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A symposium "Defining American Modernism: 1890 - Present" was held at the O'Keeffe Museum July 12-14. The Museum's newly opened Research Center also sponsored an online symposium from October 1-14 titled "The Modern/Postmodern Dialectic: American Art and Culture, 1965-2000." The papers from both the actual and virtual symposium will be published.

 

EYE OF MODERNISM: Review by C. Jill O'Brien

Eye of Modernism
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Curated by Barbara Buhler Lynes
March 23-September 4, 2001


"Eye of Modernism" is made up of 65 works on paper -- watercolors, drawings, pastels, collages -- by 50 artists. The museum brochure states that the exhibition depicts a "range of ideas that have defined the avant-garde in this country from the last decade of the 19th century." But the exhibit also reveals the machismo that continues to rule the art world. 17 of the artworks are by women. Of these, 10 are by Georgia O'Keeffe. Of the 50 artists, 6 are women. I had hoped a museum dedicated to a woman's artwork would have made more of an attempt to even the sexist score. Actual score: less than 1/6th.

A couple of other bothersome features: First, the words avant-garde and Modernism are used interchangeably throughout the wall labels and the brochure pertaining to the exhibition. Second, the Modernist genres with which each artist is associated are clearly marked on the identifying labels, but there is almost non-existent notation of O'Keeffe's possible connection to any of the other exhibited artists, or the reasons that some of these artists were considered avant-garde. After each artist's name, date, media, is the added phrase: Associated with Pop Art, or ...Minimalism, or ...Abstract Expressionism, etc. These "isms" merely represent the institutionalization and categorization of art by reviewers, art historians, and curators. They contribute little to the experience of the drawings, except to convey the realization that these once possibly "avant-garde" artworks were finally mainstreamed into the contemporary academy and art world, rendering them sanctified and legitimated commodities, not avant-garde. A statement by the curator that perhaps the status "avant-garde" is always already historical would have lent some insight into the confusion. Finally however the named genres are antithetical to the notion of the avant-garde, and have nothing to do with the hand of the artist, or the desire of the artist to express something new.

Having stated my objections, please allow me to even the score a bit. First, The O'Keeffe Museum architecture, a string of intimate galleries, lends itself extremely well to an exhibition of drawings. Also, this reviewer has a severe bias toward works on paper. I love them for the same reason that Buhler Lynes chose to exhibit them: they show "an intimate look at a range of ideas [and].... Because such ideas are often most apparent in works in which the hand of the artist is clear, the exhibition is made up entirely of works on paper."

Included in the exhibition are: two of the most powerful Joan Mitchell pastels I have ever seen (both "Untitled," 1959) -- they have an inordinate amount of depth, range of subtle color, energy; a watercolor by O'Keeffe, "Untitled (Portrait of Paul Strand)" (1917), that is full of sexual and psychological vivacity; two very small, largely sublime Agnes Martin drawings (both "Untitled" 1970s, graphite on paper); and Susan Rothenberg's "Untitled" (1984, charcoal) of a figure that is vibrating itself off the paper. (Martin and Rothenberg also live and work in New Mexico.) Other highlights include Arshile Gorky's "Untitled" (1946, crayon and graphite on paper) that is so intimate it seems to place you behind the artist's eyes; and Robert Smithson's "Spiral Hill - White Sand and Peat Blocks, Emmen Holland" (1971, graphite and brown ink on paper) -- although it baffles me that they didn't include a Charles Ross drawing, since his earthwork "Star Axis" (1971- in progress) is being created 70 miles from Santa Fe, or Walter De Maria's "Lightning Field," also in New Mexico.

The museum states that it is dedicated to "both the perpetuation of the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe and to the study of American Modernism." Since the exhibition was arranged chronologically, and included 10 O'Keeffe drawings, it would have been enlightening to have had some historical insight into O'Keeffe's relationship to, and/or feelings about the work of some of the other artists exhibited. For example, at the time when O'Keeffe was beginning to develop her own creative uniqueness, she was very drawn to John Marin's paintings. She first saw them in about 1915 at 291, Stieglitz's New York gallery. She was also drawn to Arthur Dove's work. He was committed to rendering the essence of spirituality in nature. O'Keeffe was heavily influenced by Wassily Kandinsky's essay "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1914), which emphasized accessing a child-like unselfconsciousness, emotion, and spirituality from which to create art. In works such as O'Keeffe's "Pond in the Woods" (1922, pastel on paper) one can see the unique way O'Keeffe assimilated these influences into her own vision. Also significant was O'Keeffe's connection to Paul Strand. There was an initial physical attraction between these two (who met around 1916) excitedly evident in her "Untitled" watercolor portrait of him. But also Strand's photographs would later influence O'Keeffe's sense of composition. And, Paul Strand's wife, Rebecca Salsbury Strand (Beck), was a painter and a long time close friend of O'Keeffe, even though she is purported to have had an affair with Stieglitz. Beck is not represented in the exhibition.

Later, during the 1950's, O'Keeffe's work was upstaged in the New York art scene by painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, and Robert Motherwell, all represented in the exhibition. This reveals more about the art world than it does about O'Keeffe's paintings, then considered out-moded. She had little patience for the fashionable trends of the art market. Even so, her popularity began to return at the end of the 50's. O'Keeffe's abstract watercolors reveal vulnerability and an excited view of the natural world, and are exhibited with the bold expressions of Pollock and De Kooning. Here the exhibition does successfully reveal the broadly differing sensibilities, conceptions, and interpretations of abstraction in 20th-century art that evidence an overall thrust toward creating something new. (The O'Keeffe Museum has created a new Research Center, which offers stipends to scholars examining 20th-century American art.) For further information: www.okeeffemuseum.org.

C. Jill O'Bryan
© 2001, C. Jill O'Bryan

View the one work that the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
granted permission to reproduce.