1998–2004
2003–04
Charles E. Martin: Paintings from the Covers of the New Yorker Magazine
March 27 – June 6, 2004
Met Benches, Charles E. Martin, Watercolor on paper, 1983, 14 x 10.5"
Charles Martin's art defines a lifetime of humor and subtle irony that contributed to years of pleasure by the readers of The New Yorker magazine. Martin shared his love for New York and the Maine environs by bringing quiet moments of contemplation to millions who found his familiarity with life's vagaries endearing. From his first publication of a New Yorker cover on August 6, 1938 throughout his five-decade career, his clarity of vision for gentle observations of the human condition told a story of the life in the big city and the small island of Monhegan, Maine. The city views struck a note of the classical, large American city with a personality formed by its resident and visitors; the Maine subjects took us to the typical rural experience where vacations and quiet living were shared.
Martin’s years with The New Yorker entailed a weekly ritual of presenting his cartoons and cover paintings to the art department to be acknowledge by the editor with acceptance or with questions. One hundred eighty-seven covers were published through 1987 when his last publication was produced for the sophisticated audience that moved him to visual conversation through his medium. The original watercolors and gouaches began as paintings that over the years have entered collections of families who adored his art. It is most important, however, for his work to be seen in the museum setting since acknowledgement of the artist’s skill places him in a role equivalent to his artist friends who were raising hackles and breaking records in the museums from the 1950s forward.
Close to artists in the Abstract Expressionist movement – Wilhem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Ashile Gorky – among many others, Marin poured his artistic efforts more into a communicative art form rather than avant-garde art. His process was immediate, personal, non-confrontational, and, perhaps most important, regular in his opportunities to have his work seen. Raising the standards of the public’s awareness of the magazine’s artwork, that is, his cover work rather than his small cartoons, Martin gave to the tradition a name (his) and a face (ours) to his art and to his audience.
Cartoon art has played a role in publication since mid-19th century in such artists as Honore Daumier with his regular publications in Charvari, a weekly journal of sophistication and culture. Not dissimilar in its manifestation of humor with words that conjured up a chuckle from the reader, Daumier’s art observed the human condition, as did Charles Martin’s. Without a political sting but with an observant tingle, the regular publication of cartoons appeared in the press to engage the reader into empathy with the intention of the journal and its message. By Martin’s generation in American in the 1930s, rich drawing and hyper detail to evince a smile was out of fashion and the succinct linear style of the “modern” cartoonist allocated milliseconds of attention to multi-memories of empathy with the characters. Martin’s characters had no identifiers except finding “us” in their stories; stories in some instances required visual puns without verbal explanations.
The New Yorker “spots” that first attracted Martin’s editor in 1934 evolved into illustrations of humorous moments of life. Drawn in rough form for their presentation for approval, the cartoons were crisply finished by the artist for publication. Text, if it were required, was typeset in the style of the magazine rather than in the artist’s hand. Signing his name as “Martin,” the artist soon became simple C.E.M, initials that identified subtleties in a flavor that promoted his following.
Martin began a regular working relationship with covers and cartoons, the former finished paintings; the latter black ink drawings on white paper. He received commissions from Life Magazine, Time, and several other notable publications, but it was The New Yorker that sustained him for fifty years. Such subjects appear as the front of the Metropolitan Museum, that is only recognizable by a careful scrutiny of stone walls and park benches, to those whose lives include regular visits to the temple of culture.
Around 1960 Martin and his wife, Florence, with their son Jared, discovered Monhegan Island, Maine, and purchased a cottage that captured their interest for three to four months each summer. As a result he introduced new subjects into his covers, the rural Maine scenes and idiosyncrasies of the summer cottage life. People with children at recreational events related to Island living, the images describe an Americana that appeals to vacationers and nature enthusiasts. Amusing scenes charmed the New Yorker readers: artists with their easels surrounding a seagull posing as a model by the harbor as well as quiet solitude with boats tucked away for the evening or filled with tomato plants in the off season.
Balancing an active career as a productive illustrator and cartoonist, Martin produced an extraordinary oeuvre in the medium or watercolor, which included an unusual series of paintings he titled: Follies of War. During World War II he had made illustrated leaflets that were dropped by air on Nazi Germany as propaganda pieces. Later, Martin declared in the Follies that the concept of war was simply foolish. Each of the more than twenty large watercolors included quotations from the history of art mingled with medieval war-faring figures of knights who, like Don Quixote, found themselves jousting with flowers and other elusive enemies. These paintings smack of Surrealism’s imaginary world in which the subconscious state of culture is “ravaged” by a feckless military.
Throughout Charles Martin’s career as an artist, an energetic force emerges in him that expresses an uncompromising realism versus an imaginary world that portrays life in a dream-like fantasy allowing his fancy to guide his brush. With the entire range of Martin’s various subjects and intentions to develop artistic explorations, the artist adheres to his personal avant-garde in the medium which provides him most assurance: the illustrations of his mind.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery displayed the delights of Charles Martin's lifetime efforts including his gently humorous cover designs, his subtly amusing cartoons, watercolors from his production of children's books, his imaginary Follies of War, paintings of nature in the seafaring island of Monhegan, and the varieties of categories that make his imagery create his life. With our most profound appreciation to his family: his widow, his son, his grandson, and his friends, we are able to exhibit more than one hundred paintings and illustrations that define this fertile career. As support for the gallery programs, the Charles B. Degenstein and the Florence and Saul Putterman endowments have generously brought this artistic experience to Susquehanna University.
Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After
Jan. 24 – March 5, 2004
Victims' Shoes, Lublin-Majdanek, Poland, Michael Kenna, Gelatin silver print, 1993, 24 x 20" (detail)
Fifty years have passed since the world became aware of the atrocities committed in Nazi camps at various places in Europe during World War II. Time has provided a resolve to move forward, to heal the pain and suffering of families and friends directly impacted by the horrific events and their byproducts. But the need to keep alive an awareness of this past in order to prevent reoccurrences is always a part of our present. This resolve to remember can be witnesses through the Lore Degenstein Gallery’s current exhibition of photography by Michael Kenna, whose twelve-year project documenting thirty Nazi concentration camps reignites the public’s awareness of these sites of genocide.
From a period of repeated visits to these camps from 1998 through 2000, Kenna made several thousand images, eighty-eight of which have been selected for view in an exhibition responding to the artist’s feeling that the scenes he witnessed were “impossible to forget.” He had been initially inspired by seeing a haunting photograph of a mountain of shaving brushes from Auschwitz produced by a fellow student of the Banbury School of Art in England where Kenna was studying art.
Though Kenna was born in a generation after the War, he reflected upon the initial emotional impact of the Holocaust by developing a photographic project to study it in further detail. He has returned repeatedly to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, and other camps to photograph the mood and spirit of that which had taken place in the past,
Born in England in 1953, Kenna moved to San Francisco in 1981. While having no direct encounter with personal or familial histories of the Holocaust, he found the subject compelling for his work in photography. His images are initially benign, reflections of their history rather than illustrations of the atrocities. The responsibility of remembrance lies with the viewer who must bring to the haunting images a knowledge of those crimes against humanity that were committed at the sites and with the implements shown. To some degree, the fact that they resist graphic encounter is more compelling in that it requires responsibility from the viewer.
The exhibition of Kenna’s photographs was organized by Patrimoine Photographique, Paris, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture. With appreciation to the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for the Gallery’s programs, the Lore Degenstein Gallery has the privilege of showing the exhibition through the efforts of the artist and Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles. An additional partner to this exhibition must also be acknowledged: The Jewish Studies, who arranged for Dr. Barbie Zelizer of the University of Pennsylvania, author of Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera’s Eye, to speak at the opening reception.
Painting and Sculpture by Florence Putterman: A Ten-Year Retrospective
Nov. 1 – Dec. 7, 2003
Dreams, Voices, Illusions, Florence Putterman, Oil on canvas, 1995, 72 x 62"
Collection of the artist
During 1993, Susquehanna University opened the new Lore Degenstein Gallery in its inaugural year with a large exhibition of paintings by Florence Putterman. The exhibition included an analytical catalogue that argued for the artist’s work to be placed in the history of postmodernism relating to feminist narrative. Ten years later, a retrospective of subsequent paintings and sculptures reinforces the artist’s pursuit of this tradition with her depictions of figures and subjects that suggest a personal statement defying interpretation. Color is still an exciting aspect of her work, vibrant and saturated, with emphasis upon the exotic palette that might recall the Caribbean and southern environs. Since Putterman spends half a year in Florida, it is not surprising that she responds to the brilliant, high-key chromas of her southern home.
It is possible in this exhibit to trace aspects of the artist’s earlier work, particularly noticeable in her characters, which are apparent in the intensity of her narratives. The paintings describe a continued relationship with representational art. Though seemingly autobiographical, they are decipherable in terms of familiar subjects, birds, humans, and household animals, that appear to construct a narrative. The narrative immediately suggests an environment of feminine encounter with events from the artist’s life, but it simultaneously seems to provoke metaphorical messages of global magnitude that fit the current definition of postmodernism.
Summarizing properties of postmodernism, historian Diana Crane states, “Like the modernist, the postmodernist was often interested in problems of light and visual perception but, unlike the modernist, he or she was also concerned with the subject matter and the expression of feeling.” Challenging modernism in style, meaning, and intention, postmodernism is a pluralistic art developed since the 1970’s. It is most evident in Putterman’s work by her inclusion of subjective narration that arouses a heightened sense of drama or emotion. One such painting, New York Stories, 1999, shows a cast of characters that might have emerged from her earlier work on the series, Bird, Hand, and Man. The harsh coloration with prevailing reds and golds describes the flashing neon of Broadway, figures reaching towards each other to weave an indeterminate tale. A huge bird emerges from one corner of the painting reminiscent of earlier “stories” that were equally as enigmatic.
