most hateful, yet warning figures in the movies."

In Chinatown, Jack Nicholson's character, Jake Gittes, is a deliberate throwback to Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlow in The Big Sleep. He is a tough guy and a good detective but - unlike Bogart - he can't beat the system.

Gittes takes on a loathsome land dealer, Noah Cross, played by John Huston, who is trying to corner the rights to water for the burgeoning city of Los Angeles. Cross is a close second to Clerici as a movie monster. He raped his own daughter, Evelyn, played by Faye Dunaway, who is desperately trying to stop him from gaining control of her - and his - daughter.

Chinatown, 1974

John Huston's smooth-talking character is the kind of villain that traditional Hollywood screenplays would go to any length to defeat. With a savvy detective like Nicholson and a gutsy heroine like Faye Dunaway, justice in a 1937 drama would triumph without fail. But in a 1974 film like Chinatown, the "Thirties" hero and heroine don't stand a chance. By then, as Thomson notes perceptively, "the code of Philip Marlow was a dusty relic."

Thomson's text is filled with such provocative insights. Thomson is often profound in his commentary, challenging readers to respond to these "movie moments." We re-wind and replay these scenes on the movie screen in our heads - with often startling results.

Thomson pays increasing attention to international cinema from the 1950’s onward. His essay on the French New Wave film, Vivre Sa Vie, directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1962, is notably perceptive. In an otherwise grim depiction of the life of Nana, a Parisian prostitute portrayed by Anna Karina, Thomson focuses upon a remarkable scene that is both life-affirming and an unsettling, cautionary tale.

As her pimp talks "business" with another hustler, Nana pops a coin into a juke box to pass the time. The music, a forgettable European riff on American jazz, begins to play. Nana gets into the mood and begins to dance by herself. For a brief moment, Nana ceases being an "object of desire" and has regained her full humanity. The scene is directed and acted to perfection, exuding a naturalness and simplicity that is far more affecting than a more lavish production number would have been.

Thomson movingly describes Nana's dance as "your girlfriend doing Cyd Charisse..." Earlier in his book, he presents a spirited essay on the Fred Astaire-Cyd Charisse dance film, The Band Wagon (1953). By evoking the romantic partnership of Astaire and Charisse in terms of Anna Karina's solo performance, Thomson enables two totally dissimilar films to play-off each other. It’s a double feature on the movie screen in our mind.

The Band Wagon, 1953

Dance films like The Band Wagon represent the epitome of escapism in films. Astaire, Thomson writes, was an auteur who "had a very simple code: that dance could solve everything." Nana’s dance, by comparison, is a truly heartbreaking moment, a stay of execution rather than an escape into bliss. Yet as Thomson shows, Nana's embrace of life in that wonderful display of joie de vivre highlights the humanity of people everywhere trapped in lives of suffering and desperation.

Looked at in this unconventional way, these great film scenes are powerful assertions of human emotions. They allow us to look at ourselves in ways that otherwise we could never do.

Laura, 1944

With its superb interplay of image and text, Thomson’s book rekindled my long, if recently smoldering, passion for films. But Moments that Made the Movies is more than just a "movie book." The personal, profound touch that infuses Thomson's commentary quietly nurtures a sense of empathy for our fellow beings. And then, like Gene Tierney in Laura, "character" is no longer just a picture on the wall. It is a deeply-felt set of values, helping us to feel and act more truly alive.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved

 

Images courtesy of Thames & Hudson


Introductory Image:
Moments That Made the Movies, 2013 (cover) Image credit: Thames & Hudson

Casablanca, 1942 (page 69) Image credit: Warner Bros/The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY

David Thomson (author photo) Photo: c. Lucy Gray

The Lady Eve, 1941 (page 65) Image credit: Paramount/Photofest

North by Northwest, 1959 (page 153) Image credit: MGM/The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY

Chinatown, 1974 (page 227) Image credit: Paramount/Photofest

The Bandwagon, 1953 (page 118-119) Image credit: MGM/Everett Collection

Laura, 1944 (page 72-73) Image credit: 20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY

Medieval Masterpieces from Germany at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

　

 

 

Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City September 17, 2013-January 5, 2014

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The exhibition of German art works from the Middle Ages now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City both inspires and confounds the expectations of viewers. Are these precious objects relics of the great Age of Christian Faith? Or are these strange and wonderful artifacts survivors from a remote pagan past, barbaric in spirit beneath a thin veneer of Christian piety?

Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim presents 50 masterpieces from the cathedral and monastery of Hildesheim, an ecclesiastical site of major importance. Here, in this city in Lower Saxony, Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (960–1022) launched bold programs of church building and the creation of Christian art that rank among the most influential of the Middle Ages. Bernward deserves to be remembered along with Abbot Suger (1081-1151) as one of the pioneering patrons of the arts in what was truly a renaissance before The Renaissance.

The great age of church and cathedral building began after the year 1000 A.D., which many had dreaded as the onset of the Apocalypse. The lavish spending on ecclesiastical buildings during the Middle Ages was not without its critics. Where forward-thinking prelates like Bernward saw the impressive new churches and monasteries as reflections of the Heavenly City, others held different opinions.

