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Sun Feather \u2026 Rose in the Dawn \u2026 Silver Water \u2026 these are titles of three portraits that read like tiny poems. When Joseph Henry Sharp would paint Native American people, he would ask them to dress as if prepared for ceremony. Silver Water, a young woman in profile, has bangs cut thick while the rest of her dark hair is twisted back into a chignon secured with a green band. There is a soft circle of red paint rendered on the apex of her cheek. The deep yellow of her garment harmonizes with the highlights of the tones of her youthful skin, and she is accessorized with colorful jewelry of stone and metal. All three of the women are viewed in profile. This is in contrast to the portraits of the men that hang nearby. Chief Big Nose, Little Whirlwind, and Strikes His Enemy Pretty all face the viewer, though they are turned just enough for the viewer to not have to meet their eyes. These titles, these names, they are positively delightful to ponder. How exactly does a man strike his enemy pretty, and are they laughing at him, or with him, when they call him that? Either way, it\u2019s endearing. Both Strikes His Enemy Pretty and Little Whirlwind are wearing feathered headdresses. In contrast, Chief Big Nose is wearing a pale wide brim hat. Looking at Chief Big Nose I can\u2019t help but think that his nose doesn\u2019t seem unusually big. He does have a look to him that makes him appear as though he is just on the verge of laughing. With a name like Chief Big Nose, he must also have a big sense of humor. Sharp uses color with this portrait more expressively than in the others \u2013 particularly with gentle strokes of cad red where the sun shines on the side of Chief Big Nose\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
The Butler Institute of American Art\u2019s founder Joseph Butler certainly ranks high among the people in this country with a record for preservation of American history. He collected and commissioned the works of a select few European American artists that in the early 20th century undoubtedly appreciated the beauty of the Native American\u2019s culture, and applied their skills to capture the images of the people and practices that they so admired. Sandwiched between the Joseph Sharp portraits is a work by another such painter, A Vision of the Past, painted by Eanger Irving Couse in 1913. A Vision of the Past was purchased directly from the artist by Joseph Butler in 1919.<\/p>\n
In contrast to the documentary nature of Sharps portraits, A Vision of the Past is allegorical. The muted tones nearly camouflage the background which depicts a buffalo hunt. The drawn arrows and animals charging float deftly in the distance, like a cloud of smoke sloping on a low diagonal, beyond the water that separates the lands. Three men stand in the foreground with their backs together forming a generational triangle, and a child at their feet looking back towards the smoke. The two older men are visible in various degrees of profile, while the youngest of the men is facing the viewer. This young man\u2019s expression is beyond words. Couse often employed this particular model, and with this painting it is clear why. His heavy-lidded eyes are so serene. Each time I walk past him his gaze summons from me a different state \u2026 Tuesday it is suffering \u2026 Wednesday sadness \u2026 Thursday peacefulness \u2026 Friday compassion \u2026. He is shirtless and loosely wrapped in a gloomy red blanket. I\u2019ve read that blankets hold sacred meanings to many Native Americans. While looking through the Butler archives I found that the red blanket was a prop that belonged to Couse and it was recurrently referred to in the provenance files as an \u2026 English Blanket.<\/p>\n
You can visit these works on display and more with the Western Collection in the Adler and Susko Galleries on the second floor of the Butler. We hope to see you soon.<\/p>\n
Until next time \u2013 Happy Holidays everyone!<\/p>\n
Liz Hicks Skeels<\/p>\n
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Coming soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"6023\" img_size=\"large\" alignment=\"center\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=\"1\/3\"][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\"1\/3\"][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\"1\/3\"][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]\r\n
In a world that desperately seeks to remind you of how unhappy and delusional it can get, crossing paths with the lovely painting The Street,<\/i> 1957, by such an important American Scene painter as Jacob Lawrence is a welcome comfort. Lawrence\u2019s powerful work The Migration Series, <\/i>1940-41 tells of the exodus of African Americans from the agricultural South in the US up into the industrial North. That body of work has been divided between the MoMA and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. The Street, <\/i>located in the Beeghly Schaff Gallery here inside The Butler, was painted about 16 years later. To discover an artist like this whose work documents the lesser told events of history is satisfying for it nourishes the mind, but especially so when the work is visually nourishing as well.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\n
