Whitney Museum Re-Informs Our Modernist Gaze, Celebrating Artists Who Have Been Under-Represented In Art History Alongside Leading Masters

An imposing determine emerges as a mountain, erupting from the ocean, symbolically marrying humankind and nature. Ocean waves mingle with the skyline, evoking mysticism.

My 12-year-old son, Michael Alexander, was drawn in by the sinewy traces and the ethereal colours of Adele Watson’s Untitled (Mountain Island Monk), declaring it his favourite work within the Whitney Museum of American Artwork’s Daybreak of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism. On view via February 26, 2023, the exhibition options greater than 60 works by greater than 45 artists working throughout kinds and media, together with work, drawings, sculptures, prints, pictures, and woodcuts.

“One of many concepts of the exhibition was to check out this explosion of power that occurred on the flip of the century, this concept that folks have been actually on the daybreak of one thing new, one thing that hadn’t occurred earlier than. They’re rejecting the previous, and there was a way of limitless alternative, limitless prospects. And the work displays that via these vibrant colours and sensual shapes and exploding varieties,” mentioned curator Barbara Haskell.

“The present can be one that enables the Whitney to reassess its assortment and to reassess the interval the present will embrace well-known artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, artists which can be pretty identified to the general public. However it is going to additionally embrace artists who have been equally groundbreaking at that second, however have been largely forgotten, and in some instances have been in storage for many years,” Haskell mentioned within the audio information for the exhibition. “There’s some work within the exhibition that has solely been proven as soon as the whole time we have had it on the museum. And we have additionally been in a position to make use of the exhibition as an event to accumulate new work, to fill within the gaps that also exist.”

Painted circa 1935-1945, Untitled (Mountain Island Monk) was gifted to the Whitney in 2020 by Lydia E. Ringwald. A 1930 exploration of Zion Nationwide Park in Utah impressed Watson’s shift towards anthropomorphism, inspecting human relationships with nature, depicting figures rising from rock formations and faces showing on mountains.

Born in 1873 in Toledo, Ohio, Watson moved in 1880 to Pasadena, California, after her father died. She studied on the Artwork College students League of New York as a younger grownup, and returned to California in 1917, after which traveled to Paris to review with French painter Raphaël Collin and have become pals with Khalil Gibran. Finest often known as the writer of The Prophet, a wildly influential e book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English and translated into over 100 completely different languages, Gibran was additionally a visible artist who painted greater than 700 footage, watercolors, and drawings, together with at the least one graphite on board portrait of Watson.

Gibran’s allegorical writing had a strong influence on Watson, who shared his deep affinity for nature. Studying about Watson solely after her inclusion on this informative and provoking exhibition, I can’t assist however think about that the Mountain Island Monk determine could also be a symbolic homage to Gibran, who turned a towering literary determine additionally thought to be a thinker, a title he eschewed.

I’ve handed a mountain peak and my soul is hovering within the

Firmament of full and unbound freedom;

I’m far, far-off, my companions, and the clouds are

Hiding the hills from my eyes.

From The Fantastic thing about Demise XIV by Khalil Gibran

Michael Alexander and I are grateful to Haskell for introducing us to Watson, who exhibited on the Nationwide Academy of Design, the American Artists Skilled League, the Pen and Brush Membership, and the Society of Unbiased Artists. In 1953, the Pasadena Artwork Institute held a posthumous retrospective of her work, which can be within the assortment of the Orange County Museum of Artwork.

Daybreak of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism additionally encompasses a circa 1916–1925 work by Watson, Untitled (Determine Floating on Lake), a 2021 reward from Ringwald. In Watson’s earlier work, the figures and landscapes have been distinct, but her exploration of symbolism was already a supply of self-examination and enlightenment.

We re-examine artwork historical past via a brand new lens, the place recognizable works by well-known artists akin to Oscar Bluemner, Elie Nadelman, and Charles Burchfield, are displayed alongside works by artists who’ve been grossly under-represented for many years or whose legacies have been relegated to footnotes. We acquire perception into the trailblazing careers of artists akin to Henrietta Shore, Charles Duncan, Yun Gee, Manierre Dawson, Blanche Lazzell, Ben Benn, Isami Doi, and Albert Bloch, who’ve been overlooked of the main narrative.

“One of many concepts of the exhibition was to check out this explosion of power that occurred on the flip of the century, this concept that folks have been actually on the daybreak of one thing new, one thing that hadn’t occurred earlier than,” mentioned Haskell. “They’re rejecting the previous, and there was a way of limitless alternative, limitless prospects. And the work displays that via these vibrant colours and sensual shapes and exploding varieties.”

We’re enthralled by the stark magnificence and intricacy of Aaron Douglas’ woodcuts created as an instance scenes from Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, which premiered in 1920 and was revived in 1925 with Douglas’s good friend Paul Robeson within the title function. The prints exemplify Douglas’ flat, abstracted silhouettes in black and white borrowing from Artwork Deco, folks artwork cutouts, and Egyptian tomb work. Easier variations of those photographs have been revealed alongside Alain Locke’s 1926 article The Negro and the American Stage in Theater Arts Month-to-month and his 1927 e book Performs of Negro Life.

Douglas moved to Harlem from the Midwest in 1925 and rocketed to prominence as a graphic artist of the Harlem Renaissance, designing covers for the 2 high African American magazines and jackets for books by Black writers.

“In some ways, Aaron Douglas was earlier than his time within the telling of African People having a deeper historical past than considered one of enslavement in america,” author and artwork historian LeRonn Brooks mentioned within the audio information.