In a foreshadowing of the Reformation of the 1500's, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) condemned the kind of gilded reliquaries and ornate candlesticks that are on display in the Hildesheim exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum:

"Oh vanity of vanities, but no more vain than insane! The church is radiant in its walls and destitute in its poor. It dresses its stones in gold and abandons its children naked. It serves the eyes of the rich at the expense of the poor."

Both Bernard of Clairvaux and Bernward of Hildesheim are recognized as saints in the Roman Catholic Church. Though separated by nearly a century, the two churchmen, one French, the other German, had much in common. Both served as advisers and confidantes of kings. Bernard's puritanical zeal and Bernward's progressive vision reflect a duality in Christendom that stretches back to antiquity.

In Bernward's case, he was chaplain and tutor to the short-lived Emperor Otto III, 980-1002. The Ottonian Dynasty, Saxons by birth, revived the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that had largely disintegrated after his death in 814. The Ottonian rulers looked to expand Christian (and German) power eastward and to exert political power in Italy.

Capable religious leaders like Bernward were essential to the dynastic agenda of the Ottonian rulers. The influential role of bishops and the heads of orders of monks and priests was symbolized by the ceremonial shepherd's staff that they carried. An example on display is the remarkable Crosier of Abbot Erkanbald, a striking statement of ecclesiastical authority. Church leaders during the eleventh century, of whom Bishop Bernward was a noteworthy example, were men to be reckoned with.

The world view and social position of Bernward served as the foundation for his church building. It infused his enthusiastic patronage of art as a means of conveying the truths of religion, as well. This is immediately apparent in the two extraordinary objects that greet visitors to the Hildesheim exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum.

The first is the monumental Baptismal Font, cast in copper alloy in the early thirteenth century. The Baptismal Font displays biblical scenes in bold relief and remarkable narrative power. Each has a water theme - the baptism of Jesus, Moses' crossing of the Red Sea, the transport of the Ark of the Covenant across the River Jordan and the dedication of the font itself. The massive vessel is supported by four figures which represent rivers mentioned in the Bible, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon.

Baptismal Font from Hildesheim, Germany

A stunning masterpiece in its own right, the Baptismal Font evokes the great bronze doors which Bernward originally commissioned for St. Michael's, the church of the Benedictine Order in Hildesheim. The massive doors, measuring 16 feet, 6 inches high, solid cast, are adorned by eight scenes from the Old Testament on one door, eight New Testament scenes on the other.

After seeing the ancient Roman war monument, Trajan's Column, Bernward also ordered a similar column to be cast around 1000 A.D. Instead of battle scenes in bas relief, Bernward's column depicts twenty-eight episodes from the life of Jesus swirling upward with cinematic dynamism.

There are some disturbing nuances in Bernward's Column, given the aggressive efforts of the Ottonian dynasty to invest itself with the trappings of Roman imperialism. Bernward's Column is too closely modeled after Trajan's to escape suspicion that it too is a monument to power politics. But no such charge could be leveled against the Ringelheim Crucifix.

It is commonly believed that Bernward commissioned the carving of this magnificent crucifix for the convent where his sister, Judith, was abbess. In a brilliant design decision, the Metropolitan curators have displayed the Ringelheim Crucifix on a cross-shaped partition immediately visible as one approaches the exhibition. The Ringelheim Crucifix looms over the shimmering display cases with their gilded reliquaries and gem-studded manuscript covers. The effect is profound.

 

Ringelheim Crucifix

 

The Ringelheim Crucifix was carved from linden wood, the favored medium of great German carvers down to Tilman Riemenschneider, during the 1500's. The arms, though, are a later addition, replacements made of oak. During restoration in the years 1949-52, a cavity was discovered in the head where several relics had been stored. A note on parchment signed by Bernward himself identified two stones as coming from the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, along with bone fragments from two saints. But amazing as this discovery is, nothing can match the sense of spiritual power of the Ringelheim Crucifix, one of the earliest surviving three-dimensional works of art from the Christian Middle Ages.

The Ringelheim Crucifix manifests the raw, powerful convictions of the Christian populations of Western Europe, still only a few generations from the time of their conversion. If the Ringelheim Crucifix exudes the "faith of the convert," the exquisite Bernward Cross, which dates to Bernward's era, points to the growing sophistication of that faith. Likewise, the gilded Hezilo Cross, used in processions, is evidence of the growing wealth and worldliness of the Christian clergy.

Before we endorse Bernard of Clairvaux's zealotry at the expense of Bernward's pragmatic approach to religion, one should take a closer look at the silver Bernward Cross. The figure of the crucified Jesus depicts him as a tortured martyr, head slumped and skeletal rib-cage clearly visible even on such a small scale. Here we see the dying, Good Friday Jesus.

Bernward Cross

This image of the death of Jesus on the cross so shocked early Christians that for the first five hundred years or more of their religion, few depictions of the crucifixion were created. But people of Bernward's generation embraced images of both the suffering Jesus and the transcendent Christ of the Ringelheim Crucifix. And human nature being what it is, it should not surprise us that Christians of Medieval Europe, whose "barbarian" ancestors exulted in objects "rich in gold," should also have paraded around with the glittering Hezilo Cross, encrusted with semi-precious gems and rock crystals. Later "reformers" like Bernard of Clairvaux and Martin Luther would condemn such objects. To most Christian believers during the Middle Ages, however, the Hezilo Cross was a symbol of devotion.