The color feeds the eye first. In The Street<\/i>, Lawrence uses casein, a medium comparable to gouache, to stack expressive swaths of red, gold, green and black to form four substantial figures. From across the room the eye savors the bold red and gold stripes of the long robe-like garment of the tall back of a high shouldered woman. She wears a round yellow hat with soft scrolls of dark curls sweeping out from under. Her left arm is lowered, as she holds between her large fingers a speck of a hand of a child whose small stance is set wide to mirror hers. She is large, so large, like a shield, and the stripes of her robe begin a pattern that creates a fortress around the youths within the frame, of which there are also four, and are all kept partially out of view. The arrangement of the four adult figures is subtly evocative of Nanni di Banco\u2019s Four Crowned Martyrs,<\/i> c.1412-15, half encircling the slightly asymmetrical center of the composition \u2013 a baby in a carriage. The baby, the humanist\u2019s ultimate symbol of innocence and new beginnings, is a bit a funny looking. Lawrence\u2019s stylization gives it the look of an almond with limbs. The baby\u2019s notably tiny arm is outstretched and grasping its teeny hand onto a black string pulling diagonally upwards via a blue-green fish balloon float-swimming in the sky. This upwardness reveals an essential aspect to the The Street<\/i>; everything about the children is upwards, and relatively tiny. Each of the four children is gesturing upwards in some fashion. There is one child whose face is revealed, though only partially, and he is my personal favorite because I love the way babies\u2019 arms only just reach over their heads, as this little grinning guy appears. And with one hand holding up the balloon string, the other arm is extended upwards creating a sweet rendering of that classic power pose of joy.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\n
The stylization of the large bold adult figures facilitates the pattern that creates the impression of the protective fortress surrounding the children. The narrative of the children and their upwardness is matched with the downward gaze of the adults. This downwardness reveals another essential aspect to the The Street<\/i>; the gestures of the adults is downwards, and they are in contrast to the children very large. Mostly, this difference indicates the concern and the care for the children, but the joy in the child\u2019s face is not paralleled in the faces of the adults. The adults\u2019 faces show the wear of time. They show the weight of history. They tell of the lives of people that have lost battles but keep showing up for the fight. They tell of lives that have known suffering. They tell of the lives of martyrs. This is not a feel-good children\u2019s book illustration. This is a street in Harlem in 1957, still several years before the civil rights movement.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\n
What makes The Street<\/i> so lovely is the spontaneity of the narrative the scene portrays combined with the depth of Lawrence\u2019s evolving personal stylization and symbolism. It\u2019s clear that Modernist Abstraction had some influence on his style. The solid geometric shapes in The Street<\/i> as well as the use of the strong black diagonal lines within a progressively dynamic composition sets this apart from his earlier work. The Street <\/i>has a cubist mood with poet\u2019s heart. Which brings me back to the balloons. Balloons so comparatively big and absurd that the fish look as though they could swoop down with their jagged smiles and gobble up the children. But no, that\u2019s not what they do. What the fish do is very cleverly draw the eye and the narrative up and out of the back-and-forth balance that radiates around the central point - the baby. With the perfection of a Fibonacci spiral the moral of the story is grasped with the odd balloon in the upper right corner of the picture plane \u2013 a simple round one, the same hue of blue as the sky.<\/p>\r\nUntil next time - Best!\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nLiz Hicks-Skeels\r\n\r\nlhicks-skeels@butlerart.com<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]\r\n If, for a moment, we zoom out and imagine the entirety of the human race as a singular organism on this planet, then we can adjust our perspective to observe the arts as a chart of human development, in much the same way we observe benchmarks of the development of a growing child. 30,000 years before writing was invented humans were drawing handprints on the walls of caves. With every new \u201cmovement\u201d we see the growth and expansion of our collective historical mind. From cave paintings, to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and twisted perspective, complex Greek sculptural ideals of beauty, the Romans and the political Augustus of Prima Porta<\/em>, the Renaissance and linear perspective, and so on, the building upon the developing human mind is evident. For reasons that reflect the times be it war, peace, famine, or excess, we witness that throughout the growth of human development visual art has merged lanes with religion, philosophy, satire, architecture, and technology. Now, we find ourselves on a planet so electronically interconnected that the art of all the ages is to some degree accessible from our phones. And with the onset of Covid 19 and social distancing, we have embraced electronics like never before.