Okay.
All right, let's go ahead and get started,
an official welcome to
everybody joining us today,
our friends, to our art enthusiasts,
to museum dedicated audience members.
Thank you for joining us
today for our webinar series,
it's actually the final
program in our summer series,
but we wisely scheduled it
for the beginning of the fall,
so it would be kind of
out there and advertise.
So today's topic is from social
realism to photo realism,
post 1945 highlights
from the Palmer Bequest.
And Joyce Robinson,
our assistant director,
well, we are looking
forward to having you here,
and talking on this subject today.
So I'm excited to hear as well.
Before we get started, I
do want to share with you,
I'm Brandi Breslin, if
you haven't met me yet,
I'm the museum educator,
and I am compelled to share
with you some upcoming programs.
So we do have our fall program
series is set, here we go.
And so I wanted to share with you,
I will go through quickly,
I promise I won't take
too much time on these.
We have some virtual tours
that I wanted to make sure,
you know about because the
museum is scheduled to reopen,
in early January, but you
can still connect remotely,
and virtually one way is
through these virtual tours.
If you haven't gone through and
experienced any of them yet,
they are self directed, interactive tours,
that feature a selection of
artwork, with video tour guides,
so to speak, and you can
explore at your own pace,
you can watch a little bit,
come back, watch some later.
There's also text, there's large images.
It certainly doesn't
replace visiting in person,
but it comes in a great second.
So and for those of you
in Colorado or beyond too,
that's a great access point for you.
So we have these three different
tours available right now.
During the program, probably near the end,
I'll put the access links
for you in the chat box,
so go ahead and look for those.
We have two that are
geared really towards,
university students that
maybe for upper level,
secondary students, and then
one that's kind of geared more,
towards the elementary,
middle school, K-12 students,
so do check those out.
I also wanted to let you know,
if you happen to be a faculty
member joining us today,
that we are making available
this sort of opportunity,
for classes that are meeting,
via remote synchronous Zoom classes.
If you are accustomed
to coming to the museum,
you still can get this into
your schedule, just contact me,
email me and let me know
that you're looking for this.
And we will show up in your class Zoom,
and sort of present this
introduction to the Palmer,
with sort of wide variety
of the collections,
some selected works to talk
about, discuss, in more depth.
So hopefully some of you might add that,
to your syllabus still.
And I did wanna let you know also about,
our popular summer series of videos,
the museum sketchbook series
will be continuing in the fall,
coming sort of mid to late September.
It's going to shift to be
called online art club,
and the videos will remain
very similar where people can,
participate in them at their
own levels, no matter what age
or artistic skill level,
you'll be able to participate,
but our live online
events connected to that,
will be for children and families.
So that'll be exciting, so look
for more information on that
as they start happening,
and as those live online
events get scheduled.
I also wanted to let you
know that our webinar series,
continues this sort of
virtual talk solution for us.
During the fall, we're
going to shift those,
more into a conversation mode,
instead of the presentation mode.
So do join us for these,
we'll be pairing museum staff,
graduate students, and
even undergraduate interns,
for more conversation style discussion.
And the theme of this series is around,
inner workings of the museum,
so behind the scenes, so to speak.
And you can see the variety of programs,
we have planned already,
we do have the access links available.
And again, I will put in the chat box,
a link for you to get all of
these individual links as well.
So do plan on joining
us for more of these,
and you will note that
the times have changed.
They're no longer scheduled
for Friday's around noon,
but we're looking for a later afternoon,
to early evening time
period to kind of try out,
some of those different times.
All right, so we're getting
back to our talk at hand,
as I stopped sharing and Joyce
sets her PowerPoint to share,
I just want to remind you
that I will be monitoring,
the chat box during Joyce's talk.
So if you have a question that comes up,
maybe she advanced the
slide and you didn't get,
a good look at something,
put it in the chat box,
and I will stop her for you to address it.
But for the most part,
we're gonna save questions,
and conversation to the end
where I can activate your audio,
and you can participate and
ask that question directly.
So it looks like Joyce is all
set, and without further ado,
I'll go ahead and turn
it over to you, Joyce,
thanks so much for joining us today.
- Thanks, Brandi.
It's so nice to be here
in my own living room,
talking to you all.
What a funny time I of course
wish we could be together,
in the museum talking about
these wonderful works,
but then we wouldn't have our
Colorado contingent with us.
So there are certainly
some bright sides to this,
but I do look forward to the time soon,
when we can all be back
together and enjoy these works.
And today we're going to be looking,
at I'm gonna focus on nine works.
You can see so I know
I've got a lot to do,
in the time that we have together.
You can see that I'm kind
of in Bradi Bunch Zoom mode,
thinking the way I've
presented them for you.
But you'll see an array of
works here that really do,
kind of cover that period from
social realism sort of 1940s,
up to what I'm calling photo
realism along the bottom.
And we're gonna tease
out what that term means,
in relationship to these
works, but certainly works,
that date much later in the 20th century.
So I do wanna say this is
sort of a reprise of a talk,
that I gave as a pop up talk.
Gosh, I guess it was
last year ago, spring,
2019 we received the Bequest
from James and Barbara Palmer.