The discovery of the relics inside the head of the Ringelheim Crucifix, mundane chips of stone and bone though they seem to modern eyes, points to the Christian cult of relics. Impressive for engendering piety and belief among the faithful, the cult of relics was also the keystone of vast financial transactions to the Church. The monarchs and nobles of Europe donated lands and revenue to build pilgrimage shrines to safeguard these - often dubious - body fragments and personal objects reputed to have belonged to Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Christian martyrs.

Arm Reliquary of St. Bernward

The Metropolitan exhibit displays several containers or reliquaries for relics. In the case of the silver, arm-shaped reliquary, skillfully cast to show the hem of a bishop's robe, we can be reasonably certain that it contained body parts of Bernward, raised to the rank of sainthood in 1193. But the identity of the skull in the reliquary of St. Oswald is open to question.

Reliquary of St. Oswald
 

 There were at least four skulls of St. Oswald lovingly preserved in reliquaries throughout Europe. The most likely candidate was the one in Durham Cathedral in northern England. Oswald had been one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon rulers to embrace Christianity. But Oswald had converted for the same reason that the Emperor Constantine had in the fourth century. Oswald felt that the Christian god would aid him in his military campaigns. For a time, his plan seemed to be working - until he fought one battle too many and was killed fighting the pagan Mercians in 642.

The exultant Mercians displayed Oswald's severed head on a wooden stake as a battle trophy. Later retrieved, it was placed for safe-keeping in a church in Durham. By the time this bizarre reliquary was created, around 1185, Oswald was venerated as a Christian martyr. This was also the era of King Richard the Lionhearted and the Crusades. Oswald had become a model saint for Church leaders, like Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching "Holy War" against Islam.

The ominous implications of events and Church policies in Bernward's time in the early eleventh century should not detract from his achievements. We should not judge the piety of medieval religious books - or that of the clergymen who commissioned them - by the lavish decoration of their covers.

 

Small Bernward Gospel

 

The Reichenau Lectionary, created during the last years of Bernward's life and the so-called Small Bernward Gospel, which dates from a century after his death, are both testaments to a deep and abiding faith. The Reichenau Lectionary, used in church services, presents a charming and heart-moving depiction of the death of the Virgin Mary, with angels swooping down to escort her to heaven. And the gems and rock crystal on the cover of the Small Bernward Gospel should not distract our attention from the carved ivory plaque on the cover depicting the Crucifixion. This was an especially precious object, a gift very likely from the Byzantine court in Constantinople.

Reichenau Lectionary

 

Yet this wonderful exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum produces an unsettling effect, difficult to define. Is it due to the sheer amount of gleaming gold and silver artifacts in the small space of the single gallery displaying Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim? Or is this vague uncertainty caused by the evidence of so much religious piety in a society vastly different from our own?

Whatever the answer, it is hard not to be impressed with the life and the legacy of the clergyman who was responsible for the creation of so many of these medieval treasures. As Bernward's biographer said of him, "There was nothing in the fields of the arts that Bernward did not try, even when he was not able to bring it to completion."

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Crozier of Abbot Erkanbald German (Hildesheim), before 1011 Silver with gilding H : 4-1/2 x 3 in. (11.3 x7.5 cm) without stem Dom-Museum Hildesheim (DS 7) Photograph by Frank Tomio

Baptismal Font German (Hildesheim), ca. 1226 Copper alloy, cast in eight pieces Overall H. ca. 72–7/8 in. (185 cm); font: H. 26–3/8 in. (67 cm); Diam. 37–3/4 in. (95.9cm.); cover: H. 16–1/8 in. (41 cm); finial: H. 12–5/8 in. (32 cm); supporting figures: H. 18–1/2 in. to 19–3/4 in. (47 cm to 50 cm) Hohe Domkirche Hildesheim Photograph by Manfred Zimmermann

Ringelheim Crucifix German (Hildesheim), ca. 1000 / before 1022 Linden wood (corpus) and oak (arms) Overall 63–7/8 × 63–3/8 × 9–7/8 in. (162 × 161 × 25 cm) Dom-Museum Hildesheim, on loan from the church of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, SalzgitterRingelheim (L 1993-8)

Bernward Cross German (Hildesheim), after 1007 / before 1022; base: 14th century Silver, gilding Overall (H. with base) 12–3/8 × 5–7/8 × 1–1/4 in. (31.2 × 14.9 × 3.2 cm); H. of cross 8–1/4 in. (20.9 cm.) Dom-Museum Hildesheim (DS 6) Photograph by Frank Tomio

Arm Reliquary of Saint Bernward German (Hildesheim), ca. 1194 Silver, gilded silver, rock crystal, and semiprecious stones; wood core Overall 21–1/2 × 6–1/8 × 4–5/8 in. (54.5 × 15.5 × 11.6 cm) Dom-Museum Hildesheim, on loan from the church of St. Magdalen, Hildesheim (L1978-2) Photograph by Jürgen Liepe

Reliquary of Saint Oswald German (Hildesheim) or possibly English, ca. 1185–89; partly restored 1779 Gold, silver, gilded silver, niello, cloisonné enamel (a few replaced), gems, pearls, antique cameos and intaglios; wood core H. with crown 18–3/4 in. (47.5 cm); Diam. (base) 10–5/8 in. (27 cm) Dom-Museum Hildesheim (DS 23) Photograph by Lutz Engelhardt

