The Amon Carter Museum shows "John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" a Retrospective

Written by Peter Hightower Thursday, 01 December 2011 21:25

Fort Worth, Texas.- The Amon Carter Museum is proud to present "John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" on view at the museum through January 8th 2012. In this special exhibition of over 50 oils and watercolors, Marin’s work from 1933 until his death in 1953 will be on view. Beginning in 1914, Marin drew inspiration from Maine’s forested mountains, picturesque towns, misty harbors and rolling seas; in 1933, he began living part of each year on Cape Split, a remote and sparsely settled northern peninsula in Pleasant Bay."John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" was co-organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine.  Marin grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, and attended the Stevens Institute of Technology for a year. His experience with architecture might have contributed to the role played by architectural themes in his paintings and watercolors. Marin is often credited with influencing the Abstract Expressionists.

He was among the first American artists to make abstract paintings, and his treatment of paint—handling oils almost like watercolors—his forays into abstraction, and his use of evocative stretches of bare canvas caught the eye of younger painters. From 1899 to 1901, Marin attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia he studied with Thomas Pollock Anshutz and William Merritt Chase. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1905 like many American artists Marin went to Europe, initially to Paris. He traveled through Europe for six years. Marin painted in Holland, Belgium, England, and Italy. In Europe he mastered a type of watercolor where he achieved an abstract ambience, almost a pure abstraction with color that ranges from transparency to translucency, accompanied by strong opacities, and linear elements, always with a sense of freedom, which became one of his trademarks. In 1909, Marin held his first one-man exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, 291 in New York City.


The photographer Edward Steichen, whom Marin had met through the painter Arthur B. Carles, introduced him to Stieglitz. Marin’s and Stieglitz’s association would last nearly forty years. Stieglitz’s support, in both philosophical and financial respects, was essential to Marin. From 1909 until his death in 1946, Stieglitz showed Marin's work almost every year in one of his galleries. Marin spent his first summer in Maine in 1914 and, almost immediately, the rocky coast there became one of his favorite subjects. Over the rest of his life, Marin became intimately familiar with the many moods of the sea and sky in Maine. “In painting water make the hand move the way the water moves,” Marin wrote in a 1933 letter to an admirer of his technique. In 1936, he had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. His paintings are represented in several important permanent collections and museums including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and many others. Late in life Marin achieved tremendous prestige as an American painter, an elder statesman of American art.

In 1950, he was honored by the University of Maine and Yale University with honorary degree's of Doctor of Fine Arts. A resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, he died at his summer home in Addison, Maine. In December of 2009, independent filmmaker Michael Maglaras of 217 Films released a feature length documentary about this American master titled “John Marin: Let the Paint be Paint!”


The Amon Carter Museum was established through the generosity of Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955) to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell; to collect, preserve, and exhibit the finest examples of American art; and to serve an educational role through exhibitions, publications, and programs devoted to the study of American art. Designed by Philip Johnson, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. From the beginning, the museum was intended to be a vibrant institution; not only would it house Mr. Carter’s collection of works by Remington and Russell, it would expand to encompass a broader range of American art. The museum began to acquire important works of art in various media–paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and books–by many noted artists working in various styles and depicting a range of subjects and forms. In the 1970s, the museum commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create what would become the groundbreaking body of work In the American West. Other major works acquired for the collection include "Idle Hours" by William Merritt Chase, "Flags on the Waldorf" by Childe Hassam and "Red Cannas" by Georgia O’Keeffe.

On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary the Amon Carter underwent a major expansion. Again designed by Johnson–making the building as a whole a singular example of his work–the museum now has gallery space to accommodate the full breadth of its permanent collection. With its expansive galleries for traveling exhibitions, there are today some 600 works of art on view at any given time. A 160-seat auditorium is available for programs, and the library of 50,000 volumes is the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 microform reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The museum also houses one of the preeminent collections of American photography, and the expansion resulted in climate-controlled vaults (for both cool and cold storage) and a state-of-the-art conservation center, made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.cartermuseum.org

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