We lost Jim nearly two decades ago,
I find that hard to believe 2001,
and we lost Barbara in 2019.
And as I think many of you know,
we received nearly 200 works
of art from the Bequest,
and they are now in the
museum and we have added them,
to our permanent collection of course,
and it's just delightful
to be able to work,
with these wonderful works.
Now, I think many people
when they think of
Jim and Barbara's collection, they think of
notable 19th century American artists,
think of Church and heed cusat.
They also think of Ashcan
realism, Stieglitz modernism,
Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe.
But we also certainly have many works,
that date from postwar from post 1945.
In fact, if you count and
I'm sorry if you're hearing,
my dings from my email, sorry,
I think it will stop soon.
If you count the ceramics that
are part of their collection,
and certainly their
sculpture, a number of pieces,
by Seymour Lipton, over
half the the bequest,
really dates from post war from post 1945.
And today we're gonna be
talking about a variety,
of realisms, again, going
from social realism,
across the top there, the
bottom road photo realism,
and in the middle of
something I'm calling,
kind of nature based modernist realism.
Realism is one of those tricky terms,
it can mean naturalism,
it can mean realism,
in terms of subject matter,
it can mean representational.
So we'll talk about all
those kinds of realisms.
I do wanna point out, though, oops,
I am trying to move forward here.
There we go.
That certainly not
exclusively, the post war work,
is not exclusively made
up a realist works.
In fact, Barbara and Jim,
were great champions of abstraction.
And this is just a little
teaser of some of the works,
that are in the collection,
and maybe we'll have a part two
Palmer Bequest and look at
some of the abstract works.
But this amazing, drawing
on the left by Lee Bontecou,
recent acquisitions that Barbara
made by Morris Blackburn,
Judith Rothschild, and I will point out,
the Morton Schamberg
piece there from 1918.
And I'm pointing that out
because Morton Schamberg,
died in the Influenza epidemic of 1918.
I've always taught that to my courses,
I've always mentioned that,
oh, yes, there was a great pandemic.
Wow, I think we all have a bit
more of an understanding now,
of what that means, right?
So back oh, and I will also point out too,
that there are other
kinds of realism involved,
in Barbara and Jim's collection,
now the Palmer Museum of Art Collection.
Certainly, we could talk
about magic realists,
like Paul Cadmus and George Tooker,
but we will save that
too for another episode.
So back to our grid, and
we're gonna start with,
Robert Gwathmey and this
remarkable painting,
for Lullaby in 1945, that
is right now hanging,
in the museum of course we
can't be there to see it.
But we have had it on view recently.
And I think it's interesting
because Gwathmey,
is one of those artists that
is not terribly well known,
at least not today,
it's certainly his name
is not a household name.
But a figure who really had
quite a prominent career,
mid century, considered
himself if he had to
describe himself, he was
very reticent, very humble.
He never dated his paintings,
'cause he thought it was
pretentious (giggles).
But he said, I'm interested
in the human figure,
I'm interested in the human condition.
And one reason I'm showing
photos of all the artists today,
but one reason I'm
showing Gwathmey's photo,
is because there's long been confusion.
It's been thought that he was
an African American artist,
because his subjects
focused almost exclusively,
on Black southern culture,
particularly agriculture.
And it's still confusing,
to historians today,
and it was in fact confusing in his time.
Now, Gwathmey was a White southerner,
he was an eighth generation, Virginian,
he grew up near Richmond.
But he made his way north to study art,
he studied at the Pennsylvania
Academy for four years,
in the late 20s.
And biographers have suggested
that it's when he was in,
Philadelphia that he really
started to become an activist.
In fact, he was part of
a group that approached,
Albert Barnes about
donating money towards,
buying ambulances, for
the Spanish Civil War.
And this kind of politicized
activism is something that,
continued throughout his life.
He met his wife, we'll hear
more about her in just a second,
in Philadelphia at Pefa, but
he also lived in Pittsburgh,
for a time, late 1939 to 42.
And then he and his wife moved
to New York and he went on,
to teach at the Cooper Union
For many years 1942 to 1968.
But he certainly is best
known, as I've said,
for his southern Black
subjects as a White southerner,
he was very intrigued by these themes,
and he is certainly someone
that we would call a social,
(clears throat) pardon me, social realist.
And what we mean by
social realist is that,
there's an interest in trying
to expose social injustices,
to subjects that deal with exploitation,
whether from capitalism, or
racism, or White privilege.
And many of his paintings
feature Black crows,
in reference to Jim Crow's segregation,
they feature barbed wire, again,
I kind of referenced to segregation,
often focused on Black working figures,
he was very much sort
of taken by the notion,
of sharecropping and troubled by,
the economic exploitation
of sharecropping.
And you can see on the right
this remarkable painting,
that's at the Memorial
Art Gallery in Rochester,
called Non-Fiction, where
you see a small girl,
holding a younger sibling.
That same motif repeats
in Hoeing on the left,
which was acquired by the
Carnegie Museum of Art in 1943.
