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


 

Art Eyewitness Review: Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929:

When Art Danced with Music

National Gallery of Art  Washington D.C., May 12 - October 6, 2013

  -

Reviewed by Ed Voves

"Astound me!"

This was the bold, imperious command that Serge Diaghilev gave to the composers, choreographers, dancers and designers of his fabled dance company, the Ballets Russes.

Between 1909 and 1929, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes did exactly that - they astonished audiences in Europe, the United States and Latin America. The world of dance was liberated from rigid and arbitrary traditions reaching back to the seventeenth century and the era of modern ballet was born.

A spectacular multimedia exhibition detailing this amazing chapter of Modernism is appearing at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929: When Art Danced with Music features 140 works of art. These are brilliantly coordinated with film clips of modern revivals of Ballets Russes productions. Original costumes and set designs, vintage posters and photographs and paintings and sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin tell the story of such legendary ballets as Petrushka, The Afternoon of a Faun and Rite of Spring.

The Diaghilev exhibit, extended to run to October 6, 2013, was first presented by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010. The V&A has one of the richest collections of Ballets Russes art and artifacts. This is particularly the case of the company's ballet costumes, the star exhibits of this splendid museum presentation.

Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) conceived his mission as promoting the entire range of Russian culture in the West. His first ventures were music-only programs in 1907 and 1908, along with exhibitions of Russian art which he also curated. Ballet would come later.

 

Aleksandr Golovin
Costume worn by Fyodor Chaliapin in the title role in the Coronation Scene from Boris Godunov, c.1908silk and metal thread, glass beads, "essence d'orient" pearls, metal, painted silk lining, replacement fur

200 x 165 x 70 cm (78 3/4 x 64 15/16 x 27 9/16 in.)

V&A, London

Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

 

The exhibition begins with a particularly striking example of stage apparel, the sumptuous coronation robe worn by Fyodor Chaliapin in the opera, Boris Godunov, in 1908. Boris Godunov created a sensation in Paris. But opera was expensive to mount. In March 1909, the Tsarist government ceased all financial support for Diaghilev. Liberal in his political views and impetuous in management style, Diaghilev had created numerous enemies in Russian court circles.

The decision to cut funding for Diaghilev's cultural initiatives, however, was an appalling blunder. Diaghilev, almost single-handedly, had reversed the humiliations suffered by Russia in 1905 with its military defeat by Japan and the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of starving workers outside the Tsar's own palace in St. Petersburg. In less than three years, Diaghilev's public relations triumphs in Western Europe, notably in Paris, had begun to make these self-inflicted wounds seem far less serious than they actually were.

Diaghilev stunned his opponents in the Russian court by proceeding to Paris with an exclusively ballet program in 1909. This was the first "season" of the Ballets Russes, which did not become an independent company until 1911, when the Tsarist regime compounded its stupidity by formally dismissing Diaghilev from the Imperial Ballet. During 1909, Diaghilev employed dancers on summer leave from the Imperial Ballet and used existing musical scores to achieve a cultural breakthrough of immense proportions.

 

Valentin Serov
Anna Pavlova from Les Sylphides, poster for the first Russian season, 1909

color lithograph framed:

 256.2 x 201.5 cm (100 7/8 x 79 5/16 in.)9 

V&A, London

           

Diaghilev insisted that quality was paramount in every aspect of production, the dance costumes especially. As a result, cost over-runs shadowed the 1909 season with financial ruin. But the magnificent productions of Les Sylphides and the dance of the Polovtsian warriors from Prince Igor left so many "astounded" that nobody seemed to notice the red ink on the financial ledgers.

There was a "smoke and mirrors" aspect to the Ballets Russes that is apparent when one closely examines the ballet costumes in the exhibition.

When you first enter the galleries and scan the costumes from a distance, the effect is breathtaking. This is not unlike the visual effect of attending a performance, though nothing could ever replicate the experience of seeing the Ballets Russes in person. Detailed study of the costumes, however, can be a bit of a let-down when, for instance, you see the abrasions on the sleeves of the Renaissance-style doublet worn by Vaslav Nijinsky in Giselle.

These costumes were working clothes, as Sarah Woodcock makes clear in the insightful chapter on the Ballets Russes wardrobe in the catalog to the exhibition. They were created for moving, dancing, leaping performers - not static display in a museum exhibit.