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\n Zooming back in, we have taken note of the individuals that brought about changes in the arts because they are the signposts for those of us that wish to travel back through the labyrinthine streets of art history. Those artists, and in some cases their patrons, are the people that mark the forks in this road we share. But the path is not linear. In his book New Media in Late 20th <\/sup>Century Art <\/em>Michael Rush writes, \u201cNot only are we still in the midst of the story, the story itself began and continues with simultaneous activities among different kinds of artists in separate parts of the world.\u201d (pg.9) Which brings me to The Butler Institute of American Art recently announcing the new acquisition of a collection of kinetic art from the estate of David Bermant. In the book David Bermant The Audacious Art Collector<\/em> Dr. Zona writes, \u201cBefore anyone considered technologically based artistic expression as serious art - there was David Bermant. Not only did he come to recognize that art created with light or digital electronics was indeed on the same level as painting or sculpture, he took the unprecedented step of actually acquiring such work and encouraging artists to stay with their vision and continue to explore new realms.\u201d (pg.8) This new acquisition is so important to us because it includes so many of the pioneers of kinetic art.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\n So, by definition kinetic art moves. It can be moved through a natural force such as wind, it could require electricity, or the viewer must provide the movement. For example, (spoiler alert!) in the Novak gallery in Beecher Center is Marcel Duchamp\u2019s Rotorelief, 1935-1953.<\/em> Upon approaching Rotorelief<\/em>, a relatively small mysterious black velvet box hanging on the wall adorned with a circular print, motion sensors will trigger the plugged-in device into action. The circular print, or disc, begins to spin - revolving like a drunken record player. The disc itself is interchangeable, but the one currently on display is titled Optical Disc No. 10<\/em> and will be familiar to anyone that has watched Duchamp\u2019s 1926 Dadaist<\/em> film Anemic Cinema. <\/em>Stepping back from the disc a little and allowing the eyes to absorb to the rotating pale orange circle at the center makes way for the optical illusion to set in. Mesmerized \u2013 the whole world drops away as the soft hypnotic hum of the device creates a cocoon of sound happily complemented by the sweet chiming of the George Rhoads sculpture playfully rolling along down the hall \u2026.<\/p>\r\n\u00a0\r\nMarch 2021<\/h1>\r\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_width=\"grid\"][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text css=\".vc_custom_1617197040253{padding-right: 50px !important;padding-left: 50px !important;}\"]Georgia O\u2019Keeffe was one of the great American painters of her time and she knew it. In the early 20th<\/sup> century, she was among the very first American artists to break away from realism and immerse herself in abstraction. It was a bold and brave move. Most teachers and the establishments of the times would not reward her for abstraction, but her sense of determination was as strong as steel and the self-assuredness she possessed to create the work she wanted eventually cemented her place in history as a major player in the American Modernist movement.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nBy the time O\u2019Keeffe painted Cottonwood III<\/em> in 1944, which is part of The Butler\u2019s permanent collection and is presently hanging in the Ford gallery, she was spending most of her time painting in New Mexico. Like many of her New Mexico landscapes, the intense youthful sensuality of her earlier flower paintings is subdued in Cottonwood III. <\/em>Instead, there is \u2026 a hunting? You can see it in her decisions. She is searching for something. It\u2019s hiding in the warm flesh tones of the desert floor. It\u2019s forgotten in the pale cerulean tinted sky. It\u2019s cut against the hard edge of the mountain and is tripping down its subtle slopes. It\u2019s mixed in the transition between the shades of blue to yellow of cottonwood leaves. It\u2019s lost in the tips of the sharp phthalo branches sinking like fingers deep into the greens aching to hold them in place. And it\u2019s exposed in these two beautiful bits of burnt sienna traced into shapes that certainly pleased her \u2013 waiting there perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner of the foreground.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nWhile doing research into Georgia O\u2019Keeffe to help me understand Cottonwood III <\/em>I became fascinated by her. Beyond her success as a working artist O\u2019Keeffe was truly a woman ahead of her times. In 1921 the nude photographs that her much older and very successful husband exhibited of her in New York caused a public sensation, for sure. Although by today\u2019s standards the images are not very scandalous, and just for the sake of context \u2013 it\u2019s apple to oranges \u2013 Playboy<\/em> wasn\u2019t a thing until 1953. O\u2019Keeffe was clearly brave and trusted her husband, but she was also vulnerable. In 1928 she checked herself into a hospital for two months due to a nervous breakdown over that same very successful husband\u2019s love affair with a younger woman. The humiliation was amplified when the nervous breakdown essentially caused her the loss of the elite opportunity to paint a large-scale mural for Radio City Music Hall. But you just gotta love Georgia because the next year that woman bossed up. Again, context is important here because not a lot of people, let alone women, were capable of buying themselves cars in 1929, but that is exactly what O\u2019Keeffe did. Then she essentially abandoned the New York art scene to paint in the deserts of New Mexico. In the video interview Georgia O\u2019Keeffe talking about her life and work<\/em> (link is below) the female interviewer comments to O\u2019Keeffe how \u201c\u2026 nice it was of Stieglitz to let you go to New Mexico \u2026\u201d to which O\u2019Keeffe laughs, \u201c\u2026 he didn\u2019t let me go. I just went.