And what a remarkable this Non-Fiction,
what a remarkable painting,
because it has to do with,
minstralcy and the sort of fallacy,
of that kind of performative
culture alongside something,
that he thought was, a much
more heartfelt and meaningful,
kind of aspect of Black culture.
Now, in addition to being from the south,
Robert Gwathmey was able to get,
a Julius Rosenwald fellowship in 1944.
This was a fellowship
using Julius Rosenwald,
as part of the Sears Roebuck enterprise,
funded a number of programs and schools,
throughout the south,
particularly funded Black writers,
and artists but also
funded White southerners,
who were interested in sort
of reckoning, if you will,
with the south and the racial situation,
in the southern these years.
As I mentioned, Robert
married his wife Rosalie,
when they were in Philadelphia,
and Rosalie in her own right
was a wonderful photographer,
she went on to be a member,
of the photo league.
After they moved to New
York, she donated her photos,
many of them to the New
York Public Library.
And it's interesting to see
these she accompanied him 1944,
with his Rosenwald fellowship,
they went down to North
Carolina, and spent the summer,
working on a tobacco farm
because Gwathmey felt like,
he certainly needed to
participate in this life,
if he was going to depict it.
In terms of stylistic
influences, you can see that,
he was and certainly we would
put him in the modernist camp,
He was always interested in that sort of,
architectural modernist structure.
And you notice this sort of
flattening of the plains,
the compartmentalized colors.
He's not particularly
interested in chiaroscuro,
or atmospheric perspective.
So even though it is a realist subject,
or representation subject,
there is this kind of,
modernist approach to the figure.
Here we know he was looking
at artists like George Ruo,
and on the left, you can see the old king,
which he would have certainly seen,
at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
And of course, Ruo all was
looking at stained glass,
as was Gwathmey, and
that same kind of use,
of heavy dark lines
compartmentalizing of color,
you certainly see evidence in Lullaby.
So I just also wanna say
too, that in this picture,
of course, we're not talking
about agricultural work,
we're talking about a mother
and child relationship,
and Gwathmey pointed out
that this was for him,
a universal image.
It was less about Black
vernacular culture than it was,
a universal kind of relationship,
and critics at the time,
pointed out the scribbles
on the wall in the back,
saying that, oh, it was
typical of the child,
and typical of the race.
And Gwathmey said,
well, those are actually
my child's drawings from his bedroom wall.
And so he really was thinking about,
the universal import of this.
And this work lullaby was shown, in 1946,
Gwathmey had a major show at
the ACA galleries in New York.
None other than Paul Robson
wrote the introduction,
to the catalog and actually
singled out Lullaby,
noting that it revealed
the beauty and dignity,
of the southern negro.
This was an important time for Gwathmey,
Lullaby also went on to win a prize.
The Pepsi Cola I think
competition it was called,
sponsored by so this is a
work that was well known,
at the time it was commented
on at the time as well.
And I will just leave
you with Gwathmey here,
I mean, we'll move on but
I will just point out,
that Rosalie and Robert were
both card carrying members,
of the Communist Party.
And they both were under
surveillance by the FBI,
for 27 years, until 1969.
And according to the FBI files,
the worst thing they could
find to say about him,
was that his most noticeable
characteristic was,
quote, his lack of prejudice of any kind.
So they stopped surveilling (laughs).
And speaking of universal
themes, mother and child,
we move on now to this fantastic collage,
from Romare Bearden,
entitled mother and
child collage on board,
that also was hanging
recently at the museum,
and you see a photo of Bearden there.
And in the background,
I just want you to note,
his grandparents they're gonna
come back in just a minute.
But Bearden spent much of
his life in New York though,
like Gwathmey he was a southerner.
He was born near Charlotte
in North Carolina,
but he is one of these artists
who really is interested,
in both the southern
side and the urban side.
And the the kind of iconic territories,
of the early 20th century
African American experience,
from Charlotte to Greensboro,
to Pittsburgh to Harlem.
All of these locations
certainly appear in his art.
So though he was a
southerner, he ends up living,
much of his life in New York,
and particularly in Harlem.
Now, Bearden undergoes
an interesting, sort of,
not really transformation, but
just an interesting evolution
in terms of style, beginning as a realist,
and kind of coming back
to being a realist.
And so none of these works
are in Our collection,
but I just thought I would give you,
a very quick look at where his work goes.
What really begins as
a social realist 1941,
you've seen this work called Visitation,
two African American women,
but yet the title suggests,
almost a biblical import the Visitation.
1945, he becomes very
interested in sort of,
what he would call universal
human themes, Christian themes,
this is called He Is Arisen.
He too is looking at stained
glass at that time, 1945.
He's also interested in themes
from Homer's Odyssey, etc.
He then comes about 1960 or so 50s really,
to complete abstraction.
And like many Black
artists in this period,
was sort of questioning
what his responsibility was,
in the wake of the civil rights movement.
He's part of a group called
spiral with other Black artists,
who again are interested in abstraction,
but wondering what their
responsibilities are,
to their communities.
And he comes ultimately
back to a kind of realism,
sort of certainly modernist
inflected realism,
but he really becomes a
great champion of collage.