It should be noted that Putterman’s work is quite confrontational, given the brilliance of the colors, the strength of the implied narrative, and the scale of the paintings. Most paintings in the exhibition measure at least four feet in one direction; one is a diptych (two paintings shown as one), doubling the effect by virtue of its size. Dreams, Voices, Illusions, 1995, a six foot canvas, bears the same name as an earlier version that is filled with similar iconographic images: birds, the spiral, tropical trees, and fantasy animals. In the later painting shapes are more succinctly defined, almost sculptural in their origin. The viewer may choose to parallel these forms with several wooden sculptures in the exhibition, which have shapes that seem to be described in the paintings. A contradiction to that notion is apparent when comparing the dates of their execution: these sculptures seem to emerge in the artist’s oeuvre later, around the year 2000. Several assemblages of found wooden objects painted brightly with similar colors (Intersection, 2002) attest to the artist’s facility with forms, both illusionistic and actual. The sculptures bear a familial resemblance to works of Louise Nevelson, an American sculptor from whom Putterman has expressed admiration, though their appearance is quite different given their coloration. Nevelson’s sculpture is monochromatic, usually entirely black!
The exhibition includes forty large paintings and several sculptures in the artist’s later style, allowing an assessment of the evolution of her work over the past ten years. As a currently significant player in the artworld, Putterman was recently chosen to have her work represented in an exhibition of animal sculptures in nearby Harrisburg. Her submission may surprise visitors of the Lore Degenstein Gallery by its preview in this exhibition, an added encouragement to visit this show.
Robert Henri and His Influence
September 13 - October 26, 2003
The Pink Pinafore (Mary Ann Cafferty), Robert Henri, Oil on canvas, 1926, 24 x 20"
American art of the twentieth century cannot be discussed without reference to Robert Henri (pronounced hen-rye) whose essential message to the world of artists, patrons, and public was to seek a truly American outlook in painting and sculpture of the day. Henri proposed that what is necessary for art in America is first an appreciation of the great native ideas…and then the achievement of masterly freedom in expressing them. He encouraged artists to take note of the art of France but to avoid imitation of visual information. Rather, he believed that art should express the artist’s own enounter with emotion, with mood, and with feeling toward or from the sitter. Having a direct encounter with his subject freed him to paint or sculpt with an interpretation that was clearly his own, rather than the achievement of verisimilitude that could be criticized for its lack of memory or of skill in the mere recording of nature.
Henri engendered a coterie of artists and friends wherever he went. After graduating from art school at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia, Henri spent three years at the Académie Julian in France where he explored art of both the past and the avant-garde present. He returned to Philadelphia in 1891 to teach at the Academy but soon became embroiled in bitter controversy over his support of the Impressionist style that had begun to appear in his work. At weekly open house sessions in his studio, he attracted like-minded artists who became lifelong adherents to his ideas. In 1895 he led a small group of artist friends through Europe to seek reassurance for his artistic goals but instead discovered the dark, low-key tonalities of the Dutch paintings. In Henri’s work and that of his colleagues, the new taste for limited palettes of grays and drab colors began to appear which in America became a movement termed “Tonalism.” This could be seen in the paintings of Whistler, George Inness, and many others in addition to those of Henri and his friends. Henri retained this darkness in his paintings even as he eventually introduced a later bright coloration that continued until the end of his life.
Finding his place in Philadelphia difficult in opposing the influence of the Academy, Henri moved to New York City in 1900. For a brief time he taught in William Merritt Chase’s art school gaining popularity for his charismatic performance as a dissident who protested the conservative practices of the National Academy of Design. As a result he put together a group called “The Eight,” who in 1908 exhibited their new ideas about subject matter, focusing upon the landscape of the New York street in a manner of which was later described as “The Ash-Can School.”
The tendency at this time of artists to mount exhibitions of their protestations against tradition in the artworld provided a generative force for the founding of such European movements as Cubism, Fauvism, and many other artistic statements that resisted realism in favor of abstraction. Henri’s group was clearly not in conflict with realism; it was more interested in the opportunities for the dissemination of new ideas regarding subject matter, freedom for the artist, and the application of paint. Such was the flavor of the times when Henri became involved in the group of artists that organized the Armory Show, a vast exhibition of avant-garde works from both Europe and American that changed the course of history in terms of the new direction American art was to take. Over twelve-hundred paintings and sculptures appeared in an exhibition at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in February 1913, an event that would rock the artworld.
Among those artists who were closest to Henri were John Sloan, William Glackens, and George Luks who followed him from Philadelphia. Later other artists who were to feel his influence included: George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, and many others. His fruitful energies in teacher appear in his book, The Art Spirit, that contains his ideas about art: texts for the assertion of the artist’s position in 20th century America. The book is still in print to this day. Henri’s influence extended beyond New York City. His communications with Rockwell Kent and George Bellows encouraged these artists to visit and paint on Monhegan Island, Maine, introducing New York artists to the northern environs to leave their impact from that time forward. Henri’s influence continued into mid-20th century and beyond, although before his death in 1921, the artist’s writings had much to say about the use of subjects and their rightful place in the history of American art.
A significant collection of paintings by Robert Henri and his contemporaries is on loan to the Lore Degenstein Gallery from the University of Nebraska through the efforts of Smith Kramer. We are particularly appreciative of the Charles B. Degenstein endowment that continues to support the gallery’s programs.
2002–03
Edward Steichen and the Advent of Hollywood Celebrity Portraiture in Vanity Fair: 1923-1937
April 5 – June 1, 2003
Marlene Deitrich, Edward Steichen, Gelatin silver print, 1931
Edward Steichen was a major figure in American photography. Transcending the nineteenth-century Pictorialist movement with an emphasis on photography as an art form, Steichen made portraiture a stunning commercial product for publication in Vanity Fair magazine with his revolutionary photographs of young, aspiring film stars. His sense of mood and drama in the presentation of these burgeoning actors introduced a new concept into their relationship of art with commercial enterprise. Steichen was appointed by Condé Nast as chief photographer for Vanity Fair which at the time was less than nine years into production.
Nast recognized Steichen's achievements in various applications of photography. He trusted the artist to achieve a visual effect for the magazine that set it apart from other publications just as he had trusted Frank Crowninshield as its editor. Vanity Fair was unique in its focus on "things people talk about at parties -- the arts, sports, humor," asserted Crowninshield. Inevitably, Vanity Fair soon became a "pioneer in so many areas that it was later said to be a significant yardstick of American culture," along with setting "a new standard for photography and picture journalism." The visually pleasing magazine was noted for its first-rate writing by young authors and for the 1930 Pulitzer Prize won by Edward Steichen.
Steichen was first and foremost an artist and secondarily a photographer, but he was also an innovator in the distinct visual attributes that photography had to offer. Working with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in his promotion of the Photo-Secession movement to rid photography of its mere documentary role, Steichen designed the first cover and the initial publicity for Camera Work, Stieglitz's publication to advance photography as a fine art. He worked as a painter in France before World War I and during the war directed aerial photography for Allied Forces. After the war he became enamored of fashion and advertising photography; this was the time he worked with Vanity Fair.
The number of photographs Steichen produced for Vanity Fair exceeds that of any other photographer on the staff. Steichen recognized that Hollywood's methodology in the formation of the "star" was "image" focused upon sophistication and recognition, soon to become an American icon by its familiarity. The fresh, young faces of these stars were defined by a formula both romantic and expressive – some portrayed in costume and role as in Steichen's 1927 portrait of Fred Astaire; some as elegant portrayals of the emblems of beauty as in his many portraits of youthful actors Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and Greta Garbo among many others.
As Steichen's career moved to another phase, he left Vanity Fair in 1937 turning his attention to the blurring of aesthetic distinctions that were being produced by such social commentary projects as the Farm Security Administration photographs in Franklin D. Roosevelt's program to document the results of the American Depression of the 1930s and the photoreportage of documentary magazines like Life Magazine. During World War II, he became the Director of Naval Combat Photography, and, at the conclusion of the war, took on the directorship of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His expansive creative output, however, was never greater than the years of his involvement with Vanity Fair.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery presents a collection of more than seventy of the photographic portraits produced by Edward Steichen in his Vanity Fair years on loan from the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York. It is our pleasure to exhibit these images as our ongoing support of the medium of photography in its multitude of manifestations as fine art, as documentation, and as aesthetic offering for students in the Department of Art on our campus. We are particularly appreciative of the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment which provides ongoing support for the programming of the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
Art of the French Poster: Cognac, Café, and Culture
Jan. 25 – March 23, 2003
Cognac: la grande marque, Leonetto Capiello, Lithograph on paper, 47.25 x 62.5"
French posters in the twentieth century exhibit a legacy from the turn of the nineteenth century’s creative designs from such graphic artists as Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Their crisp imagery established a model for a hundred years of artful graphic design to follow. Every item offered for sale was featured in the form of a brightly colored enormous-scale work of art which was to find a place on billboards on the streets of Paris and throughout France. One of the subjects that tantalized the populace was social beverages, which included wine – the mainstay of the French table – and other alcoholic drinks that were produced in France and its environs. Moderating influences coopted the advertising vehicle intending to promote an alternative to the abuse of alcohol, namely, coffee and its implements of production. Most significantly, governmental programs used posters to warn of the hazards of indulgence and to produce a spirit of sobriety.
Monhegan Modernists: 1940-1970 Paintings and Sculptures from the Collection of John M. Day
Sept. 28 – Dec. 8, 2002
Wreck of the St. Christopher, Joseph de Martini. Oil on canvas, 1950, 30 x 40"
The unique opportunity to exhibit paintings and sculptures precisely focused upon time and place – as reflected in the collection of John M. Day – represents a privilege to examine a phenomenon of the artworld that continues to this present day. The selection shows the work of more than fifty American artists all responding to a particular setting during the advent of abstraction in the New York art scene from 1940 to 1970. The exhibition shows the work of artists who found fellowship and an intellectual community with friends and colleagues each summer on Monhegan, a small island off the coast of Maine. Though most were trained at a variety of professional art schools, some are products of self exploration in their efforts to arrive at an individual statement in their art. We are familiar with the various active summer artists’ colonies spawned in New England, Provincetown, Ogunquit, Cape Anne, and Old Lyme, however, none of these has the unusual distinction of attracting artists of diverse perspectives which are retained in their work as that of Monhegan. Though addressing abstraction as a universal experiment in the artworld at the time, each artist distinguishes vision and style with an absolute fidelity to individuality in spite of the tantalizing subjects which they all portray.