It's a miracle that any of them have survived at all. Used and reused, very few costumes from the first seasons of the Ballets Russes have been preserved. The classic full-skirted tutu on display from Les Sylphides is from the 1916 season, when the Ballets Russes toured the United States, not the original 1909 season. It owes its preservation to the British ballet historian, Cyril Beaumont, who had received it as a gift from Lydia Lopokova, the ballerina who danced in it in 1916

Alexandre Benois
Costume worn by Lydia Lopokova as a Sylph from Les Sylphides, c. 1916

silk and cotton net, with metal armature for the wings
overall: 152 x 85 x 80 cm (59 13/16 x 33 7/16 x 31 1/2 in.)
V&A, London, Cyril Beaumont Bequest
Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Once the reality - the working lives - of these costumes is accepted, then their status as art objects can be appreciated. Diaghilev employed the premier artists of the early twentieth century to create the magical allure or contemporary ambience he sought, depending on the ballet's theme.

Only the best was good enough for Diaghilev. Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst, Nicholas Roerich, Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel, among others, brought unique insights and talents to their collaboration with Diaghilev. They invariably created the effect that Diaghilev wanted -and expected. Whether it was the romanticism of Benois in Les Sylphides, Bakst's sensuality in Scheherazade, Roerich's vibrant evocation of ancient Russia in Rite of Spring, or the hyper-realism of Chanel's "collection" for The Blue Train, the costume and set designs were indisputable works of art.

The transition from costume design to Ballets Russes performance is readily apparent in items on display from The Spirit of the Rose. Léon Bakst designed the ethereal, enchanting costume worn by Vaslav Nijinsky to evoke the fragrance of  a rose brought back by a young girl from her first dance. From the photo of Nijinsky in 1911, we can see that Bakst succeeded. But the costume, fragile by its very nature, was worn to shreds.

 

 Léon Bakst
Costume design for Vaslav Nijinsky as the Rose from The Spirit of the Rose, 1911

graphite, watercolor and silver paint on machine-made laid paper
39.5 x 25.8 cm (15 9/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Ella Gallup Sumner & Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund

      

 

 Auguste Bert

Vaslav Nijinsky in The Spirit of the Rose, 1911
gelatin silver print
framed: 56.7 x 41.5 cm (22 5/16 x 16 5/16 in.)
V&A, London, Gift of Richard Buckle and Annette Page

     

According to ballet legend, Nijinsky's servant made a small fortune selling silk petals from the costume to fans of the great ballet star. The example on view dates from 1922 when it was worn in a post-war revival by Stanislas Idzikowski, also a great dancer of Polish-descent - but no Nijinsky.

 

 

Léon Bakst
Costume for the Rose from The Spirit of the Rose, designed in 1911, fabricated 1922

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The J. Herbert Callister Fund, the Florence Paull Berger Fund, the Costume & Textile Purchase Fund 

The Ballets Russes produced a revolution in movement. One of the less striking objects in the exhibition provides insight into the tremendous concentration that went into the planning and preparation for the Ballets Russes programs. This is series of sketches, by Valentine Hugo, of Nijinsky performing in Petrushka. Each of these scenes had to be meticulously choreographed, rigorously practiced and executed to perfection. The sets evoked the atmosphere of a winter festival in old Russia, as did the costumes. These, however, had to be designed to permit the necessary mobility of the modern-style dance movements that the Ballets Russes pioneered.

 

 

Valentine Hugo
Vaslav Nijinsky in title role from Petrushka, 1911

pencil on paper
41.5 x 56.7 cm (16 5/16 x 22 5/16 in.)
V&A, London, Gift of Jean Hugo

 

Diaghilev possessed an intuitive grasp of popular taste that complemented his absolute dedication to perfection. He was well aware that throughout the nineteenth century, Europe had repeatedly embraced cultural imports from all points of the compass as an antidote to bourgeois conventionality. Diaghilev realized that if he could find a way to make the "primitive" aspects of Russia's Slavic heritage appeal to the European appetite for the exotic, the finances of the Ballets Russes would leap into the profit column.

