American Modernist: considered America's first abstract painter
Training: Cornell University
Early Years: Born in New York. 1903-07, illustrator in New York; 1907-09, went to Europe; returns to NYC & begins crucial assoc w/Stieglitz, who showed Dove’s work at 291 in 1910 & in solo exhibition 1912. 1921 separates fr his wife & lived on a house boat w/artist Helen Torr. 1924 they marry & spend their time in close proximity to nature on boat, then Geneva & Long Island, NY.
Influences:
Training: Cornell University
Early Years: Born in New York. 1903-07, illustrator in New York; 1907-09, went to Europe; returns to NYC & begins crucial assoc w/Stieglitz, who showed Dove’s work at 291 in 1910 & in solo exhibition 1912. 1921 separates fr his wife & lived on a house boat w/artist Helen Torr. 1924 they marry & spend their time in close proximity to nature on boat, then Geneva & Long Island, NY.
Influences:
- Matisse & the avant-garde in Paris (1907-9);
- Cubism, Expressionist work of Kandinsky, and by writings of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) who stressed the importance of mystical, rather than analytical, understanding of the world, and insisted on the existence of an elan vital, a spirit of energy that constantly animates all living things. Also inspired by the parallel between visual arts and music.
- Ernest Haekel infl use of archetypical forms of nature as source of abstraction
- Stieglitz who encouraged Dove to develop a truly abstract approach to the landscape. Dove’s relationship w/Stieglitz was very important for the development of an abstract vocabulary in the US
Key Works:
Lobster, 1908, early fauve-influenced.
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue, part II, 1927.
Foghorns, 1929, re: his interest in synesthetia
The Red One, 1944.; Flat Surfaces, 1946 - last major painting.
Lobster, 1908, early fauve-influenced.
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue, part II, 1927.
Foghorns, 1929, re: his interest in synesthetia
The Red One, 1944.; Flat Surfaces, 1946 - last major painting.
Patron: Duncan Phillips (Phillips Collection) paid him a stipend of $50 a month.
Legacy: Of the painters of his generation, Dove most clearly appropriated the abstract languages of European modernist art. Credited with influencing the 1st gen. of Abstract Expressionists (e.g. Pollack & Rothko), who placed similar emphasis on the artist’s subjective experience of his environment & on the intrinsic emotional power of color & line. Considered 1st American artist to have created purely nonrepresentational imagery.
Legacy: Of the painters of his generation, Dove most clearly appropriated the abstract languages of European modernist art. Credited with influencing the 1st gen. of Abstract Expressionists (e.g. Pollack & Rothko), who placed similar emphasis on the artist’s subjective experience of his environment & on the intrinsic emotional power of color & line. Considered 1st American artist to have created purely nonrepresentational imagery.
Nature Symbolized, #2, 1911.
- Small oil pastel, w/limited range of colors (gold, brown, black, blue, green).
- Despite the title, the composition is overtaken by abstracted organic forms, yet no concrete reference to natural world.
- Dove represents nature by abstracting it, as the Cubists & Fauves did, but he remains committed to the tradition of representing depth. There is a clear foreground, middle ground and background.
- stylized, abstract forms at a remarkably early date in American art.
- The heart of Dove's artistic philosophy was the articulation of "essences" that would transmit a sense of the spiritual in nature. These "essences" were biomorphic shapes that represented different kinds of energy or organic growth, suggesting an inner principle of inherent reality. His early abstractions, especially the large pastel paintings on linen such as Nature Symbolized, No. 2, are part of his effort to realize this. (artstory.org)
See Artstory Bio: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-dove-arthur.htm
Regarding Dove and Nature (“essences, elan vital): http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/dove.html
Exhibition Review “Observer”: http://observer.com/1997/11/superb-exhibition-brings-arthur-dove-back-to-life/
Dove, O'Keefe & Freudian Analysis
“Dove is very directly the man in painting, precisely as Georgia O’Keefe is the female; neither type has been known in quite the degree of purity before.”
- Paul Rosenfeld Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), was fascinated by what art could reveal about the human psyche. Following the translation of his essays into English in the 1910s, Freud's ideas infiltrated American culture and informed the pairing of Dove and O'Keeffe in the eyes of art critics. Gender was now seen as a fundamental component in understanding an artist's images, and critics responded to the supposedly "masculine" and "feminine" aspects of Dove's and O'Keeffe's work. These interpretations frustrated O'Keeffe. You can download the brochure accompanying the Dove O’Keefe: Circles of Influence exhibition, (Clark, 2009): http://www.clarkart.edu/exhibitions/dove-okeeffe/content/exhibition-brochure.cfm |