And you see a wonderful
example there in 1964,
the prevalence of ritual baptism,
which is a collage as I mentioned.
So we were very delighted to add this,
I was very delighted to
add this to our collection,
and I should mention too,
that these are all works,
that I have written about in
the gift from the heart catalog
that we did of Barbara and
Jim's collection in 2013.
So these are words that
I've thought about a lot,
0:26:46.000,0:26:49.810
and that I that I know very
well and that I certainly love.
And so, Bearden, as you can
tell from that little survey,
that we just did was
certainly interested again,
in the kind of universal import.
Yes, using the block
subject, but experiences
that are common to all humans.
And one way he sort of felt
like he could further this,
was to look at past art.
And we know that Bearden would
take compositional elements,
from Italian Renaissance paintings,
from Duda French Impressionism
,from Byzantine art,
and he would use those those
compositions, those ideas,
and he would sort of
update them if you will.
And we know or we suspect least I think,
that our collage here
this mother and child,
is based on this icon
of the Virgin and Child.
It's known as the Vladimir
Icon, early 12th century,
was taken to Moscow
and is now in a church,
and I think it's trimarchi.
And this detail over to the
right I'm showing you there,
I know you might think
that that's a very strange,
little detail.
It looks like maternal hair
looks like Madonna's hair,
but it's really, I guess it's
the left arm of the baby,
reaching all the way around.
Everybody's see that, those
little fingers over there.
And you can certainly see that
in Bearden collage as well.
Now, if we compare this
collage to the image,
that we were just looking at,
that prevalence of ritual,
you can see that this is,
he's sort of hesitant,
to fracture these figures,
these sacred figures,
if you will.
But still interested in,
a modern sort of rhythmic,
syncopated, patterned expression,
of this universal subject matter.
I love that stripe of
green that comes across,
just sort of boldly announcing itself.
Also that pattern which sort
of suggests an African source,
but we weren't able to find
a specific source for it,
but it does sort of add
that sort of element to it.
And we know that Bearden
was certainly upfront,
about these kinds of sources.
And in 1945, he wrote
to a friend, he said,
I've tried to learn
the design of pictures,
studying Byzantine painting
and the old Italian primitives,
not to seek surface elements, he said,
but essences to get at the essence,
of this sacred relationship.
And I will just sort of leave this image,
just talking a little bit
about you might notice,
in Bearden's collage that the skin tones,
are not perhaps we might
say stable or fixed.
There's certainly brown
paper that he's using,
there's lighter colored
paper, note the difference,
between the mother skin
and the child's skin.
Also, the child's face is
different from the darker hand,
and the arm reaching across the front.
And I think this has
everything to do with,
Bearden's own experience in the world,
and in his family, he
certainly identified,
as African American was African American,
was very likely skinned, you
can see a picture of him,
up there with his grandfather.
Very light skin, blonde
as a child and he was,
when he was three years old,
walking down the street,
in Charlotte with his
darker skinned father.
He was forcibly taken
away from his father,
because it was assumed
that this was a child,
that couldn't possibly belong to this man.
And so I think for him,
this has a lot to do with,
his own sort of mixed identities,
not mixed identities he wasn't mixed,
but sort of unstable identity.
And okay kind of the
opposite of Gwathmey perhaps,
I think, at times people
thought that Bearden was White.
And it's interesting, I have
the picture at the bottom up,
because Bearden's friend Ralph
Ellison, the great writer,
once quipped, well, he
really looked more Russian,
and Black he said, and so I
sort of like that in context,
talking about this with
the Byzantine icon.
But it's a gorgeous
work, and certainly one,
that I hope you'll get to see in person.
Our last image along the top
and I know I really have,
to get moving here on is
Confrontation at the Bridge,
by Jacob Lawrence.
And this is a work that
wow 1975, a work that is,
as timely today, as it
was when it was probably,
more so perhaps and when
it was created in 1975.
Jacob Lawrence, like
Bearden's, one of the great
American artists of the 20th century,
you can see he lived 1917 to 2000.
You see photos of him here as a young man,
like Bearden, and he too lived
for many of his early years,
in Harlem in New York,
and you actually see him,
in the lower image there
as part of a student,
at the Harlem community workshops.
For those of you who saw
the Augusta Savage show,
that we had on view, you
might remember that Lawrence,
was really part one of the young artists,
that was very much influenced by her.
He goes on though to
oh, I'm hearing thunder,
I don't know if you all are hearing it.
He goes on though to leave New York,
1970, he was hired as
a visiting professor,
at the University of
Washington in Seattle.
And 1971 became a full professor there,
and went on to teach and have
a long career as a professor,
at the University of Washington.
So this word Confrontation is the Bridge.
It's a wash or an opaque
watercolor, again from 1975.
I'd shown you this work,
this is the migration series,
by a Jacob Lawrence force,
probably the series,
he was best known for.
And what I really want
to point out is that,
this is an artist who was
interested in the Black subject,
but was interested in sort
of historical narratives,
and he often works
sequentially, worked in series,
the migration series that he
created in 1941, 60 panels.
So it's a huge, vast
series that is charting,
this massive demographic
shift of African Americans
from the south to the north to Chicago,
to New York to St. Louis.