Sets, costumes and dance needed one final component to achieve that goal. Music - original scores by hand-picked composers - was the final ingredient in Diaghilev's recipe for success. Earlier in his career, Diaghilev had worked with the great Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who was also an ardent Russian nationalist. One of Rimsky-Korsakov's protégés was a student of Russian folk music, as well as a gifted young composer. Igor Stravinsky and the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev - The Firebird, Petrushka and Rite of Spring- gave the Ballets Russes the kind of music that would make Russia's ancient, mythic past come alive for audiences in the West.

  

 

Pablo Picasso
Igor Stravinsky, Paris, December 31, 1920

pencil on paper
34.29 23.5 cm (13 1/2 9 1/4 in.)framed: 58.42 48.26 4.76 cm (23 19 1 7/8 in.)
Private collection

 

Thanks to the exhibition’s incorporation of film clips of modern revivals of Ballets Russes classics, we are able to grasp why ballet enthusiasts applauded Firebird and Petrushka and why Rite of Spring created such a furor. This succès de scandale evidently did not surprise Diaghilev, but Rite of Spring has not lost its capacity to shock a century after it was first performed.

Rite of Spring depicts the sacrificial death of a young maiden in pre-Christian Russia. It premiered in Paris on May 29, 1913, detonating a riot in the theater and endless theories on why audiences reacted with such violent emotion. Was it an uncharacteristic misstep by Diaghilev who miscalculated the degree of avant-garde experimentation that audiences were willing to accept? Or did Rite of Spring touch a raw nerve among people who were aware of the approach of war and the sacrifice of a generation of young men in equally senseless slaughter?

There may be no such thing as bad publicity, but the inordinate attention given to Rite of Spring and the personal estrangement between Diaghilev and Nijinsky has obscured the trials and tribulations that haunted the Ballets Russes in its post-Rite of Spring seasons.

Rite of Spring set the tone for the Ballets Russes as the well-spring of cultural innovation. Ballets Russes productions were expected to blaze new trails. But a very descriptive chart in the exhibition catalog details the premieres and closing performances of Ballets Russes productions. Despite great expectations, many of the later ballets had very short runs.

 



 

Diaghilev and John Brown, New York, 1916photograph by Bain News Service
10.16 15.24 cm (4 6 in.)
Collection of Ms. Anna and Mr. Leonid Winestein

 

There was no discernible pattern to this. Diaghilev, aware of the widespread yearning for a return to classicism following the First World War, staged one of the great works of the nineteenth century Imperial Ballet, The Sleeping Princess, in 1921. The music was by Tchaikovsky, reworked by Stravinsky, and Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava, updated the choreography. The costumes by Léon Bakst were among the most stunning ever worn by Ballets Russes dancers, who were at the top of their form for this ballet. The premiere was set for London in November 1921, perfectly timed for the holiday season. Yet, The Sleeping Princess was a disaster. The production received mixed reviews and ballet enthusiasts failed to appear. Diaghilev, bankrupt and humiliated, left England with the sets and costumes impounded by his creditors.

 

One of the most notable features of this great exhibition is the almost complete absence of personal effects from Diaghilev himself. A virtual exile from the nation he loved – before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 – Diaghilev had no home to call his own. He lived in a succession of hotels, whether the Ballets Russes was touring or not. Even Diaghilev’s last resting place was not his own. His funeral and burial in Venice in 1929 was paid for by his friends, including Coco Chanel.

 

Diaghilev’s legacy is a different matter. Not only did he succeed in his self-appointed task of raising the appreciation of Russian culture throughout the world, but he was a patron and champion of artists, musicians, dancers and writers in the formative stages of the rise of Modernism. Picasso, Matisse, Stravinsky, Cocteau are but a few of the great figures of twentieth century culture who received career-sustaining support from Diaghilev.

 

Gazing on the wonderful treasures on view in Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, one is reminded of the Latin inscription on the memorial to Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The words are singularly appropriate to Serge Diaghilev as well:

 

Reader, if you seek his memorial – look around you.

 

Images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Introductory Image: Léon Bakst, Russian, 1866–1924, Costume design for Vaslav Nijinsky as the Faun from The Afternoon of a Faun, 1912, graphite, tempera, and gold paint on paper, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund

 

Text copyright of Ed Voves