Gospel Book (so-called Small Bernward Gospel) Front cover: German (Hildesheim), second half of 12th century. Gilded copper, rock crystal, paint on parchment under horn on oak; Byzantine ivory plaque 8-7/8 x 6-3/4 in. (22.5 x17 cm) Dom-Museum Hildesheim (DS 13) Photograph by Erika Dufour, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Gospel Lectionary and Collectar German (Reichenau), ca. 1010–30 Tempera and gold on vellum Overall 8–3/4 × 6–1/2 in. (22 × 16.5 cm); 96 leaves Dombibliothek Hildesheim (Hs. 688) Photograph by Lutz Engelhardt
　

　

　   

 

  

Shaw Memorial Exhibit at the National Gallery, Washington D.C.

                        Tell It with Pride:The 54th Massachusetts Regiment                              and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial 

National Gallery of Art Washington D.C., 

September 15, 2013 - January 20, 2014

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Tell It with Pride, the new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, recounts one of the pivotal moments of the American Civil War. It also documents the long, ever-evolving attempt to understand and pay homage to that tragic conflict 150 years ago, especially in terms of the African-American contribution to winning the "War for the Union."

For exactly a century, there were two vantage points to properly examine the greatest of all Civil War monuments. This is the bronze sculpture honoring the sacrificial courage of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the African-American soldiers of his regiment. Shaw and many of his men were killed during the heroic 1863 attack on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina.

One could go to the intersection of Beacon and Park streets on the northern boundary of Boston Common and personally view the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment. This bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens is enshrined across the street from the state capitol building of Massachusetts. It marks the path of the great military parade of Colonel Shaw and the 54thMassachusetts prior to their rendezvous with destiny on the night of July 18, 1863.^.

The second vantage point required travel of spiritual nature. Since it was unveiled in 1897, "The Shaw" has occupied a special place in American folk memory and religious conviction - at least in the North. Without going to Boston Common, an art lover or American patriot could peer into the human heart and there find a resonance of "The Shaw."

Time and tide have not budged Saint-Gaudens' mighty sculpture from either place.

There actually was a third venue for studying Saint-Gaudens' tribute to Colonel Shaw and the gallant African-American troops of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. Saint-Gaudens' bronze sculpture had been cast from a plaster version and this remarkable work had then been re-tooled into a stunning, golden-hued object d'art that had won international praise and awards.

In September 1997, the National Gallery of Art created a special exhibit space for this magnificent plaster model which Saint-Gaudens had exhibited to wide acclaim in Paris in 1900. This second "Shaw", on long-term loan from the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire, had a long, interesting - and ill-starred - history behind it. Praised at first, it had then been ignored and badly preserved. The impact of this gold-patinated plaster version had also been significantly lessoned by its eventual placement at a remote location in the New England countryside where Saint-Gaudens had maintained a short-lived art colony.

Now skillfully and beautifully restored, the plaster monument to Colonel Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts is the centerpiece of the National Gallery's insightful exhibit.

 

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, 1863

Tell It with Pride recounts how Shaw, the twenty-five year-old son of a prominent New England family, accepted command of the first U.S. Government-sponsored military unit comprising African-American troops. Several local units of African-Americans had been recruited in the liberated areas of the South. But the 54th Massachusetts was a special case, as it had been raised in direct response to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. The great African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass had been instrumental in pressing for the regiment's authorization. Volunteers, including two sons of Douglass, answered the call from all of the states loyal to the Union and from Canada as well.

54th Massachusetts Regiment Recruitment Poster

 

The Tell It with Pride exhibit displays a number of vintage photographs of troopers from the 54th, both during and after the Civil War. When one looks at Sergeant Major John Wilson and Private James Matthew Townsend posing in Union blue, the images are strikingly similar to those of the "Boys of 61," the brave, untried white volunteers - like Shaw - who had rushed to the recruitment depots after Fort Sumter.

Sergeant Major Wilson wears the swirling, light blue stripes of his rank and perhaps it is this insignia which nurtured the quiet sense of composure and self-confidence on his handsome face. Private Townsend, on the other hand, glares apprehensively at the camera. His Enfield rifle from bayonet point to rifle butt is taller than he, a point of contrast made even more incongruous by the embroidered curtains and table cloth of the setting.

Sergeant Major John Wilson, 1863

 

Private James Matthew Townsend, 1863

On May 28, 1863, Colonel Shaw, Sergeant Major Wilson, Private Townsend and a thousand comrades from the 54th Volunteers marched past the Massachusetts State House in a military review that was one of the most inspired dedications to the principals of political liberty and human equality in all of American history. It is this proud moment that the Shaw Memorial commemorates.

The tragic death of Colonel Shaw and many of the men of the 54th during the assault on Fort Wagner on the night of July 18, 1863 did not diminish the significance of this demonstration of idealism. In fact, the sacrificial valor of the 54th demolished one of the principal precepts of the Southern Confederacy - that African-Americans were incapable of fighting with the same measure of courage, dedication and skill as white soldiers. That delusion fell to pieces during the attack on Fort Wagner, though many in the South - and some Northern racists, too - refused to acknowledge the obvious message of the event.