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nBut it isn\u2019t O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s determination, or her bravery, or her talent, or even her vulnerability that fascinates me. There is a moment in the video interview Georgia O\u2019Keeffe talking about her life and work<\/em> towards the end of part 3 where the interviewer asks O\u2019Keeffe if she had ever climbed over the surrounding rocky terrain of her New Mexico home, and again O\u2019Keeffe laughs, \u201c\u2026 certainly, wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d And there is this sparkle in her eye as she says it. That sparkle. That\u2019s where she got me. Georgia O\u2019Keeffe was an adventurer - exploring the West. What could be more American?\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v71awD38Qy4<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SD1G-QFRne8<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yO1Fo4lvMFY<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nUntil next time - Best!\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nLiz Hicks-Skeels\r\n\r\nlhicks-skeels@butlerart.com<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]\r\n
\u00a0February 2021<\/h1>\r\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_width=\"grid\"][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text css=\".vc_custom_1614368703644{padding-right: 50px !important;padding-left: 50px !important;}\"]There is an old pale blue comb on the floor and it\u2019s missing most of its teeth. It rests there like the brittle bones of a lifeless fish whose ribs a have been picked apart by ravenous birds. If only the pale blue comb could have ever actually provided any such value to birds.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nThe materials chosen to create visual art, particularly sculpture, can intrigue when used wisely to develop complex layers of metaphor, symbolism, or multiple narratives into the imagery. For instance, while walking through the Ron Barron and Ed Hallahan installation Earth Air Fire Water<\/em> in the Flad Gallery at The Butler my eyes land on the outspread wooden wings of a Totem. The winged Totem is just one of a small forest of Totems gathered here. Shorn of bark the Totems stand naked like souls without skin. In hand-carved shapes of various geometric whimsy they rise abstractedly Solomonic. Some of them unite in couples or herds while others tower in isolation. Many dichotomies exist here, for these Totems are both alien and familiar, similar yet unique, they are still yet animated, and though they are silent certainly they are speaking secretly in some unknowable ancient language. Ed Hallahan has titled these works of wood DORW<\/em> \u2013 a Sanskrit word for tree and truth.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nOn the south wall of the exhibition beside Hallahan\u2019s DORW <\/em>works of an interestingly different variation, hangs Ron Barron\u2019s Cocoon <\/em>assemblages which are made up of collected household waste bound into visceral little plastic shrink-wrapped bundles. Though the textures here sparkle softly and almost beckon, there is something uncomfortable about them \u2013 something suffocating. These garbage beings grow dysmorphicaly. Some are long and thin like sickly snakes in grass while others are squat and bulging oracularly fertile. It\u2019s scarcely visible that they are caught up in an elastic glitter cord matrix \u2013 a double bind. But the beautiful truth about cocoons is that while they are in fact shells of devastating self-annihilation, enveloped within all that detritus is the determined grace of transformation.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nMoving on, my eyes travel over Ron Barron\u2019s scavenged ground pollution and again something pale blue draws me in. This time it is a mangled mesh bag casting a shallow shadow like a warped grid of space and time, next a lost sole of disposable footwear, then a rusted chunk of metal machinery gesturing to crawl along like a crab, a dirty dark blue ring pop, mylar balloons with streaming tails tangled up in fisherman\u2019s nets, badminton shuttlecocks, lighters, bolts, screws, washers. So many discarded material objects that occupy the mind, but it\u2019s the stray feathers lingering among them that will weigh on the heart.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nEarth Air Fire Water <\/em>will be open for view in the Flad Gallery at The Butler until March 21, 2021.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nUntil next time \u2013 Best!\r\n\r\nLiz Hicks-Skeels\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\nlhicks-skeels@butlerart.com[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]\r\n
January 2021<\/h1>\r\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_width=\"grid\"][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text css=\".vc_custom_1638554615425{padding-top: 32px !important;padding-right: 50px !important;padding-bottom: 32px !important;padding-left: 50px !important;}\"]\r\n