John Day has been collecting art for more than twenty-five years. Determined to limit his selections to a particular time and place, he responded to the art of his home state, Maine, and became quickly enamored of the conceptual framework observed in paintings from Monhegan. The artists were often friends and neighbors as well as colleagues who had shared experiences in the Works Progress Administration in New York City in the 1930s. They often serendipitously found their way to Monhegan or were persuaded by their friends to try out the summer setting. Day was intrigued by the passion of their involvement with the island scenery and events, while noting the diversity of vision found in their work.
During this thirty-year period, 1940-1970, New York was a hotbed of artistic activity. The Surrealists had emigrated from Europe because of their expulsion by the Nazi regime; young avant-garde New York artists were influenced by the newness of the gallery spirit; the Abstract Expressionists declared their pre-eminence in their “takeover” of international acclaim – the first universally significant art movement for the United States. This was the flavor of the times during which most of these Monhegan artists emerged.
Few of the artists embraced elements of Surrealism, but all the artists in this exhibition found their message in abstraction. Flavors of Cubism (Picasso and Braque), Neo-Plasticism (Mondrian and Van Doesburg), Abstract Expressionism (Hans Hofmann and de Kooning) to mention a few, began to show up in the subjects that Monhegan offered: shipwrecks; views of rocks and sea; houses and studios; and particularly the Headlands, 160’ cliffs that dashed the visitor visually down to a turbulent sea.
These modernists, as they can best be described, were preceded by American artists from the turn of the 19th century: Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, Edward Redfield, George Bellows, all of whose prominence in their careers began an awareness of Monhegan through their emphasis on realistic portrayals of the extraordinary scenery. Later, the Wyeths and Edward Hopper extended the views of land and sea to observe the natural phenomena with a personal idiom. Much of this effort of realism is still present today.
But it is the modernists that attract our attention as they portray the subjects with an emphasis on a style of painting that can be recognized as uniquely responsive to the New York School beginning in the early 1940s. Artists, who witnessed tragic events found in the abstractions of a wreck in 1949 of a ship, the St. Christopher, such as Joseph de Martini and his painting in the exhibition, record the moment in an expressive disembowlment of the ship against a raging sea. This painting, one of three versions of the St. Christopher by the artist, is based upon his direct encounter with the subject. We know that the Metropolitan Museum acquired the painting in that same year, only to deaccession it recently, when John Day acquired it.
Other paintings represented in the collection demonstrate the village and studios of the artists. William McCartin’s Interior of 1956 gives his viewer an intimate moment in his cottage where his subsequent involvement with non-objective abstraction emerged. McCartin was a member of a group of artists who focused their New York community around Zero Mostel at his studio on 28th Street. Calling themselves “the 28th Street Gang,” they held a weekly meeting at a poker game each Thursday in the city. Many of the group continued their friendship in their summers on Monhegan. Mostel’s close friend Herbie Kallem was a sculptor who built a studio just a few houses away from Zero’s cottage on the island. Summers perpetuated the spirit of New York by these artists, but their styles and approaches to their subjects remained individualized expressions.
Several Monhegan artists claim early experiences with modernism because of their studies with Hans Hofmann, who never actually came to the island himself. Hofmann’s school of painting in New York attracted all the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s bringing a new realization of the visual impact of abstraction on the subjects of the island. As a result, Ted Davis, Alexander Minewski, Robert Casper, Michael Loew, and Lynne Drexler all observed the island in their paintings embracing the elements of Abstract Expressionism learned at the feet of the master, Hofmann. Loew, who also was part of the 28th Street group, eventually evolved his work to focus on the precise, analytical approach to nature established by the Neo-plasticist, Mondrian. Thus, it can be observed that a cross section of the American avant-garde was alive and well in the summers on Monhegan from 1940 to 1970.
Of the more than seventy artworks in the exhibition, all demonstrate an adherence to the avant-garde aesthetic of the New York artworld. John Day’s vision in selecting artists and paintings that support this notion is the governing spirit of the exhibition. It is the intention to travel this show to colleges and museums across the country to share the wonders of this art. Though some of the paintings were shown at Bates College in the summer of 2001, the Lore Degenstein Gallery is appreciative of the opportunity to be the first to display this, the inaugural exhibition, that will be the focus of the subsequent tour. The efforts of the Lore Degenstein Gallery are made possible through the Charles B. Degenstein endowment, which supports our exhibition program.
2001–02
Winslow Homer Illustrations 1857-1888
April 27 – June 9, 2002
Snap the Whip, Winslow Homer, Wood engraving, 1873
Winslow Homer's name is a household word in American art, beloved painter of sea, people, 19th-century genre, and American life. Understanding his involvement with illustration early in his career is a particular perspective upon the artist's contribution to a medium that not only is aesthetic in its inspiration and application but is journalistic in its initial intention. Homer was an observer of current events for such magazines and journals as Harper's Weekly and Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. Though well known in the study of his life and work, the consideration of these images separated from their original context places then in the general arena with his paintings, which were created solely for aesthetic purposes. The exhibition intends to explore this aspect of Homer's oeuvre and allow an assessment of the opportunity the illustrated image was given for informational as well as artistic presentation.
Homer's exposure to the world of print media began with his apprenticeship in Bufford's lithography shop in Boston, where he was confronted with the role of the artist in the new application of the inclusion of pictures with printed stories. Prior to this time, articles were basically composed of verbiage, however, the 1850's dailies, weeklies, and other publications began to use pictorial descriptions that corresponded to the written word. With printing processes turning artists' drawings into wood engravings that cleverly replicated the drawn line, the possibilities were endless for artists to flourish in this medium. Thus was born the illustrator/journalist – at least for a limited time, since the process ceased with the advent of the photographic image that would engender its own revolution in the late 1870's.
The literature surrounding Homer and his historical position tends to distinguish the artist's illustrative work from his paintings. It is important to note that the overlay between the two can be viewed as a continuum of the artist's production, the illustrations often inspiring larger works produced later in a more traditionally artistic medium. Such is the example of Snap the Whip, published in Harper's Weekly, 20 September 1873. Nine boys hand-in-hand play the rough and tumble game of disengaging weaker members at the end of the line. The illustration is transformed into a painting seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that reduces the number to eight, while creating a strong horizontal genre scene of children at play.
Nothing remains of the engraving blocks from which the prints were made, undoubtedly because they were continually reused; the consistency of the size of his prints supports this notion. Homer's involvement with the process was most likely limited to his drawing on the white, smooth surface of the hard wooden block that would have been cut by an engraver who eliminated all but the line which was then used in printing the image.
Homer's activities during the Civil War involved his going to the front as an artist/correspondent who covered the events of the war. Selling his work as a free-lance artist, Homer described scenes behind the battles of soldiers at leisure or in camp with an eye towards developing narratives that gave a sense of humanity to those involved in the war. Unlike the stark realism of photographic observations of such artists as Mathew Brady, Homer's illustrations provide a lasting record of individuals engaged in the conflict between Americans fighting for their beliefs.
Disconnecting himself from the issues of the war at its conclusion, Homer continued to produce over one-hundred more illustrations for engravings for Harper's Weekly. Genre and agrarian views embody the work of this period until his career with Harper's ended in 1875. Curiously, Homer's intentions did not appear to be directed toward social commentary on either the reconstruction at the end of the war or on the events of the industrial revolution, both of which would have engendered strong persuasive narrative illustrations. Rather, Homer maintained a focus upon Americans at leisure, modest life on farms, children's activities, the workers of the sea, and drama surrounding the sea.
Homer produced around 200 illustrations throughout the years 1857-1888, after which he turned exclusively to painting and watercolor. A selection of wood engravings from among those illustrations demonstrates the vision of the artist at the beginning of his career leading into his mature work in painting. The exhibition has been organized by the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and provided for our pleasure by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services. We are privileged to hold this exhibition through the generosity of the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for the Lore Degenstein Gallery which supports our ongoing exhibits and programs.
Pre-Columbian Art from the Collection of Robert and Virginia Williamson
March 16 – April 21, 2002
Monkey Stirrup-spout Vessel, Chavin, Poly-chromed terracotta, 700-400 BCE, 9.5"
Pre-Columbian Art has long been a favorite of collectors of antiquities, probably for reasons related to the beauty of the objects as well as the history that the artifacts describe. The title perhaps is a misnomer, suggesting a time before the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus in 1492; however, the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Cortez in 1521 and the subsequent incursion on Peru by Pizarro in 1532 more specifically influenced the artistic production of Mesoamerica. Some scholars refer to this period as Pre-Hispanic rather than the more popular term, Pre-Columbian. Either term describes a location in time and place and the impact of indigenous peoples on the objects - both functional and decorative - that produced a remarkable tradition which helps us understand them in our present time.
The artwork in this complex culture usually is considered to extend from a few centuries B.C.E. (called Pre-classical) to the 16th-century European presence mentioned above. The location spans two continents from Mexico to the tip of South America with particular cultures developing their individual aesthetics in various pockets of local culture. Some cross fertilization of ideas, techniques, and function occurred as interactions brought new influences, however, for the most part each of these cultures retained its individualistic appearance and function.
The two major cultures generally defined by scholars are described as Mesoamerica which includes Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and part of El Salvador; and the southerly cultures, termed the Andean Area, considered to be southern Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile and Argentina. Intersecting these two major regions is the "Intermediate Area," which includes Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, and northern Ecuador. The distinctions among these cultures reflect attitudes towards their people, their religion, and their emphases upon important values which show markedly in the subject matter portrayed and the techniques employed from rough, primitive forms to highly polished, idiosyncratic, and technically precise examples.