This was shown in the early 1940s,
at the Edith Helper gallery in New York,
and it made his reputation and Moma,
and the Phillips collection
both wanted to buy the series,
at the time, and they ultimately decided,
they could both buy it
and so they split it.
I can't remember I think the Philips,
has the odd numbered
ones Moma has the even,
I might have that backwards.
But this is a major major
series, but you can see,
Lawrence's style that is
deceptively simple, right?
It is influenced by, inflected
by, synthetic Cubism.
And it is sort of highly
colorful, highly patterned,
but as I said, sort of deceptively simple,
because what Lawrence is interested in,
is the narrative content,
he wants you to understand that story.
He doesn't want you to get
distracted by chiaroscuro,
or naturalistic light effects,
he wants you to concentrate,
on the essences of this story.
This particular image from 1975
Confrontation of the Bridge,
was actually commissioned,
Lawrence was commissioned,
to create this image in
honor of the Bicentennial,
and it was part of a
larger portfolio of prints.
And you see on the
right, the screen print,
after our original image.
And so I just want everyone to be clear,
the image that Barbara and Jim had,
the image that we now
have is the original wash,
the original idea, and then
a screen print was made.
And sorry, this is the
best shot that I could get,
you could tell him I was on my computer.
But this particular image is
at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
And as I mentioned, certainly
this is a timely image,
scholars have suggested that
well, this must be the 1963,
march on Birmingham when
peaceful protesters,
were met by fire hoses and attack dogs.
Others have suggested,
of course that it is,
the Edmund Pettus Bridge
march that we've just heard,
so much about recently.
And by the way, today
is the 57th anniversary,
of the march on Washington.
And I think it's bigger than that,
I think it is both of
these and it is more,
it is a group of peaceful protesters
who are expressing their discontent,
in a peaceful kind of way.
And who look at that as
snarling canine there,
that cipher of evil of
brutality on the left,
and you just look at the stalwart
strength of these figures,
and certainly it is a moving image.
And I will just remind folks
to with Jacob Lawrence,
there's ladders, there's
trains, there's stairways.
This kind of movement away on the south,
is movement toward something better.
And notice that that bridge, even though,
there is a confrontation, it is ascending,
and this group is going to
be moving to a better place,
(sighs) and we have to believe that.
Okay, so I wanna switch
to that middle rung,
of my Brady Bunch Zoom
(laughs), grouping of works.
And we're gonna talk about three works,
and I'm gonna go through
these fairly quickly,
but just want to show you
these remarkable works.
And when I was working on the
catalog of the collection,
I wrote about these three works together.
So we're looking at John
Marin, Milton Avery,
and Charles Burchfield.
And what I realized when I
was working on these works,
is that they're all three
examples of very, very late works,
by these really remarkable artists.
But in all cases, they are among really,
I think the best works of
these artist's careers.
John Marin, American artist
as you can see there,
on the left, Marin is certainly someone,
who we associate with early
20th century American modernism,
and the circle of artists
around Alfred Stieglitz.
He has his first one man
show in 1910, with Stieglitz.
And really he's quite well
known for the kind of image,
that you see on the left.
These dynamic, syncopated, wonderful,
sort of modernist renderings of the city.
Capturing the dynamism of
the city was particularly,
taken with the Woolworth
Building, the Brooklyn Bridge,
and this downtown district
Manhattan from 1929,
is actually in our collection L two,
this was owned by Barbara.
Barbara and Jim, owned
four works by Marin.
And I neglected to say that
Marin began his earliest work,
when he worked as an
architectural draftsman,
and he was born in 1870.
He counted Whistler among his influences,
and then you look at this
painting on the right, you think,
wow, that's quite a long career.
But there's a kind of scaffolding, right?
The kind of linear scaffolding
I think that informs,
his work, whether it is
downtown district, Manhattan,
or landscape.
Now, we're gonna just take a look quickly,
and these are some pictures
of Marin later in life,
in a wonderful haircut.
And landscape, Marin, though
he was tied to the city,
he also lived much of his time in Maine,
he moved there in 1933,
maintained a house there,
and was particularly drawn
to images of the water,
but also to landscape and
the work on the right,
it's actually on the back,
it's inscribed untitled.
But it has come to be known as landscape,
and you can just make out a
hint of sky, a hint of blue wash
and I should mention too you
that Marin was just a master,
of watercolor hint of blue,
and then is that a mountain?
Is that a hill?
It doesn't really matter, but we can see,
that just at the top,
you have this moment,
where land is meeting the heavens.
And then look at that
mountain side, that hill top,
that foreground, this would
have just a remarkable,
sort of Dionysian frenzy of
applying a watercolor and ink.
Now 1951, Marin was 81 years
old when he is creating this.
And we know scholars have told
us that he was hospitalized,
about this time 1950, 1951 had
a series of hospitalizations,
and he watched a nurse with
a syringe, gave him an idea.
And so pretty sure that in this work,
those ink splatters, that
you see are probably applied,
with a syringe.
And of course, what does it call to mind?
What do you think of, 1951?