It is significant that the public spirit and sense of personal initiative that characterized the conduct of the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment did not stop at the attack on Fort Wagner. This spirit carried on after the Civil War into the decades-long campaign to erect a memorial to Col. Shaw and his men. It was an African-American citizen of Boston, Joshua B. Smith, who was instrumental in the effort to erect a monument to Shaw and to honor the 1863 actions of the men of the 54th "by which the title of colored men as citizen soldiers was fixed beyond recall."

Fund-raising continued for nearly two decades, but the years between 1865 and 1880 were not favorable for civic projects commemorating the heroes of the Civil War. Most people in the United States wanted to get on with their lives following the end of hostilities. Huge sums were still needed to care for maimed soldiers, North and South, and to provide for orphaned children. Furthermore, Shaw's parents were modest New England people who discouraged a grand equestrian statue of their son.

In 1881, the man and the hour arrived that would lead to the creation of "The Shaw." The man was sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Born in 1848, Saint-Gaudens was too young, by a couple of years, to have served in the Civil War. But like Shaw, the great conflict determined the course of his life. Many of Saint-Gaudens' greatest works would have Civil War themes, but none was greater than the Shaw Memorial.

Saint-Gaudens, immensely gifted, studied art in France and Rome after the war. Returning to the United States, he received a commission to create a statue of Admiral David Farragut, one of the first major Civil War monuments. The lifelike bronze portrait of Farragut was unveiled in New York City in 1881, making Saint-Gaudens’ reputation in the process.

Saint-Gaudens soon had more work than he could handle. But when he was approached by the committee from Boston in charge of the planned Shaw Memorial in 1882, Saint-Gaudens willingly agreed to work on the project.

Preliminary sketch for the Shaw Memorial, 1883

Saint-Gaudens submitted several plans, initially for an equestrian figure of Colonel Shaw. But he reckoned without considering the Puritan reservations of Shaw's family. Then in 1883, Saint-Gaudens created a plaster sketch for a bas-relief showing a mounted Colonel Shaw positioned near to his men. This was accepted and a contract formally signed on February 23, 1884. The work was expected to be completed in two years, but the Boston committee had reckoned without considering the genius and ambition of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

By the time it was unveiled on May 31, 1897, the Shaw Memorial had been transformed from a bas-relief to a statue group. Shaw and the men of the 54th do not march past in serried ranks of low-relief, blank faced heroes like the Roman legionaries on the famous ancient monument, Trajan's Column, from the second century A.D. Instead, the image of Col. Shaw is a fully realized, three-dimensional equestrian statue emerging from the setting of the action. In an absolute master-stroke, Saint-Gaudens created a similar effect for the infantrymen of the 54th. They are positioned so that the rows of troops stride forth, in step with Shaw, seemingly out of the stone architectural base that had been designed by Charles F. McKim, Saint-Gaudens' associate.

Saint-Gaudens insured that the individuality of the foot soldiers of the 54th, as well as their commander, was on view. He sculpted each head of the marching 54th infantrymen, from the grizzled old sergeant to the young, impassive drummer boy, upon separate African-American models who posed in his New York studio. In an age of racial type-casting, Saint-Gaudens affirmed human individuality to an astonishing degree.

Study Head of a Black Soldier, 1883/1893

 

The pride that the surviving members of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, who paraded past the Shaw Memorial on that splendid day in 1897, is well evident from photos of the event. No doubt, they felt that the wait for the bronze masterpiece was worth the long delay.

But what these old warriors could not have known is that one of the biggest hold-ups was Saint-Gaudens' unresolved struggle on how to depict the allegorical figure, the "angel" of victory or death, who hovers over the 54th as it marches to war.

So vivid, so superbly realized are the figures of Shaw and his men that it is a cause for wonder that Saint-Gaudens bothered to include the "angel" at all, much less become obsessed with the way to properly depict her. Allegorical figures were much more the norm of nineteenth century art than today - witness the bare-breasted heroine leading the charge in Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830). But the angel is a vital feature of Saint-Gaudens' work, in some ways its key component.

In an early version, the angel's face is toward the viewer. She is positioned in a pose of vigorous motion, her arm thrusting forward as if urging the viewers to join the 54th and begin the charge on Fort Wagner directly from that spot at the intersection of Beacon and Park streets in Boston.

Early Study of the Allegorical Figure for the Shaw Memorial, late 1880's

 

This "prototype" angel is a militant spirit much like the winged companion who accompanies General William Tecumseh Sherman in Saint-Gaudens' statue of the controversial Union General erected in New York City. Saint-Gaudens worked on the Sherman Monument for much of the time that he was involved with the Shaw Memorial. The angel who leads the grim-faced Sherman is based upon the ancient Greek personification of Victory, the Nike of Samothrace.

The pairing of General Sherman and the Winged Victory brought a certain logic to Saint-Gaudens' design. Sherman's capture of Atlanta, Georgia, in the summer of 1864, and the subsequent "scorched earth" March to the Sea had, after all, produced significant Union victories.

The assault on Fort Wagner was a defeat. Despite the heroic efforts of the 54th Massachusetts and the white soldiers in the second wave of the attack, the Confederate garrison held out, safely protected by formidable "bomb-proof" bunkers.