It is the pleasure of "reading" the narrative in the objects that brings particular delight to collectors and historians. From assessments of these remarkable works of art, we are able to conjecture upon the more functional aspects of each culture, Just as Attic vase decoration described Ancient Greed religion, mythology, and cultural practices which informs our understanding of a time before Classical Antiquity, so also do the various objects in collections of Pre-Columbian art.
The artwork in this exhibition is part of a larger collection of artifacts owned by Robert and Virginia Williamson. The exhibition is organized by traditional historic cultures representing many of the aesthetic examples which typify their production over particular time periods. The cultures shown include artifacts from along the southwestern border of Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima; and the central and Gulf coast: Vera Cruz, Tlatilco, and Maya from the Yucatan. Mesoamerican cultures include Nicoya and Quimbaya. Peruvian cultures include Chimu, Moche, Chavin, Inca, Chancay, and Nazca, among others. Forms range from religious figures to functional vessels, some with human or animal effigies providing information about deities or everyday activities. People demonstrate various illnesses, sexual interactions, and possibly, portraits. Animals adorn objects, some incorporating their forms into that of the vessel;some as painted decorations. Most of the objects are figurative with some exceptions in the abstract designs of painted vessels by Maya and Nazca artists.
The material used is predominantly terracotta, clay fired at high temperatures to provide rigidity and the ability to hold liquids. In some cultures, a sophisticated decoration of polychrome (the use of various colors) is applied as slip (thinned liquid clay) which when fired becomes an integral part of the vessel. Stone is used by the Mexican Guerrero culture to a large extent; mostly small figures and heads appear in the Williamson collection. The Peruvian Nazca objects display the most elaborate polychromy, with abstract repeated patterns and descriptions of deities in a variety of actions, perhaps defining a mythological narrative. These latter vessels are highly polished and represent a considerable concert for craft.
Of all the effigy vases, the Mochica examples perhaps bear the most significant reputation for workmanship and precision in their descriptions of human heads and figures. Portraits as well as actions are portrayed in a highly realistic manner. Some scholars believe the artisans to be the women of the culture describing every manner of their culture existence, including elaborate depictions of sexual interactions and complex descriptions of the ill.
With over 100 artifacts in the Williamson exhibition, arranged by culture and demonstrating both typical and aberrant examples, it is possible through the art to assess the nature of human activity as a record of its time and its people. The Lore Degenstein Gallery is privileged to show this valuable collection and grateful to Dr. and Mrs. Williamson for their generosity in bringing it to our door. We also thank the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for the programs of art shown throughout the year in the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
Urban Fusions: Photography by Leo Mendonça
Jan. 26 – Feb. 24, 2002
Deconstruction: New York City, Columbus Circle, Leo Mendonça,
Gelatin silver print on Ilford Multigrade fibre-base paper, 2000, 16 x 20"
For over a hundred years photographers have sought new avenues of visual expression, particularly where subject matter can be manipulated to alter our way of seeing the world around us. Photographers in the early 20th century considered the streets of New York as fodder for their cameras to record the flavor and feel of the urban landscape. Combined with a movement called "straight photography," this began at the very inception of photographers' desire to capture the image without manipulating the print in the darkroom, thus, providing a "truthful" approach to the subject.
With and historical consideration for the photographic ideas which inform his art, Leo Mendonça, a photographer of a more recent vintage, has established a body of images that persuade his viewer toward his personal perspective of New York City – its people and its expressions. Mendonça offers a view of the city that sees anew that history which tempted photographers of past generations.
Mendonça photographs reveal a slice of urban existence that emerges from their silver gelatin surface in layers of reflected meanings. The viewer is titillated by the enigmatic interplay of image and reflection, as actual and virtual co-mingle in one frame. Because his camera observes more than just the street life passing by, it finds the heart of the city, beating with a vibrancy that describes its personality. Minor White, an influential American photographer, told us that the camera should reveal "things for what they are" and "for what else they are," a cryptic statement that suggests the camera provides more than mere description.
Earlier in the 20th century an approach to the concept of straight photography was introduced through the work of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston who were seeking equivalences between form and feeling. Their intention was to obliterate visual information about locale, size, and identifiable characteristics in order to provide an enigmatic view of nature that allowed viewers to see whatever they wished. The photographers of the "Stieglitz Circle" found fascination in the subject of New York, its architecture, its abstract elements.
After the Second World War, photographers looked at New York again this time with influences from the various art movements which were generated by an energetic breed of young New York artists. Images of the streetscapes with layers of visual information appear in the 1960s Photorealist movement paintings of Richard Estes, among others, in which the reflection introduces new levels of information that was often obscured by the way in which it was presented, confusing store windows' contents with reflected images from their glass surfaces. Walker Evans in the 1930s had already photographed store windows in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but the layers of meaning in his images were the humanized contents of the window, showing functional objects that described their future owners.
Mendonça was aware that his predecessors in the use of the subject had already explored this territory for many years before he came to the city. Having arrived in the United States from Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1990, he discovered that New York brought about familiar longings for his distant home, recreating for him a reflection of that home that was, he commented, "a familiar fit where I was neither simply spectator nor tourist but a seasoned participant." Evolving circuitously into a career in photography, Mendonça had a prior degree in architecture and urban planning from Brazil, which, he noted, made him aware of "the frequent use of signage in the urban setting," which eventually became for him "an essential component of the photograph."
The list of photographers who have found their place in the streets of the city filled with varied approaches, each to a personal confrontation with it. Berenice Abbott's love affair with New York in the 1920s and 30s pushed the envelope of the documentary photograph. In her book published in 1939, she stated:
"To make a portrait of a city is a life work and no
one portrait suffices, because the city is always
changing. Everything in the city is properly part
of its story - its physical body of brick, stone,
steel, glass, wood its lifeblood of living breathing
men and women."
While Abbott placed responsibility on her feelings toward the city, others found a serendipitous pleasure in capturing special moments. Mendonça responds both to the flavor of the city in his observations and to that happenstance event that causes him to patiently wait for the right moment to use his camera. The result is an interplay of word, image, people, reflections of people, all describing what Pop artist James Rosenquist terms, the fleeting expression of the city. In Mendonca's image of a gargantuan sign for Trump (cover), the view of reflected architecture and people on the street fusing into a statement of its own, enhanced by the medium of black and white which restricts it to a classical document of time and urban essence.
David Scharf: The Art of Color in Scanning Electron Microscope Photography
Oct. 27 – 2 Dec. 2, 2001
Corn, Immature, David Scharf, Inkjet print on Epson paper:
digital source from a scanning electron microscope, 1994
When art and science interconnect, the effect is majestic bringing together unique concepts of each. Subject matter and technique may combine in a way that appeals to an audience both seeking information and considering the visual result. Images by David Scharf attest to the power of the aesthetic treatment of scientific data, recorded through the scanning electron microscope, processed by computer, and printed through high quality color processing, Scharf controls the subject viewed by the Macintosh computer as a signal from the electron microscope; he subjects the image to coloration from a system of his own invention; and he further presses the limit of the current state of technology printing the image on a color-calibrated large format printer that precisely reads his definition for intense, saturated color.
Scharf's subjects – a result of his many projects to provide investigators with microscopic views – range from insects, botanical subjects, and nano particles to higher magnification of even smaller bacteriological specimens and the microworld of medical science. The image of an immature corn flower (cover), for instance, demonstrates the anthropomorphic nature of vegetal life when seen at a closer level than the eye can behold. Color, visible as pigment only at a macro level, is a virtual creation of the photographer's technique, produced by his patented process of using separate RGB (red, green, blue) electron detectors affording an eerie "natural" appearance. This color enhances the three-dimensional quality of the image enabling the viewer to read hills and valleys as if they were visually accessible without the aid of his technology.
It is signficant of Scharf's impeccable photographer's eye that his scientific images exude a kind of beauty usually reserved for paint on canvas or color photography. That these images could be subjected to the scrutiny of the art museum and its visitors, attests to the nature of his composition and resourceful selections from the less than visible world. Yet, science has found its way into the art museum for hundreds of years. Witness the magnificent drawings of Leonardo that explore the visual world with means now revered among the highest aesthetic traditions. At the brink of discovery Leonardo produced drawings that preserved an understanding of visual perception unknown before. The intention of these drawings was to record phenomena rather than to delight the senses. If however, the end result serves both goals, then the visual effect can be profound.
In the present day scientific photography similarly provides new information through a visual experience that aids discovery. Sophisticated instruments augment the camera's eye focusing upon distant as well as minute images. We can liken the electron microscope to a camera with the photographer in command of the way in which the material under scrutiny can be seen. David Scharf, using the scanning electron microscope (SEM) as his camera, manipulates the viewer's perception of objects too miniscule to see and too difficult to define under conventional scientific techniques.
Working for years with a tool that destroys its subject in order to observe it, Scharf manipulates the fatal vacuum tube that ordinarily snuffs out the life of its subject as it allows photographs to be made. The necessity to exclude oxygen from this large cylinder in order to facilitate the movement of electrons around the object under examination is part of the conventional operating procedure of the electron microscope. Normally the object desicates and shrivels in this environment. Scharf however, has developed a technique that keeps the integrity of the object in its original state. Working with his own electron microscope in his lab in Los Angeles, Scharf has defined a procedure that is revolutionary to the scientific world and has invented a technological process to color the object as he views it. He observes that on occasion, an insect under 70 seconds of this bombardment, often can be released into his garden, still alive.
Known for over twenty-five years for his SEM pictures, Scharf's images are regularly published in science journals, popular magazines – Time, Nature, and Discovery, to name a few – and even in cinema form. His earliest experience with the latter appears in the 1982 movie, "Blade Runner," in which his SEM image of a snake is revealed as a mechanical device, thus aiding Harrison Ford to "zoom in" on his opponent. Scharf this year received an Emmy award for his contributions to an IMAX film in which he incorporated animation of his specimens to travel through the body's interior.
