Wes Rolley on thu 8 mar 07
I was able to see the show Picasso and American Art
at the San Francisco MOMA on Tuesday. It was very illustrative of the
manner in which Picasso has been an over-bearing influence on American
Artists. It also makes very clear which artists "got it" and which ones
didn't.
I used the term "got it" to differentiate between those who were able to
capture the essence of what was unique about Picasso and those who were
only able to imitate some surface aspects of his design, his technique,
is iconography. When placed side by side, it was clearly evident that
works by Stuart Davis (for example) lacked something. Or, as Pollock
was quoted to have said of Picasso, "That guy missed nothing."
Sadly, the number of top name artists who could live up to Pollock's
description is very small, based on this show. Pollock himself, Andy
Warhol, David Smith. Those who only copied aspects of Picasso without
really absorbing what he was doing include Davis, Max Weber, Roy
Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and a host of lesser knows. John's, in
particular, seems to have entombed Picasso rather than truly connected
to him. Somewhere in the middle were Arshile Gorky, W. de Kooning and
Louise Bourgeois, each capable of excellent work that may have adapted
some aspect of Picasso's work but developed it in terms of their own.
It was even more disappointing to continue on to a lower floor where the
museum offered a retrospective exhibit of the works of Brice Marden
. That the
Picasso exhibit would have been so crowded (waited in line for over 30
min. to get in) and the Marden given so much space was a major case of
misplaced priorities.
--
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough;
We must do. –Leonardo DaVinci
Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024 - http://cagreening.blogspot.com
Vince Pitelka on thu 8 mar 07
> I used the term "got it" to differentiate between those who were able to
> capture the essence of what was unique about Picasso and those who were
> only able to imitate some surface aspects of his design, his technique,
> is iconography. When placed side by side, it was clearly evident that
> works by Stuart Davis (for example) lacked something. Or, as Pollock
> was quoted to have said of Picasso, "That guy missed nothing."
> Sadly, the number of top name artists who could live up to Pollock's
> description is very small, based on this show. Pollock himself, Andy
> Warhol, David Smith. Those who only copied aspects of Picasso without
> really absorbing what he was doing include Davis, Max Weber, Roy
> Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and a host of lesser knows. John's, in
> particular, seems to have entombed Picasso rather than truly connected
> to him.
Oh boy, Wes, I wish I had the time to express the degree to which I DISagree
with what you say above. To discredit Stuart Davis like that is a real
mistake. Have you really looked at a broad spectrum of his work? Remember
that there was almost no significant avant-garde in American art before the
influence of European modernism (specifically cubism) was absorbed. The
primary precedent for American art at the turn of the century was pure
realism, aside from a few who did derivative Impressionism, like Prendergast
and Hassam, and the 19th century visionary painters like Ryder, Blakelock,
and Vedder. The big revolutionaries in American art in the first decade of
the 20th century were Robert Henri and the Ashcan school, doing
expressionistic realism. So, when Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Charles
Sheeler, Elsie Driggs, Louis Lozowick, Georgia Okeef, Arthur Dove, Ralston
Crawford, Max Weber and others incorporated the influence of Cubism in the
1920s and 30s, it was a major revolutionary step for American art, and you
will notice that the work of any one of those artists is not derivative of
any of the others. The degree to which the work is derivative of Picasso
without evolving something original is pretty subjective, depending on the
degree to which you have studied these individual artists and their own
sources.
Curators like to have a strong theme, and they like to have the theme be
controversial, because that's the only way they are going to attract any
real attention in the mainstream art press. That's no indication that
there's any real substance to their theme. In many cases, a curator will
come up with a strong theme, and then skew the research and documentation to
support that theme, regardless of how far-fetched it is. From your
description, this exhibition smells funny.
I guess I had a little more time than I thought.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft, Tennessee Technological University
Smithville TN 37166, 615/597-6801 x111
vpitelka@dtccom.net, wpitelka@tntech.edu
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
http://www.tntech.edu/craftcenter/
| |
|