Saint-Gaudens acknowledged the tragic nature of the sacrifice of the 54th by posing the angel's shrouded head in profile, a gaze of grieving solicitude on her face. There is no trace of the martial ardor of the Nike of Samothrace. Instead, Saint-Gaudens gave his angel the sorrowing expression of the Virgin Mary as she beholds the dead Jesus at the foot of the cross in Giotto's Arena Chapel fresco from the fourteenth century.

  

Allegorical Figure, Shaw Memorial,  (detail) 1900

This same expression graces the face of the angel in the gilded plaster version that is the centerpiece of the Tell It with Pride exhibition. This golden-hued version, from which the bronze memorial in Boston had been cast, can be regarded as Saint-Gaudens’ "director’s cut." Saint-Gaudens had made further minor changes on the plaster version following the installation of the bronze cast in 1897.

 

Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment, 1900

After being exhibited in Paris in 1900, this plaster "Shaw" began a checkered career marked by benign neglect, exposure to the New England winter and – in 1997 – brilliant restoration. Today, it serves as the "show-stopper" in this magnificent exhibition. Tell It with Pride also includes a wealth of period photos and historic artifacts including the Congressional Medal of Honor presented to Sergeant William Carney of the 54th for saving the regimental flag during the attack on Fort Wagner. This was the first ever Medal of Honor awarded to an African-American soldier of the United States.

The American Civil War took place a century and a half ago. But as you walk through the Tell It with Pride exhibition, time seems to stand still and the poignancy of the events of 1863 exerts a living presence in the museum gallery.

 

Shaw Memorial (detail) 1973

 

What William James said at the unveiling of the Shaw Memorial in 1897 is once again true. In his remarks to the guests at that long-ago event, James said:

"Look at the monument and read the story; - see the mingling of elements which the sculptor’s genius has brought so vividly be-fore the eye. There on foot go the dark out-casts, so true to nature that one can almost hear them breathing as they march."

***

Images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
 
Introductory Image:
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Shaw Memorial, (detail) 1900
Patinated plaster
Overall (without armature or pedestal): 368.9 x 524.5 x 86.4 cm (145 1/4 x 20 1/2 x 34 in.)
overall (with armature & pedestal): 419.1 x 524.5 x 109.2 (165 x 206 1/2 x 43 in.)
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
John Adams Whipple
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, 1863
Albumen print
Overall: 10.9 x 6.1 cm (4 5/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
Image 8.4 x 5.8 cm (3 5/16 x 2 5/16 in.)
Boston Athenaeum

54th Massachusetts Regiment Recruitment Poster
J.E. Farwell and Co.
To Colored Men, 54th Regiment! Massachusetts Volunteers, of African Descent, 1863
Ink on paper
Overall: 109.9 x 75.2 cm (43 1/4 x 29 5/8 in.)
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society

Sergeant Major John Wilson
Unknown Photographer
Sergeant Major John Wilson
Albumen print
Image: 9.1 x 5.8 cm (3 9/16 x 2 5/16 in.)
Sheet 10 x 6 cm (3 15/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
West Virginia and Regional History Collection
West Virginia University Libraries

Private James Matthew Townsend
Unknown Photographer
Private James Matthew Townsend
Albumen print
Image: 8.6 x 5.8 cm (3 3/8 x 2 5/16 in.)
Collection of Greg French

Preliminary Sketch for Shaw Memorial, 1883
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Preliminary Sketch for Shaw Memorial, 1883
Plaster
Overall: 41 x 38.7 cm (16 1/8 x 15 1/4 in.)
 U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire

Study Head of a Black Soldier, 1883/1893
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Study Head of a Black Soldier, 1883/1893
Plaster
Overall: 14.8 x 13.2 cm (5 13/16 x 5 3/16 in.)
 U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire

Early Study of the Allegorical Figure of the Shaw Memorial, late 1880sAugustus Saint-Gaudens
Early Study of the Allegorical Figure of the Shaw Memorial, late 1880s
Plaster
Overall: 25.4 x 94 cm (10 x 37in.)
 U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire
Allegorical Figure, Shaw Memorial,  (detail) 1900

Allegorical Figure, Shaw Memorial, (detail) 1900
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Shaw Memorial, 1900
Patinated plaster
Overall (without armature or pedestal): 368.9 x 524.5 x 86.4 cm (145 1/4 x 20 1/2 x 34 in.)
overall (with armature & pedestal): 419.1 x 524.5 x 109.2 (165 x 206 1/2 x 43 in.)
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire
Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment, 1900
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Shaw Memorial, 1900
Patinated plaster
Overall (without armature or pedestal): 368.9 x 524.5 x 86.4 cm (145 1/4 x 20 1/2 x 34 in.)
overall (with armature & pedestal): 419.1 x 524.5 x 109.2 (165 x 206 1/2 x 43 in.)
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,
Cornish, New Hampshire

Shaw Memorial (detail), 1973
Richard Benson
Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, 1973
Pigmented ink jet print
Image: 30.5 x 38.7 cm (12 x 15 1/4 in.)
Sheet 32.9 x 45.6 cm (12 15/16 x 17 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Susan and Peter MacGill
© Richard Benson. Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York




 

 












   
  
 
 

American Modern at MOMA

American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, August 17, 2013 to January 26, 2014

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Upon entering American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe, the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one has the sensation of having walked onto the pages of an art book devoted to the masterpieces of early twentieth century America.