Beginning his career as an engineering student at Monmouth College, Scharf went to California and ran a vacuum physics lab for Burroughs Corporation. There he found the process of seeing the unseen tantalizing and sought ways to continue to use the SEM eventually in his own studio. Since an electron microscope occupies an entire room of electronic equipment required for its fascinating process, he was able to fund his equipment through numerous studies for hire. He currently maintains an image bank that can be accessed for commercial and scientific use at a premium, income for the photographer.
The exhibition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery shows 59 of David Scharf's current images in which he has used virtual coloration, printing them from high-resolution digital computer files on a large-format inkjet printer. The photographer uses cutting edge technology to explore the microworld in an enhanced way, bringing the viewer to a new level of understanding of the forms and objects that we cannot see.
The Celebration of Woman in the Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise
Sept. 8 – Oct. 21, 2001
Egyptian Head, Gaston Lachaise, 1923
Lachaise Foundation
Gaston Lachaise was a sculptor of life found in portraits and metaphorical nudes that proclaim his love of the voluptuous celebration of human existence. Working in the first three decades of the 20th century, Lachaise produced monumental figures – and small sculptures that appear monumental – in both bronze and marble that attest to his goals. Though Lachaise's oeuvre contains sculptures of a large number of subjects – ornamental architectural adornments; peacock sculptures for the James Deering estate; a decorative frieze for the AT&T building – his passion for the figure drew him closest to becoming the human imperative.
The figure of woman cast in bronze as a metaphor for this celebration of the presence of life has loomed controversially in the oeuvre of Lachaise since his early work of the 1910s. Throughout his career and prominently focused in a group of small bronzes, appears the female nude which declares the vitality of the female form – a comment on the history of art from the cave era to the present. Female heads, as seen in Egyptian Head (cover), also give corporeal expression to the concept of woman as omnipresent reference to the mother goddess whose disembodied form oversees the life of humankind. Lachaise invoked in his sculpture, "the Goddess I am searching to express in all things," which he eventually found in his wife Isabel whom he had met in 1902 and eventually married in 1917.
The antecedent of these figural works can be seen in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Elevation of 1912-1927. A standing figure of a female nude, rising upon her toes with her fingers reaching upward gives evidence to the notion of lightness and delicacy of a robust body which otherwise declares ponderous weightiness. This sculpture and its subsequent study, Torso of Elevation (in the exhibition), is a seminal work for Lachaise and the model for his subsequent sculptures which utilize the female figure to express the dynamism of existence. It was Isabel, of course; she was the essence of his sculptural expression, his obsession throughout his life.
The figures, by and large, are of exceedingly robust forms that were neither the standard of feminine beauty of the times nor descriptive of particular women with whom he came in contact. Though his wife became his muse, she was only present as the spirit of his art not the direct translation of it. During and after the First World War, Lachaise was in conflict with "the cult of slenderness of 1918" which, according to Gilbert Seldes in a 1931 New Yorker article, showed the artist to be "a sort of public enemy of its thin and athletic idea."
A classicist born in 1882 and trained in France in the academic tradition the artist came to America in 1906 during the artistic era of expressionism. The avant-garde artist chose to follow in the path of Auguste Rodin, master proponent for sculpture of the human figure as the expression of life. Rodin had introduced in the late 1880s the use of the partial figure from his vast study of sculpture of Antiquity, made partial by the vagaries of time. The human figure, no matter how truncated, still contained the stuff of life, the constancy and persistence of existence.
Lachaise's early productive life in America led him to work as a sculptor's assistant casting swords and buttons to complete the academic Civil War sculptures of Henry Kitson. He eventually went to work for Paul Manship where he employed the art of gold working. He later settled in New York maintaining a studio separate from Isabel's apartment where she lived alone. There he worked at night on his own sculptures while drawing a paycheck during the daytime working for others.
His friendship with e. e. cummings, Lincoln Kirstein, Marsden Hartley, and others from the intellectual set involved in the publication of The Dial, brought champions to Lachaise's art and engaged interest from among the great collectors of the 1920s and 1930s. Among them, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and A. E. Gallatin were described as "a small liberal elite critical of the narrow philistinism of American culture, and in particular of the inhibited, repressive spirit of Puritanism that denied the body." In Lachaise's complex sculptures fraught with sexual overtones, the artist experimented with the newly publicized insights of Sigmund Freud. Eventually, with the fear of public outcry, his friends withheld Lachaise's more sexually explicit sculpture from his major exhibition of 1935 in the Museum of Modern Art. It was not until years after his untimely death from a sudden, brief bout with leukemia that same year that these works began to be shown.
The late works appear to be largely under the influence of such Stone Age fertility fetishes as the Venus of Willendorf which he first saw reproduced in 1923, Marsden Hartley described Lachaise's more "liberated" works as made by "a natural male. . .the indomitable pagan who saw the entire universe in the form of a woman." These figures were faceless and sometimes headless but constant in their emphases upon the generative spirit thought to be consistent with their function of promoting fecundity. In his 1993 art historical analysis of Lachaise's small sculptures, Sam Hunter quotes critic Barbara Rose's definition of the artist's female figure as "a voluptuous mother goddess who is neither madonna nor whore, but an abundant, generous fertility and creation symbol."
The Lachaise Foundation through the auspices of the Salander O'Reilly Galleries in New York has brought to the Lore Degenstein Gallery the opportunity to show thirty-nine small bronze sculptures – portraits and figures – along with drawings from the artist's oeuvre. We are greatly indebted to the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for making our exhibition program possible.
2000–01
Hans Moller, Purveyor of Color: the Essence of a Vision
April 28 – June 10, 2001
Hans Moller. Glowing Horizon. 1969. oil on canvas, 45 x 60"
Estate of the Artist.
At the forefront of the New York artworld in less than ten years after his 1933 arrival in the United States, German-born artist Hans Moller (1904-2000) invoked a strength and determination to discover the art of his new homeland. The opportunities for him in America were legion. He vigorously explored stylistic variations on the avant garde movements that had been so vehemently rejected by the rising Third Reich in Nazi Germany. During those early American years before he broke away to try the tempers of New York critics and the gallery scene, Moller had been hired as a graphics designer within a week after landing in New York, and in the 1940's he taught art classes at Cooper Union. More significantly, he found financial stability in his experiments with Surrealsim from 1943 to the early 1950s.
With an oeuvre of over 1,300 oil paintings, watercolors, and collages, Hans Moller left a legacy to the devotees of his art and to a history of life confined to the making of it. His exibitions sold out each year spreading among a large group of collectors the bulk of his production. The museum world was to benefit from Moller's presence with a few paintings granted over the years by purchases and gifts. Though numerous small exhibitions regularly explored his current year's work, the large analytical retrospective was not to take place until after his death in the year 2000 at age 95.
Beads
Feb. 24 – April 8, 2001 Oct. 21 – Dec. 3, 2000
Garden Party, Kaua'I (detail). A. Kimberlin Blackburn. Beads. 13.5 x 9.5 x 19.5"
Collection of the artist.
"Bead International 2000," an exhibition organized by The Diary Barn Cultural Arts Center in Athens, Ohio, highlights seventy pieces of contemporary beadwork by fifty-seven artists. The exhibition is a result of a juried competition among artists who work in the specialized medium of beads. Through this exhibition, the Lore Degenstein Gallery offers our campus communtity a revelation of the many inventive and imaginative ways beads are used today as a medium of artistic expression.
The History of these of beads goes back to the beginning of time. As a material that was used for ornamentation, it can be traced to 38,000 B.C. in the area known later as Mesopotamia in the Ancient World. Made of glass, shell, bone, or whatever else nature could provide, these object transended all cultures. Mainly beads were used in stitchery as a form if decoration for everyday objects. However, in many societies beads ave also been vital to communication. They have served as an important part of a culture's forms of welath and exchange. It is also typical that many cultures have added a spiritual connotation to these objects. For example, today, religions of nearly two-thirds of the world's population utilize some form of prayer beads. Now there is a new type of art which enables us to encounter this material. The recent emergence of beads used as a medium of fine art has become of current interest in many exhibitions and museums worldwide.
Beads are no longer designed only for jewery, adornment, or communication. They are used to interpret the elements of art through their special characteristics of decoration, energy, and the incorporation of ideas. "Beads International 2000" is a focus on the experience of beadwork as a medium of fine art. Beadwork artists are exploring criteria new to their process through traditional elements of all artforms. Traditionally, beadwork has been considered a craft. The idea of craft becoming art is more accessible if we remember that it is not defined by its technique and materials but by its form and content. The objects offered in thes show reveal artist seeking to stimulate thought and dialogue, while intending to excite and challenge the viewer.
The selection process and the artwork presented in theis exhibition were the result of a complex jury procedure that reviewed over 400 works during a yearlong competition in the year 2000. Jurors were David K. Chatt, NanC Meinhart, and Kenneth R. Trapp. Each artist submitted up to three objects for consideration. The submissions included a range of objects created by a time-consuming, detailed process to those focusing on the most literal definition of a bead as any pierced object. The exhibition includes a diverse technical representation of an aesthetically stimulating example of the medium.
It is the hope of the curators and jurors of this show that a new audience will be receptive to all that bead art now illustrates and that viewers will leave with a newfound appriciation for contemporary beadwork. By bringing these works together, the exhibition gives is a look at the variety and quality of the medium.
We appriciate the efforts of The Dairy Barn Cultural Arts Center in Ohio for their cooperation in organizing this exhibition. In addition, we acknowledge the generosity of the Charles B. Degenstein Foundation in providint partial funding for this exhibition. This was a large undertaking and it is with excitement that we invite you to come see this heritage of antiquity brought to new life.
