The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum to exhibit " Modernists in New Mexico " |
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| Sunday, 11 January 2009 01:16 |
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“It is very fitting that the Museum displays these magnificent works while the entire state is celebrating Santa Fe ’s 400th anniversary,” stated Barbara Buhler Lynes , Curator, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Emily Fisher Landau Director, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center. “And, we are especially delighted to have several of these works in our collection, not only because of their inherent significance, but also because they greatly enhance our ability to fulfill one of the Museum’s fundamental objectives: to organize exhibitions of O’Keeffe’s contemporaries that shed light on the history of American Modernism, a phenomenon that began in America in the 1890s and continues into the present.” In 1916, the painter Robert Henri left New York for the first of three visits to Santa Fe in search of new artistic inspiration. He did so at a pivotal moment in the early history of American Modernism, during the Great War and amid the aftermath of the sensational Armory Show in New York , when many of his compatriots were responding inventively to the aesthetic challenge posed by the European avant-garde. Captivated by the beautiful, unfamiliar western places and peoples of New Mexico , Henri encouraged two close friends and colleagues, George Bellows and John Sloan, to follow his lead. Before long, many American Modernists had trekked to New Mexico as well, including Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Edward Hopper. Some visited only once or stayed for just a short time, while others, notably O’Keeffe and Sloan, became longtime residents; for all of these American Modernists, though, visiting and picturing New Mexico became an artistic rite of passage of sorts – a catalyst for aesthetic reinvention.  Some of the pictures in the exhibition clearly represent specific people and sites, as in Robert Henri’s Julianita, 1922, John Sloan’s La Cienega (1923), and two paintings of the Santuario de Chimayó by George Bellows (1917) and Joseph Bakos (1935), respectively. Other works evoke New Mexico in a more general way, as in Andrew Dasburg’s Mountain Landscape, 1923, and Thomas Hart Benton’s Train on the Desert (1926 or 1927). Still others – such as Stuart Davis’s Interior, New Mexico (1923), Raymond Jonson’s Oil No. 5 (1940), and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Place IV (1944) – approach particular people and places with an abstracting vision so personal as to transform the subject into a vehicle of private expression and formal experimentation. In every case, though, New Mexico provided the artist with a distinctive creative point of departure – a compelling array of subjects, forms, and colors – that revitalized the creative process. Regardless of an artist’s particular style then, the Modernist approach revealed New Mexico ’s essential beauty. Modernists in New Mexico: Works from a Private Collection was organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. This exhibition was made possible in part by a generous grant from The Burnett Foundation. Additional support for this exhibition and for related programs has been received from The Kerr Foundation, the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and 1% Lodgers’ Tax, New Mexico Tourism Department, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum at : http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/home.aspx Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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