Almost immediately, Edward Hopper's signature work from 1925, House by the Railroad, looms into view. Nearby are photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, as well as one of Stieglitz himself, taken by Ansel Adams in 1938. Venture further into the exhibit galleries and a display of key works from Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, Charles Sheeler's "Precisionist" masterpiece, American Landscape, and the flowering sensuality of Georgia O'Keeffe's An Orchid greet the eye.

American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe is a major exhibition that fulfills both its premise and its promise. Yet two interrelated factors need to be emphasized in order to grasp the significance of the exhibition. First, almost all of the art works on display are from MOMA's collection. Many of them were very early acquisitions, dating to the 1930's and 1940's, when a vigorous movement to define the character of American art was in full swing.

These were the same years when MOMA's dynamic director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., successfully asserted MOMA's leadership role over the international modern art movement, a position it has never lost. Barr's pioneering presentations of the art of the Surrealists, Picasso and Matisse at MOMA's rented exhibition space during the 1930's gave the appearance of shifting priorities away from the contemporary focus on American art.

In 1939, the year the museum found its permanent lodgings on W. 53rd St., MOMA presented a celebratory exhibition. The catalog to Art in Our Time set forth MOMA's mandate "to present to the public the living art of our time and its sources." That meant American art as well as Picasso. MOMA had in fact mounted a retrospective of Hopper's paintings in 1933 as well as acquiring works by other contemporary American artists.

American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe thus corrects a misperception about MOMA's role in shaping modern American art. During its formative years, MOMA played an important part in the dialog on the identity of American art. This exhibition also shows that diversity was the defining aspect of art in the United States during the 1920's and 1930's. After surveying the range of artistic works on view, it is misleading to apply a generic label to them such as "American Scene Painting" or "Precisionism."

The exhibition title is not particularly helpful in this regard. "Hopper to O'Keeffe" implies a process of insight and innovation, a path breaking moment of discovery leading to further epiphanies by second-generation artists. From the title, one might assume that American art had evolved from Realism (Hopper) to the first stirrings of Abstract art (O'Keeffe) in an almost pre-ordained progression.

The paintings on display in the MOMA exhibition reveal a different sequence of creation. Abstract art, influenced by pre-World War I Expressionism and Cubism, often preceded realist-style work by these "American moderns."

Arthur Dove (American, 1880-1946)
Willows
1940
Oil on canvas
25 x 35" (63.5 x 88.9 cm)
Gift of Duncan Phillips, 1941

Only the career of Arthur Dove (1880-1946), continued to evolve in a consistent Abstract style. Although his titles usually suggest elements from the natural world, Dove was a courageous pioneer of Abstract art. But the life-long support of Alfred Stieglitz and Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Gallery in Washington D.C., was crucial to his survival as an artist.

For other "American moderns," the creative path remained grounded in Realism or often shifted back and forth from representational to Abstract art - and sometimes back again. Two of the key works on view in the MOMA exhibit are particularly noteworthy in this respect.

Georgia O'Keeffe
(American, 1887-1986)
Evening Star, No. III
1917
Watercolor on paper mounted on board
8 7/8 x 11 7/8" (22.7 x 30.4 cm)
MOMA, Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Straus Fund, 1958

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) were close contemporaries and though O'Keeffe lived far longer, she painted only a few years beyond Hopper's death because of failing eyesight. In no way was she a "later" painter. Hopper's House by the Railroad, when compared with O’Keeffe's Evening Star, No. III, might appear to be an earlier work, rooted in the nineteenth century. In fact, Hopper painted it nearly a decade after O'Keeffe evoked the desert sky in her astonishing water color. During the 1920's, O'Keeffe embraced a more realistic or Precisionist style in her cityscapes and landscapes.

A comparison of a photograph and a painting by Charles Sheeler confirm the impracticality of trying to confine works from this period in a straightjacket of schematic theory.

Sheeler (1883-1965), a native of Pennsylvania, frequently painted in Bucks County, a then-rural area situated between New York City and Philadelphia. Many of the leading lights of Broadway like Oscar Hammerstein escaped to country homes in Bucks County. Sheeler's Bucks County Barn, painted in 1932, is an image of the bucolic simplicity that would appeal to anyone seeking a respite from "the Great White Way."

Charles Sheeler
(American, 1883-1965)
Bucks County Barn
1932
Oil on board
23 7/8 x 29 7/8" (60.6 x 75.9 cm)
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1935

 

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
White Barn, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
1914-17
Gelatin silver print
7 5/8 x 9 11/16" (19.4 x 24.6 cm)
MOMA, Anonymous gift, 1941

Sheeler's earlier photograph, White Barn, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has the opposite effect. Rather than calming the spirits of a jaded urbanite, it displays a top-to-bottom expanse of panel and plaster wall, a barrier to both understanding and pleasure. There is no skyline visible in the photo, no sense of depth or "elbow room." Without any recognizable details, viewers are at a loss as to what Sheeler photographed. Only a very close study reveals that the v-shaped object under the window shutters at the bottom of the photo are the tail-feathers of a chicken investigating a small pile of hay. This is realism of a type but hardly "Precisionism."