Dwayne Franklin: Letter From A Land Of Sinners
Sept. 9 – Oct. 8, 2000
Detail from a work in progress. Dwayne Franklin. Oil on wood. 2000. 4 x 5"
In trying to define the art of Dwayne Franklin, one finds how nearly impossible it is to make a concise declaration. The viewer cannot conveniently find a concrete foundation for his images. They are simply points of departure for us to interpret as we wish.
Though his work remains enigmatic, Franklin's background can more easily be explained. As a child, he lived in such cultually diverse areas as Japan, California, and Texas. He graduated from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 1985 and is represented by Gomez Gallery in Baltimore. He lives and works at his art in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Through several conversations with Franklin, Interim Galery Director Jody Horn posed several questions that generated a brief discussion offereing a glimpse into his art and what it means to him.
JH: Why "Letter from a Land of Sinners"as a title for this show?
DF: I like the way that words and phrases come together. It's a near quotation from a poem by Adrienne Rich. I didn't think of it while I was making the work. It came to mind
when asked for a title. I always thought that it was a particularly evocative line. She's a good writer. You'll have to look her up.
JH: You have defined this work as "non-linear narratives." What do you mean by that?
DF: Non-linear, not straight, multi-directional, without a clearcut beginning, middle , or end. False narrative is another apt description.
JH: A narrative suggests you are trying to tell us something; a story is being told. Are you trying to communicate something with these images?
DF:Narrative refers to a process or technique. My work IS narrative. This implies that there is a diaogue that occurs between the one telling the story and the one listening. In this case, the work is the storyteller; the viewer is the listener. The narrative, or dialogue, is what occus in the "space"between the viewer and the work.
JH: You went to The Maryland Institute College of Art. What do we see in your work today that is a direct reminder of that study?
DF: Everything, and nothing. I was around amazing people. I saw amazing things. I can't begin to sum up the experience. The city of Baltimore was as much a part of my education as the Institute. I wasn't prepared for all that I would see. I could just as well stuck a pin in a map as to have found myself in a place so foreign.
JH: What would be some of the artistic influences (artists, styles, works) that relate to you?
DF: No comment. I look at everything and everyone. I don't consciously take from anyone. Whether you're talking about something that's abstract or figurative, a good painting has essential qualities of presence. It's not something that you can put into words. You internalize what you come to understand and hope that your work emits this presence that you admire. As far as style is concerned, that's a bad word. I paint figuratively for the most part, but my focus is something abstract. What style is that?
JH: Finally, what would ne the message you hope viewers will get out of these image?
DF: Well, I didn't set out to give a message so I guess there isn't one. I kind of set out to make pictures. Hopefully, interesting pictures that hold people's attention, maybe give them something to talk about.
Franklin's art appears currently in the Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehana University. To further explore the evolution of his work, his Web site is located at the www.dickinson.edu/~franklid. We are grateful to the artist for this installation and a glimpse of his work. The exhibition is made possible through that generosity of the Charles B. Degenstein Foundation which supports the gallery's programs.
1999–2000
Mahantongo Valley Quilts and Crafts: A Pennsylvania-German Community's Surviving Aestheic
April 29 – June 5, 2000
Appliqéd Quilt from the Mahantongo Valley, "Blazing Suns" pattern. Made and quilted by Salome Falk Diehl. 88.3 x 79.5"
Courtesy of Hugh and Mary Lou Wagner.
Situated in Central Pennsylvania just east of the Susquehanna River in Schuylkill and Dauphin counties, on the southern border of Northumberland county, lies a small Germanic community that began its culture in the late 18th century and continues its folk art traditions into the present. Responding to a need for color and exuberantly decorated objects for the home, the residents produced an idiosyncratic style in their arts and crafts that is the focus of this exhibition. Most notable among the works shown is the distinctive treatment and handling of needlework, particularly in their quilts. Though the colors and symbols in their work maintain a direct, rudimentary formula of reds, greens, and yellows with recognizable designs which include the eight-point star, the heart, and flowers - often the tulip - Mahantongo Valley artisans transform everyday objects into vibrant works of art.
We are priveledged to have as curator of this exhibition Jane DuPree Richardson, Director of the Northumberland County Historical Society, who initiated her research through a comprehensive survey of quilts from the Valley. Discovering through her inquiries a parallel among the painted objects, the fraktur, the furniture, baskets, household objects, hand-worked metal items with designs and colors of the quilts, Richardson defined a group of objects that, shown together, demonstrates the integral nature of their craft and vision.
The name of the community, "Mahantongo," was so designated by the Delaware Indians as "plenty of meat" or "good hunting grounds." A creek which divides Northumberland and Dauphin counties as well as a mountain which delimits the valley to the south both bear the word, Mahantongo, thus providing the valley with its name. Richardson describes its location as:
Nestled in the pocket of the Blue Mountains of Central Pennsylvania's Appalachian chain, the Mahantongo Valley extends east from the Susquehanna River for seventeen miles. Bordered to the north by Line Mountain - once the boundary between the Commonwealth and the Indian Lands - it extends four miles to the south where the Mahantongo Mountain closes the valley.
Two major communities are defined by the Mahantongo Valley watersheds where the traditional artforms can also be found: the Schwaben Creek to the north and the Mahantongo Creek to the south. Unification of these areas may have been the result of the circuit followed by Isaac Faust Stiehly, a Reformed minister, who from 1827 to 1864 regularly serviced the churches potentially bringing them to an integration of the arts.
The Mahantongo Valley aesthetic has been explored in various recent studies, particularly those of Frederick S. Weiser and Mary Hammond-Sullivan who focused attention on decorated furniture made in the region. They described a highly distinctive furniture that had been created between 1798 and 1828 along the Schwaben Creek Area of the Mohantongo Valley. Henry M. Reed's Decorated Furniture of the Mahantongo Valley limited its research to extraordinary pieces of furniture shown in an exhibition at Bucknell University in 1987 for which there was an exhibition catalogue. Through the breadth of these and other less-formalized studies, a view of the spread of the Mahantongo Valley culture to the adjacent areas closer to the Susquehanna River can be found in art objects from outlying regions as well.
The Lore Degenstein Galllery will display numerous works of art and craft from the hands of the historic creators, including quilts, coverlets, and other objects that demonstrate the aesthetic unique to the Mahantongo Valley. We appreciate athe generosity of all those who lent objects to this exhibition. We are particularly appreciative of Jane DuPree Richardson for her efforts and professional expertise in bringing this exhibition to Susquehanna University. We are deeply indebted to the Degenstein Gallery Endowment for making our exhibition program possible.
Collecting In The Academic Environment
March 18 – April 16, 2000
Red-figure Oenochoe. Greek. Terra cotta. c. 6th-4th century BCE.
Permanent Collection of the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
What is the value of collecting works of art and artifacts fo artistic and historical nature for the academic museum? Why is it desirable to expend efforts and resources in the maintenance and care of objects that help us define ourselves or our past? These are the questions whose answers describe the university or college museum's intention to bring these values to the students and the campus community. The role of the collection in the academic environment is to provide an ongoing opportunity for works of art to be viewed and, more importantly, studied, providing a dialogue among members of the art audience to learn about cultural and aesthetic values.
Collections begin the moment art objects are acquired by the college. Some are from generous donors whose interest in particular types of art brought them pleasure during their lives to be shared with others in the future. Some collections are provided with an interest in impacting upon the visual environment of the campus with works of art that engender discussions. Others may afford a provocative view of art and society either in the recent or distant past. Art is never meant to "decorate," but intends to facilitate our passage through life.
The museum collection has never been more successful to this end than in the present, however, it must be noted that the notion of building and art collection appeared more than 2000 years ago with the Greek Hellenistic reverence for the treasures of their own culture and the preservation fo relics of their past:
About 290 B.C. Ptolemy I established a center of learning [in Alexandria] dedicated to the muses (hence "museum," house of the muses, "mouseion" in Greek). It consisted of the famous library in addition to collections in all of the museum fields, and astronomical observatory, and facilities for research and for establishment and was, in fact, the first real museum.
Thus, the museum and its collections were deemed important in the preservation of art and artifacts of the past, even in the Ancient World. Earlier still, in 5th century B.C. Greece, we are told fo the Pinakotheke, a building on the Athenian Acropolis that is known to have supported a picture gallery. The northern wing of the Propylaea contains a large rectangular hall that provided, according to architectural historian Marvin Trachtenberg, "the first room known to be built especially for this purpose. Light was admitted through the central doorway and the flanking windows; the pictures themselves were displayed on boards fastened to the walls."
In our present day conception of the collecting and exhibiting of art in the academic environment, we realize the significance fo providing our public with the opportunity to study the objects in the collection, an important function of the Lore Degenstein Gallery. Not only do we display special exhibitions from collections outside the university, but we make available the works that are maintained within the Gallery's collection. An example of this effort can be noted in our use of the Joseph and Ann Silbaugh gift of French Posters. A photograph of each poster is currently being entered into a database and will subsequently be stored on a CD-ROM disc that can be borrowed from the Gallery for for the purpose of studying the artwork. An added measure of interest in this collection is the benefit of sharing some of the work with other institutions in travelling exhibition. An exhibition organized by the Gallery with the assistance of museum studies students and interns, entitled "Marketing Mamas: the Provocative Woman in French Advertising Art," has travelled to Colgate University where it was shown in the Picker Art Museum.