Well, we think of abstract expressionism,
we think of Jackson Pollock.
And I'll point out that at this time,
in the 40s and early 50s, Marin
was considered by critics,
to be really one of the most
important American artists,
of his time.
In fact, critic Clement Greenberg in 1942,
said it is quite possible that he is,
the greatest living American painter.
And in 1950, just a year
before this was painted,
Marin was featured at the Venice Biennale,
in the American Pavilion,
alongside Jackson Pollock,
Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky.
And we know that Clement
Greenberg imparred one reason,
he is extolling Marin, is
because it sort of creates,
a national lineage for the
abstract expressionists, right?
Marin would never get
himself completely over,
to abstraction.
It was always about, remaining
representational painting,
what he called, I think, the
big disorder, within the order
of the cosmos and it's
just a splendid example,
by this remarkable octogenarian.
Another very, very late work,
this another watercolor too,
a painting entitled watercolor Butterfly,
and Poppies by Charles Burchfield.
Now, Burchfield is quite
an interesting figure,
another one of these
artists that perhaps is not,
a household name today, but
is someone who certainly was,
an important presence in American art.
But unlike Marin, who spent
much of his time in New York,
and then in Maine, Burchfield
was really much more,
I don't really wanna say
preventual, but he was away,
from the center of the
art world in New York.
He was from Central Ohio,
he had studied at the
Cleveland School of Art.
He graduated there 1916, he
moved to Buffalo in 1921,
worked as a wallpaper designer,
and then ultimately decided,
to try to make his career as an artist,
but spent most of his life really working,
in and around the Buffalo area.
Now, like Bearden it's
sort of fun to look at,
the trajectory of Burchfield's career.
And we're very blessed
that Barbara and Jim,
had these three works in their collection,
and they very wonderfully, beautifully,
show the trajectory of
Burchfield's career.
This splendid photo of inspired modernist,
September Sun and Waterfall
on the left from 1915,
what a glorious work.
In the middle Street Scene,
Sun and Shadow from about 1933.
Burchfield goes through a kind
of American scene painting,
a bit more dark, somber period in the 30s.
Critics have described it
as, like Edward Hopper,
on a rainy day.
And then certainly in his later career,
given over back to kind of the
beauty of nature, landscapes,
some of which are almost sort of cosmic,
in the way they express the
wonders of the natural world.
But I want to talk to you
a little bit more about,
our particular watercolor,
and just to show you here,
a photograph of Burchfield,
taken by a wonderful
photographer, Dwayne Michaels.
This is Burchfield and his
wife in their garden in 1966.
As I mentioned, Burchfield
once he decided,
he left the wallpaper design business,
and decided he was gonna
devote full time to his art.
He and his wife moved to a
new West Seneca, New York,
to a town called Garden Ville.
And basically, they remained there,
for the rest of their lives,
and very much, I think,
delighted in the simple
pleasure of home and garden.
Burchfield wrote to a
friend, not too long,
after moving there and said
how this stretch of land,
has grown into my heart.
I think for many of us, all
of us who are stuck at home,
these days, you know it's been wonderful,
to have these gardens and
backyards where we can spend,
some time sort of thinking about,
things other than the pandemic.
And so this painting is very, very late,
in Burchfield's career,
this watercolor Butterfly,
and Poppies, and you'll notice
the span of dates there,
1950 to 66, this was not
uncommon for Burchfield,
these kind of two period
paintings, he would go back,
and revisit works that
he'd already started.
So clearly, this is a work
that he had started in 1950,
and he decides to finish it in 66.
And I'll point out again,
that Burchfield dies in 1967,
so this just was several
months before he was passing,
I'm sure he passed, we
know that he was getting,
his life and his estate in order.
He established the
Charles Burchfield Center,
at Buffalo State College in 1966.
He also established the
Burchfield Foundation,
so he was getting his life
in order here toward the end.
And we know from an
inscription on the back,
of this watercolor, that this
was a gift to his sister,
Louise, and on the back it is
inscribed given to my sister,
Louise on her birthday, August 9th 1966,
from Bertha, and Charlie.
And I'll just point out to you
these gorgeous butterflies,
and bees that are hovering
around these poppies.
Notice by the way, the
signature at the bottom,
this is Burchfield's monogram, this CEB,
and notice the E becomes
almost like a butterfly,
it's actually based on the
ram horns of his zodiac sign.
But I think if there's a kind
of ascendant V shaped movement
like those butterflies, and
I don't wanna read too much
into it, but when we think
about butterflies and birth,
and renewal, when we think about poppies,
and kind of the sleep of death.
I think Burchfield is pondering
some of these things here,
at the end of his life,
even as he is enjoying,
the sort of lush
sensuality of this summer,
in his own backyard.
All right, we're coming in,
we just have a few more minutes here.
And so I don't wanna
overlook this fantastic,
Late Milton Avery, another
of what I would call,
these kind of nature inspired,
almost abstraction, realist paintings.
This is called Tangerine
Moon and Wine Dark Sea 1959,
or watercolor and oil pastel on paper,
and you're also seeing another work,
from the Palmer collection
two the sort of delightful,
little image of beach birds
scuttling along the shore.
