Marsden Hartley Retrospective at Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe

Written by Steve Weatherspoon Saturday, 20 November 2010 16:48

Santa Fe, NM— The work of Marsden Hartley—modernist painter, poet, critic, and artistic rebel is featured in two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.  Marsden Hartley : American Modern is a traveling retrospective exhibition from the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota and curated by Patricia McDonnell, Chief Curator of the Tacoma Art Museum.  Hartley’s New Mexico, curated by the Museum of Fine Art’s Joseph Traugott, explores the artistic context that Hartley discovered in New Mexico from 1918-1919 when he worked first in Taos, and then in Santa Fe.  The shows run through September 3, 2006.

Marsden Hartley was at the center of the artistic and cultural vortex known today as American modernism.  Many recognize Hartley as a leading artist from the period, hailed by Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes as “the most brilliantly gifted of the early generation of American modernists.”  He was a core member of the circle around photographer and impresario Alfred Stieglitz in New York City, a group that also included painters Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographer Paul Strand.

Hartley lived from 1877 to 1943. In that period, two world wars were fought, and American society shifted from a rural to an urban focus.  Americans benefited from a gradual lessening of restrictive Victorian social conventions and watched as inventors and industry made exciting technological breakthroughs.  The many shifts Hartley made in his art reveal his persistent effort to stay abreast of change, to come to terms with the dynamics of his world, and to forge his own contribution to it. 

During Hartley’s time, to be new meant to be modern—and to be modern meant taking part in the vibrant and vital changes afoot in the world.  Hartley joined a generation of radicals who shook off the weight of convention and tradition.  Although trained in the art academy, he chafed at formulas that valued tradition over innovation.  He worked to develop an original artistic voice.  “[Art] can come only out of the burning desire to be oneself,” he asserted.

Marsden Hartley: American Modern is a retrospective exhibition culled from the artist’s own estate, now in the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum.  This Minneapolis museum holds the largest collection of the artist’s work that is now on national museum tour.  Over fifty paintings and two sculptures that date from between 1908 and 1941 is on display.

Hartley’s New Mexico, a smaller exhibition, runs concurrently and presents a larger cultural context for understanding Hartley’s essays on Native American art.  His observations of Native dance rituals in New Mexico led him to conclude that mainstream America lacked rituals that encompassed a unique American aesthetic.  He proposed that Pueblo Indian dance rituals offered models for its development.  Hartley summarized these ideas succinctly when he said, “I am an American discovering America [in New Mexico].”

Hartley’s 1919 oil painting, El Santo, from the Museum of Fine Arts collection, typifies the work he produced in New Mexico. Paintings, prints, and sculptures by Gustave Baumann, Robert Henri, Louise Crow, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Maria Martinez, John Sloan, and Awa Tsireh provide a context for understanding El Santo. These works reveal the spirited discussions about modern art and Native American dance that took place in Santa Fe during Hartley’s visit in 1918 and 1919.

Hartley’s New Mexico will feature eight paintings and one sculpture. Hartley’s essays are also available to the press for further research through the Public Relations office.  Marsden Hartley: American Modern is organized by the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1917 as the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico. Housed in a spectacular Pueblo Revival building designed by I. H. and William M. Rapp, it was based on their New Mexico building at the Panama-California Exposition (1915). The museum's architecture inaugurated what has come to be known as "Santa Fe Style." For more than 85 years the Museum has collected and exhibited work by leading artists from New Mexico and elsewhere. This tradition continues today with a wide-array of exhibitions with work from the world’s leading artists.

Visit : www.mfasantafe.org