Since the Lore Degenstein Gallery's inception in 1993, numerous gifts and collections of artwork have been brought into the permanent collection. The present exhibtion invites a brief glance at some of these objects, demostrating the strengths and the treasures that they represent. Among the various gifts, we show a small group of ancient artifacts that were given to the university many years ago. The donor's name and the provenance of these pieces (the history of the objects' posession through time) are, at present, unknown, however, we display the objects in the hope of learning more about them. Featured in this group is a small pinched-lip pitcher – and "oenochoe" from Ancient Greece. It is a red-figure terra-cotta vase in the style that originated around 530 B.C. and was used for pouring liquid, perhaps water or wine. Noting the profile of the face on the front of the vase, the image of a greek deity comes to mind. Although little is known about its provenance, it provides a meaningful dialogue with its viewer. Other artworks given to the university since 1993 invite an appreciation of the artists who created them. Though the exhibition is diverse in its offerings, it shows the variety of aesthetic approaches in the collection
John Fischer's Electronic Paintings
Jan. 29 – Feb. 27, 2000
CD017. John Fischer. Print on handmade archival paper. 1997. 36 x 36"
The term "electronic paintings' refers to computer graphics that in some manner relates to the painter's art, i.e, the use of formal qualities characteristic to painting. Though both painting and drawing share a number of these forms, that which is usually considered distinctive to painting is color. Computers have remarkable facility with color in graphic design applications, evidenced by brilliant computer screen displays, enabling the computer artist to create endless images "painted" with "millions of colors" available on the screen. But the art fails if it has no foundation in the elements of artistic training and experience in traditional media and methods.
Computer art by John Fischer bears the mark of the experienced virtual artist. His background in traditional art training at City University in New York, along with many years of exploration of the media of painting and drawing, give evidence to the mature vision of this artist. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1930, Fischer's education also includes study in classical piano which launched his later interest into modern jazz. His numerous jazz compositions for piano developed into a career parallel with his painting and sculpture, soon to become uniquely integrated with his computer-generated art.
It was not until 1975 that Fischer began to discover a correlation between the composition of music by electronic means with that of electronic "painting." As computer technology advanced, his art evolved into color fantasies that shared paradigms with that of music. His recent compositions include video productions of images and music that bear the rhythmic parameters of each.
Fischer described the discovery of the phenomenon in his art, remarking in 1993 that:
After years of drawing and painting with traditional materials, I found in the computer's graphic capabilities a magical universe – irresistible, fascinating. The computer's visual prowess is seemingly endless in its diversity. In collaboration with the latest in software programming, the artist creates new pictorial vocabularies... The computer solves visual problems in a way that changes the rhythm of the creative process. The transformations are virtually instantaneous. The work appears in the mind's eye and is realized on the monitor's screen.
Suggesting the immediacy of the resolution of idea and image, Fischer developed an affinity with a medium that was boundless in its anticipations. Rather than the more pedestrian term, computer art, the artist prefers the notion of "electronic paintings," which lends an air of sophistication to a medium both facile and quickly realized.
Fischer's electronic painting, CD017, 1997, exemplifies the elements of abstract lines and tertiary colors in a "wash" of greens and oranges across its surface. Working in Pixel Paint® and Adobe Photoshop®, Fisher achieves a painterly quality in his work that is subsequently printed on handmade archival paper, creating an effect of a color lithograph or tightly controlled watercolor painting. The colors are saturated, intense with a preponderance of movement that almost suggests a musical accompaniment.
Fischer spends his time now in his New York environs and in those of Geneva, Switzerland, where he enjoys the stimulation of sharing his discoveries through teaching art. His legacy to the world of music is replete with composition including a concerto for piano with thirteen instruments as well as an octet for woodwinds and brass. He has appeared at jazz festivals in Austria, Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
Fischer's legacy to the visual arts appears in the current exhibition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery. We are appreciative of the artist's efforts to bring our audience over fifty works that alloww us a glimpse of the breadth of invention availabe in the world of computer art. The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Charles B. Degenstein foundation which supports the gallery's programs.
Buggies: The Development of the Horse-Drawn Light Carriage in Central Pennsylvania
Oct. 23 – Dec. 10, 1999
The William A. Heiss Coach Works. Vintage photograph.
Collection of the Mifflinburg Buggy Museum.
When the horseless carriage made its impact as the major mode of transportation around the turn of the nineteenth centruy, it replaced a tradition of wheeled vehicles that saw their origins far back into Antiquity. The American buggy fueled the popular taste for individual transportation in rural as well as urban settings. In Central Pennsylvania even today the presence of buggies still persists with numerous groups of people resisting technological innovation in efforts to retain a lifestyle of the past.
The history of the buggy in America appears to have had its inception around the 1850s with the intention of providing a vehicle that would exhibit a number of desirable properties over its predecessor coaches and wagons. First, it limited transport of riders to two, providing a means of personal transportation for such individuals as physicians and landlords who wanted to avoid the delays imposed upon them in larger vehicles when additional passengers requested rides. Moreover, the nature of rutted and poorly maintained roadways at mid-century made heavier vehicles more cumbersome and difficult to manage. The lightweight buggy, built to clip along at a brisk pace, was the answer to the transportation needs of the nation. Its ease of handling because of its weight, also made it suitable for women to drive. Charles M. Snyder in his essay, Buggy Town: An Era of American Transporation, 1984, notes the popularity of the vehicle:
The word "buggy" was scarcely a part of the American vocabulary until mid-century. In fact for some years after the public was flocking to acquire them, most of the manufacturers continue to call their businesses coach or carriage works. But it was the buggy which became their principal stock in trade, and "horse and buggy days" remains an appropriate expression of the era between 1865 and 1915.1
The means of spreading the word on the design and manufacture of buggies took place in the literature of The Carriage Monthly, a journal began in 1865. Carriage Builders' National Association, organized in 1872, held annual conventions at Madison Garden in New York at which designers and manufacturers could develop advances on the mechanics and decoattive treatments of the vehicle.
In the first published manufacturing of the buggy, a number of high-level artisans were employed including, among others, the tanner, the blacksmith, the machinist, the carpenter, the woodworker, the painter, and the wheelwright. Buggies were manufactured in a particular order, beginning with the body, the wheel, the gears (axles and springs), shafts and poles, and, finally, paint and trimmings. As the form of the buggy evolved, big city manufacturers referred to their type or style by terms familiar to the public: piano box, square coal box, cut under, panel seat, square box, spindle seat, the Jenny Lind, and the Brewster. The piano box buggy was by far the most popular in the early 20th century.
Numerous centers for the production of the buggy were established both in large cities and small rural towns. The intense demand for more buggies developed a kind of cottage industry in which manufacturing companies sprang up everywhere, increasing their production before the advent of the auto. Success stories may be told by the names of prominent manufacturers – the Brewster, for instance – however, smaller successes also appeared in regional productions of the vehicle.
One such success story may be found in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, a small town situated northwest of the Susquehanna River Valley not far from Susquehanna University. Lovingly referred to as "Buggy Town," it once supported over 70 family-owned companies producing buggies. Early days saw the fabrication of all manner of parts and elements of the buggy's structure, however, the machine-manufactured parts business began to flourish in the last quarter of the century making assembly of the vehicle easier, so new emphasis was placed on custom finishing.
Among the Mifflinburg buggy companies was a prominent firm founded by William A. Heiss in 1883. Actively producing some of the community's finest examples, Heiss continued to operate well into "post-buggy days," finally succumbing to the automobile's impact as did most of the Mifflinburg companies between 1908 and 1912.
The William A. Heiss Coach Works, manufacturer of quality buggies, survives today in a new form – that of the Mifflinburg Buggy Museum. Several buildings, including the blacksmith shop, the family home, and the repository of display center, have been preserved in a pristine state, housing buggies of various types from the community as a museum of historic artifacts related to the development of the buggy in Mifflinburg.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery brings this exhibition of a selection of objects from the museum, including examples of authentically restored buggies which tell the story of a place of honor for this important utility vehicle. Various other museums and collections have provided additional objects. Through the gracious accommodations of the Board of Directors of the Buggy Museum and the museum's director, James Remar, we are pleased to hold an exhibition which portrays American ingenuity in one of its icipient forms, the art of invention and productivity.
Christopher Ries: Sculpture of Glass
Sept. 11 – Oct. 10, 1999
Sunflower. Christopher Ries. Optical crystal glass, pigment, and gilt. 1992. 12 x 38.5"
Collection of the artist and Schott Glass Technologies.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery of Susquehanna University welcomes an exhibition of glass sculpture by Christopher Ries as the opening exhibition of our 1999-2000 year. Ries works on his sculpture at Schott Glass Technologies in Duryea, Pennsylvania, where he has been an artist in residence since 1986. Schott is a manufacturer of precision optical glass, providing material for such applications as large lenses for telescopes and other industrial uses of glass. It made a distinctive collaboration for the sculptor to combine his working process with a company that could provide him with the high-quality material needed to fit his aesthetic and technical purposes.
Ries's sculpture employs the technique of coldwork. As opposed to heating and blowing glass sculpture, Ries grinds, slices, cuts, carves, polishes, and otherwise treats the surface of glass material while it is cold to refine its reflective and refractive properties. His finished product incorporates forms which enhance his goals by introducting ambient light into the final effect. Some of his pieces are monumental forms; Sunflower, 1992, for example, utilizes simple facets carved into 770 pounds of glass along with engraved images of petals and plant forms to give the impression of a large flower floating in a crystal pool.
Ries's collabrative project with Schott Glass has led to opportunities for both the corporation and the sculptor to advantage. Ries states,
I began to promote this material to other artists which led to a secondary market for Schott, whose primary market is ophthalmic glass, laser glass, radiation shielding, optic crystal, and such. They had a fair quantity of glass that did not meet the company's very rigid specifications. That glass used to be turned into landfill as there was no scientific use for second-quality material. But Schott's second-quality glass is at least three times as good as the very best being made in art glass studios. To an artist, the glass was a dream material.1
For Schott's benefit, Ries offers demonstations of the use of hand grinding and polishing techniques, particularly that of diamond technology, and he has bult a polishing lathe which facilitates the polishing of large round and curved forms by hand. Ries feels that one of the important benefits of the collaboration is that the company is able to display his work at trade shows. The attractive nature of the artwork, Ries says, "always draws a crowd."2
After receiving his BFA degree at Ohio State University in 1975, Ries found his focus on glass to be continued at the University of Wisconsin where his graduate studies allowed him to maintain a private glassblowing studio in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. He was later to abandon the hotwork process and begin a viable affiliation with Schott to develop new techniques which are evident today in his oeuvre.