Milton Avery, again, like Burchfield,
another sort of interesting,
almost anomalous figure,
a figure who, early in the 20th
century was greatly admired,
for his modernist, yet very
simple kind of subjects.
But modernist, almost Picasso like,
and particularly matisse like images,
such as picture painter,
which is a work that is in
the Palmer Museum of Art,
has been at Penn State for
quite a long time, from 1945.
Avery is someone who was
very much tied to New York,
and we know that in the 1920s and 30s,
his studio was a favorite gathering place,
a gathering place for
people named Adolf Gottlieb,
and Mark Rothko folks like that.
That was in the 20s and 30s.
What we know too is that
those were friendships,
that were maintained
Milton Avery, friends with,
Gottlieb and Rothko, I'm going
to show you these here we go.
And we know too that all three of them,
were in Provincetown together
at the end of the 50s.
And certainly when we
think about work like,
Tangerine Moon and Wine
Dark Sea, Milton Avery,
we can see that it is very
much bordering on abstraction,
it has a similar kind of
luminous, glowing rectangles,
of a Mark Rothko, a similar bifurcation,
of the composition that Gottlieb has.
So this like Burchfield
and Marin these works,
these late works are, I
think, among the artists best,
and critics have agreed with that.
And they point out to that
there is also a painting in oil,
with the same name 1959,
sorry, this is the best,
reproduction I could find
of it working remotely.
But it's wonderful because
it shows you the inspiration,
for this piece and it basically
Avery was in Provincetown,
he was looking out across the water,
and just quickly read here it
says, "Weeks of wet weather,
have discouraged me, and the day cleared,
the atmosphere was still
oppressive that evening,
I sat on my deck facing Provincetown Bay.
The water was moody wine dark,
which is a reference to Homer.
Across the bay the lights of wellfleet,
were a row of buttons on the horizon.
Suddenly above the lights
appeared a surprising moon,
tangerine in color and
shape, it made magic.
A week later I painted Tangerine
Moon and Wine Dark Sea."
And whether he's referring
to the the painting there,
the canvas or the watercolor,
I don't think it matters I
think just a remarkable very,
I wanna say forward thinking.
But a kind of remarkable
fresh color field painting,
by an artist that we associate,
perhaps with other kinds,
of artwork earlier, modernist artwork.
And I'll just leave you too
with this image with Wolf Kahn,
a contemporary artist
who recently passed away,
who talked about Milton Avery and said,
his light works were the best.
And you see this Wolf Khan also
from the Palmer collection,
there in the upper left
very much, I think indebted,
to the Milton Avery.
So I know I have like five minutes left,
and so I'm just going to give
you a little bit of a taste,
of some of these other works
and perhaps we can have,
a part two and talk about
photo realism a little bit,
in more depth but just wanna talk about,
this remarkable watercolor
called Leslie from 1986.
Leslie number two, by
Chuck Close and instead,
of showing you a photo of Chuck Close,
I'm showing you well there
is a photo on the left.
But I'm showing you one
of his hyper realistic,
photo realist works big
self portrait of 1968,
of a very, very large canvas,
it's now at the Walker Art Center.
And of course, we think of Chuck Close,
as the quintessential photo
realist, who translating,
transferring information from
black and white photographs,
and recreating that sort
of inch by inch by inch,
dividing up that original
image and reading it out.
And then transferring and almost like,
in the sort of old master
wakes, he's using airbrushes,
and things to create
this remarkable illusion.
Now, I think many folks know
that Chuck Close in late 1988,
had a catastrophic event involving
a spinal artery collapse,
which has left him severely paralyzed.
However, he is still able to
paint, but I want to point out,
that the polymer image on the right,
was painted prior to that event.
So this shift towards a
more sort of abstract mode,
but still grid based,
and still portrait based,
happened before this accident.
So he was already moving
in this what we might call,
pixelated direction.
And I'll just point out two
that are watercolor from 1986,
number two, reason it's
number two is because,
same time he was creating this first one,
which clearly is based on
a photograph of Leslie,
who was his wife, no longer his wife,
but she was at the time.
And you can see that he's
working in both modes,
at the same time, almost
still photo realist,
and then this more sort of
abstracted dynamic again,
that's called a pixelated mode.
And what we know too is
that Close is actually,
one reason he's moving in
this direction in this case,
is that he is preparing, he's
thinking about a woodcut,
that is going to be
inspired by this image,
by our watercolor.
And this is a well
traveled little watercolor,
it has been over to Japan,
Chuck sent it ahead to a studio,
where Tinashi Toda, a Japanese printmaker,
could create wood blocks
and help with this color,
wood cut print, which was published by,
Crownpoint Press in 1986.
So I know we're getting
at the end of time,
and oh, I love these
images of Chuck Close.
I'm not really gonna talk too
much about Deborah Birmingham,
other than to say, this
gorgeous, beautiful still life,
that really is a kind
of homage to her father,
Little Sir John, 1994.
And then end too with this
image of Ad Astra by Dan Massad,
who I failed to mention
that Jim and Barbara,
loved to get to know the
contemporary artists,
represented in their collection.