Sheeler's White Barn shares an element in common with Hopper's House by the Railroad. The buildings in both pictures are isolated from their surroundings. This is particularly the case of Hopper's painting, where the railroad tracks in the foreground dramatically cut the Victorian mansion away from its foundation. House by the Railroad appears to be in process of being moved to a new site and, indeed, it has been - away from the mainstream of modern life.

Hopper's House by the Railroad and Sheeler's Bucks County barns are cut-off from all human contact. There is not a person in sight. It is an element that these works share with the majority of the other paintings and photos on display. It is easy to read into these works that the absence of human protagonists is a sign of the alienation of the artists from the soulless, urban environment of modern America. Too easy.

Charles Sheeler
(American, 1883-1965)
American Landscape
1930
Oil on canvas
24 x 31" (61 x 78.8 cm)
MOMA, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1934

 

Sheeler's American Landscape traced its origin to publicity photos of the Ford Motor Company plant in River Rouge, Michigan. Sheeler was contracted by Ford to take the photographs in 1927. But he was so impressed by what he saw that his comments sound as though they were written for him by Henry Ford himself.

"Our factories," Sheeler wrote, "are our substitute for religious expression."

With Hopper, we are on more uncertain ground when the issues of human sensibility are considered. Hopper described his paintings as reflecting "the loneliness of a big city." Whether the people in Hopper's paintings were lonely too is hard to say. Hopper was a political conservative and a bit of a crank. He was tight-lipped when it came to discussing his work. In the case of the woman bending over in Night Windows with only her behind visible, that just might be a private joke of Hopper's on opinionated art critics.

Hopper's etchings are a different matter. Hopper was the greatest American practitioner of etching during the twentieth century and he did not disguise his feelings in these striking works. When we see forlorn figures hunched next to the wall of dilapidated building, we don't really need to read the etching's title, The Lonely House, to comprehend the inner turmoil of these people. Likewise, the overhead view of a man trudging down a deserted street in Night Shadows is an indelible image of human "aloneness."

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967)
Night Shadows
1921, published December 1924
Etching
plate: 6 15/16 x 8 1/8" (17.6 x 20.7 cm); sheet: 9 7/16 x 11 1/4" (24 x 28.6 cm)
Publisher: The New Republic, New York
Printer: Peter Platt, New York
Edition: approximately 500
MOMA, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1940

Comparisons between Hopper's etchings and those of Rembrandt are hard to resist. Hopper's skill in this medium was of the highest order, which makes his decision to cease printmaking after 1923 a cause for regret. But unlike Rembrandt's etchings, there are no images of Christ blessing the multitudes in Hopper's prints. There is nothing reassuring in the plight of these solitary souls adrift in the modern city. Hopper had exhausted the potential of etchings to portray the "quiet desperation" of humanity, so curtailing his production of prints was perhaps a wise choice after all.

The crisis - or rather collapse - of religious values in the American urban centers extended to the towns and cities of the nation's heartland. Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) came from an Ohio clergy family but dissatisfaction with conventional religious practice led him to reject his Christian faith. Instead, he was motivated to invest his scenes of nature with a numinous, magical power. After he returned from military service in World War I, Burchfield shifted to paintings of dilapidated mill towns and deserted street scenes. His work, realist in technique, proclaimed "after the fall."

Charles Burchfield (American, 1893-1967)
Rogues' Gallery
1916
Watercolor and pencil on paper
13 7/8 x 19 7/8" (35.2 x 50.6 cm)
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1935

Later, during the 1940's, Burchfield reverted to the symbolism and mysticism of his breakthrough years, 1916-1917. His redirected quest for meaning is readily apparent in his 1916 painting, Rogues' Gallery. Here the silhouettes of steep-roofed farm buildings point toward heaven while ripening sunflowers twist, turn and ultimately sag in surrender to gravity and mortality.

The focusing and refocusing of technique and style, Abstract art to Realism and back again, was characteristic of American art before World War II. The "invasion" of European émigrés, artists and writers, during the late 1930's and 1940's, gave a decisive impetus to the rise of Abstract Expressionism after 1945. "Ab-Ex" as practiced by the New York School was hailed as the definitive American art of the twentieth century. But its triumph was short-lived. Realism, especially when invested with the psychological insight of the best of Hopper's work and that of Andrew Wyeth, was simply too valid a form of artistic expression to simply surrender the field to Abstract art.

Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917-2009)
Christina's World1948
Tempera on panel
32 1/4 x 47 3/4" (81.9 x 121.3 cm)
MOMA, Purchase, 1949

  

When we see Wyeth's Christina's World in company with its fore-runners, the significance of this hugely popular work is powerfully reinforced. The crippled woman in Wyeth's painting is dragging herself up the slope to a somber, solitary dwelling. It is Hopper's House by the Railroad and The Lonely House, Sheeler's Bucks County barns and the Great Plains shack in a Dorothea Lange photo also on view.
Wyeth's Christina is clawing her way Home - a very real place in the "American Scene," be it ever so humble.

***

Images courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved

Introductory Image: Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967) House by the Railroad 1925
oil on canvas 24 x 29" (61 x 73.7 cm MOMA Given anonymously, 1930