They were great supporters
of Deborah Birmingham,
of Dan Massad, and I'll leave
you with this still life,
which it is a kind of portrait
and we won't go into it,
it's called Ad Astra.
Just a remarkable pastel image
by this wonderful artist,
Dan Massad, and Ad Astra per aspera,
you may know this Latin phrase,
to the stars through adversity.
And I wanted to end on that note,
because we're all living
in this time together.
And we are looking forward,
so Ad Astra to the stars,
through adversity, we'll get beyond this.
And I'm gonna leave you there,
because it's almost one
o'clock and thank you so much,
for for being here.
- Thank you, Joyce, it was wonderful.
So at this point, we'll
be glad to open up,
I didn't see any questions
come into the chat.
Nobody had a chance because it
was so thoroughly enjoyable,
but they are maybe beginning
to have questions come in.
I just closed my chat
inadvertently, sorry everybody.
Here we go.
And I will gladly be able
to open up your audio,
and add you to the conversation
if you have a question,
that you would like to pose.
We're getting a lot of thanks,
thank you, thank you Joyce,
wonderful, I concur.
Any questions out there?
- It was very thorough.
(laughing in unison)
Now, and of course, there's
always so much more to say,
and I've too much to talk
about but I do think,
there's so many avenues we could pursue,
and we'll do it again.
- Right, that's great.
- Some of these other works.
- Please, right?
For the next opportunity to come together,
and look at some of these works,
that you weren't able
to go into depth about.
A question from Linda Gall,
Linda, would you be open
to posing the question?
There it is, I'm going to open up.
There you go, Linda, if
you take yourself off mute,
you should be able to ask your question.
- [Linda] Thank you, Joyce.
This was wonderful, thanks so much.
I was just curious about
some of Bearden's materials,
that he might have used for his collages,
you made reference to paper
when you were talking about,
the mother and child piece.
But is was it all paper
that he used to paint,
the color of the paper himself?
Or I don't know I was just curious
- I think in general, these
are colored papers yes,
essentially all paper that
he's working with here,
but if you give a look
at sort of at the chin,
of the mother that's sort of greenish.
And I'll be honest, we
haven't seen this in a while,
upclose but yeah, I think
he would sometimes paint,
some of the papers, and then
yes, collage them together.
He also would photocopy, some images,
he would tear things out of magazines.
And he would actually use it's
actually called photostat,
he would use those black
and white enlargements.
And he really was, I think,
quite inventive as an artist,
and particularly with collage,
does that answer your question, Linda?
- [Linda] Yes.
- Great.
- All right, nice.
I have another hand raised by Jason,
I'm gonna go ahead and click you on,
if you unmute yourself,
you can ask your question.
- [Jason] Yes, hi.
I have two questions
actually, first of all,
your talk was very
enlightening and terrific,
and I've liked everything you had to say.
But I have a couple of
questions about Bearden.
The first question is who influenced him?
And secondly, why is he not
better known today do you think?
- Oh, interesting.
Well, I do think he's pretty well known,
but I think maybe it is
well there's a larger issue,
of Black artists, I think
being sort of omitted,
from the canonical
narratives historically.
So sorry, I'm just gonna go,
into a little personal thing here.
I became interested in
African American arts,
well into my graduate school studies,
I had never heard of any, honestly,
I did not know any Black
artists from my undergraduate,
artistry courses, not even Jacob Lawrence,
who made it into some survey texts.
And so I think, historically there's been,
these artists have been eclipsed.
I do think Bearden certainly
has come into his own,
there been some major
shows, in recent years.
He studied with George Grosz,
German expressionist artist.
We know certainly everybody
was looking at Picasso,
and particularly synthetic
Cubist Picasso think of Guernica,
and sort of influenced there,
looking at African art,
it was also important
for Jacob Lawrence too.
And yeah, and he was
very much in the circle,
of abstract artists, not
only Black abstract painters,
but White painters as
well and just very much,
sort of interested in what was going on,
in the New York art scene.
So happily I think this is changing,
and if you look at survey
texts of American Art,
you now have figures,
certainly like Jacob Lawrence,
and Bearden and there
should be many others,
but we're starting to know their names.
- [Jason] Thank you.
- Thanks for your question
and participation, Jason.
Anyone else before we wind up for the day?
Any other questions?
I'm not seeing anything else in the chat,
and no hands raised.
- I will say one last thing
that we are hoping to,
not hoping, we are going
to highlight works,
from the Palmer Bequest, in an exhibition,
coming up next summer.
We're calling it an American Place,
Highlights From the Palmer Bequest.
So we will have a chance to see these,
and many, many more wonderful works.
- Definitely look forward to that.
There's the top part two, of course,
if not sooner (giggles).
- Right (laughs).
- All right.
Well, a final thank you to
everyone for joining us today,
and Joyce for leading us
through the lovely discovery,
of some of these works in depth.
So thank you for preparing
and leading us through that.
All right, goodbye everybody,
until we see you next time.
- Thank you.
- [Linda] Bye bye.
- [Jason] Thank you, bye.
- Bye, don't get wet
in the storm (laughs).