Objects in the exhibition include Sunflower, mentioned previously, and several smaller works that can be experienced for their intricate approach to carving utilizing the surfaces of the scultpure to provide an illusion of interior forms. Many of these sculptures can be seen at the conclusion of the exhibition at Ries's studion and gallery near Scranton.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery appreciates the efforts of the artist and David Schimmel of Schott Glass Technologies for bringing the exhibition to Susquehanna. We are also deeply indebted to the Degenstein Center Theater and Lore Degenstein Gallery Endowment for making our exhibition program possible.
1998–99
A Celebration of Sculpture at Susquehanna University A Special Selection of Large and Small Sculptures by Glenn Zweygardt
May 1 – June 6, 1999
Slice II. Glenn Zweygardt. Granite and steel. 1993. 8 x 4 x 4'
Collection of Susquehanna University.
When outdoor sculpture takes its place amidst the architecture and landscape of a college campus, it proclaims a celebration of art to be witnessed by all who walk past it. Susquehanna University has been priviliged to enjoy art in Lore Degenstein Gallery for the last six years, bringing a range of art from traditional landscape paintings to modernist abstraction into the lives of the campus community. Now the gallery joins in the celebration of modernist sculptures that take their place outdoors to proclaim the importance of art entering into campus life.
In late March 1999 three large sculptures were installed at Susquehanna, gifts of Muriel and the late Philip I. Berman. The Bermans, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, have been noted collectors of art and benefactors to numerous collge and university campuses. Dr. Muriel Berman offered a gift of three sculptures to the university, thereby beginning an opportunity for art to become a visual presence on campus. The university was granted a selection from among the vast Berman collection of modernist sculpture. The works chosen represent current issues in American sculpture that address aspects of the 20th-century dialogue between realism and abstraction. The artists of the selected works Menashe Kadishman, John Hock, and Glenn Zweygardt, each worked in an idiosyncratic language that explores material and techniques from their artistic milieu.
Kadishman's Three Discs, fabricated of construction-grade steel, challenges our sense of gravity as the discs appear to fall over, setting up visual tension engendering the expectation of thier spilling onto the ground. Kadisman, an Israeli artist who has numerous works in major sculpture collections, often toys with his viewers' awareness that steel has an inherent weight and power that is manifest in architecture of the 20th centurey. The surfce of his sculptures bears the marks of the environment – acid raid and environmental pollutants which add rust and color changes to its presentation.
John Hock's untitled sculpture traces the history of the twentieth-centure modernism arising from the early 1930's when Pablo Picasso and Julio Gonzalez experimented with found pieces of metal that shared elements of their original shapes with the new forms created by their constructions. Faces and the human figure began to "grow" visually as the sculptures take on new lives in the bringing together of pieces of metal. Hock works in the spirit of these constructivist sculptors, welding building materials and castoff pieces of similar metals together to bring a sort of totemic presence to his work.
Glenn Zweygardt seeks primordial essence in his large granite sculpture, entitled Slice II, incorporating the language of monumental, steel construction material with natural, unaltered quarry stone. Creating the illusion of the heavy stone being parted by a triangular blade of steel, Zweygardt sets up an incongruity with our visual belief system and forces a recognition of the affinity between the power of both materials, natural and manmade.
Lore Degenstein Gallery Celebrates Campus Sculpture
To complement the campus sculpture while celebrating the Bermans' gift, the Lore Degenstein Gallery has organized an exhibition of works large and small by Glenn Zweygardt. Professor of Sculpture and Head of the Art Department at the College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Zweygardt has had a relationship with the Bermans since the early 1970s when one of his sculptures was purchased by the collectors and given to Temple University. Philip Berman purchased the maquette for his private collection and became aware of other work by Zweygardt through an exhibition catalogue. Desiring to see more, the Bermans drove to Alfred, New York, in a snowstorm to see the originals. After catching view of six sculptures covered with snow, the Bermans decided to purchase them all, hence, the beginning of remarkable years of patronage with the young sculptor. After that initial encounter, Philip bought all Zweygardt's pieces in each subsequent show.
Zweygardt's reputation began to develop as the Bermans each year continued to purchase his work which they gave to colleges and universities. The artist was the first contemporary sculptor to have work placed on the campus of Ursinus Collge, a beginning of many benevolences to follow for the college, including the Bermans' establishment of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art.
While Zweygardt's earlier work was constructed metal, in the 1980's his interest in materials changed. He went with Philip to a quarry to see large pieces of granite dynamited and removed from the ground. Berman became fascinated with the possibilities of stone re-emerging in sculptural art with the same profundity as modern steel, its surfaces bearing the marks of the powerful tools that released it from the earth. Setting up a working atelier at the Wentz granite monument works in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Philip provided the means by which Zweygardt could fabricate his new ideas in sculpture.
Artists' work often evolves with the serendipity of new encounters, and such was the case with Zweygardt's interest in cast glass. Hiring a new faculty member at Alfred University, Steve Edwards, who worked in a glass casting process, Zweygardt began to introduce "occuli" or windows of solid, sometimes colored glass into his massive stone pieces. His intent for Slice II is to carve an opening into the large slab and place a cast glass "eye" into its surface. The sculpture has been sited to take advantage of the angle of the sun which will stream through the glass at certain times of the day. At this moment, Zweygardt is discussing red as the color of the glass. It is anticipated that in the fall 1999, the artist will provide a demonstration of the process to Susquehanna students as he installs the glass.
The gallery exhibition will display several large pieces of Zweygardt's sculpture and a number of smaller maquettes giving the opportunity to show a retrospective collection of work by the artist. It is through the generous spirit of Muriel and Philip Berman that Susquehanna University is able to enjoy the treasures of modern sculpture, adding our name to the list of many Pennsylvania institutions that have been so honored.
Marketing Mamas The Provocative Woman in French Poster Art
March 27 – April 25, 1999
Reard of California: Le Premier Maillot de Bain du Monde. Paris: Galliard.
Permanent Collection of the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
Throughout the 20th-century visual advertising has used the tantalizing image of a beautiful woman, sometimes provocative in presentation and certainly her request that the public take note of her as she makes her pitch to sell a product. That French art has innovatively employed the richly produced poster is well known to collectors and to the public that has "enjoyed" the medium since its rise to artistic status in the 1890s. The female figure is often subtle in its presence among these posters, suggesting that for more than 100 years they contain the message that female sexuality sells.
An assessment of the role played by women as sales provocateur is the subect of the current exhibition, a selection of thirty-one large French posters from the extensive collection of Susquehanna University's Lore Degenstein Gallery. Over 1,600 posters came to the university in 1997 through a generous gift from Joseph and Ann Silbaugh. Independent appraisals described this gift as the "largest collection of French Poster art in the United States." Posters in the exhibition range from 1897 to 1988 including work of such prominent artists as Bernard Villemot, Pierre Fix-Masseau, and Razzia.
The subjects of the selected posters include figures that overtly express sexual provocation and sophistication, but, curiously, are not necessarily aimed at a male audience. Products offered include bicycles, art exhibitions, the lottery, alcoholic beverages, household appliances, women's shoes, and dance hall performances. Consequently, the majority of these posters are aimed at the female consumer, perhaps appealing to her need to acquire sophistication or sexual power and beauty.
One poster, particularly, illustrates this issue. Does an advertisement for bathing suits by Reard of California direct its "come hithter" gesture to an admiring male? Rather the act of purchasing the bathing suit addresses the woman consumer, guaranteeing her instant social adoration. The message states: purchase it and receive the magic talisman that transforms its wearer into an attractive bathing beauty.
The French use of the sophisticated model to sell a product has been established since the inception of the medium. A promise of sexual power is subtly suggested when viewers are offered a glass of wine and a promise of pleasurable moments ahead; or a ride on the Orient Express offers a similar assurance of a discreet sexual liaison. It is the promise of attainable sophistication with the implication that the buyer will acquire a certain personal power that directs the message.
Some of the posters seem to provocatively speak directly to a mail audience. If, for example, a figure bares her breasts and raises her skirt, is she not inviting a male consumer to purchase her thermostatically controlled space heater? Seductively attired figures appear in many of the posters, enticing the viewer to attend performances of burlesque dance reviews or art exhibitions or to invest in the lottery.
The limited literature about the artists of these posters persuades us to take a closer look at not only the treatment of the subject in the allure of its advertising, but in the artistic milieu that is presented. Three artists represented in the exhibition demonstrate the profound significance of the message: Bernard Villemot, Pierre Fix-Masseau, and Razzia. A poster is "like a telegraph that speaks to the multitudes," said Villemot. An artist of considerable reputation in commercial advertising, Villemot contracted throughout his career with Bally Shoes and Orangina. His hand-painted approach harks back to a style before the 1970s before photography largely supplanted the images of graphic artists. Pierre Fix-Masseau, working earlier in the century, brought ideas of modern reductivism into his art. Clean, straightforward with a minimum of detail strike the viewer with the value of the product rather than of his technical prowess. Razzia (his Lnomme d'artiste), who is currently working in Paris and New York, presses the issue of the sophisticated model as the sales person in his poster art. His "hard-edge" realism reflects the fashion industry's present interest in exoticism, although his posters focus on automobiles and sparkling wines rather than on feminine products alone.
Scholarship on French poster art of the twentieth century is still to be written. The poster itself has been analyzed through many significant studies of worldwide examples throughout the century, however, the focus on idividual French artists, the agencies and products that represent them, and the range of their contributions to the development of advertising in other countries is yet to be published. Exhibition catalogues have tended to be based on the individual collections of museums, which have broadenend their vision of national styles. It is the specificity of focus on the present exhibition, "Marketing Mamas," that explores more the subject of the advertisers' audience than that of the artists themselves, generating an interest in the visual methods necessary to convey their messages. We anticipate that Susquehanna University's extensive collection of French posters will inspire students and scholars for year to come in the quest for knowledge about this artform.
The students of the Spring 1999 Museum Studies course led by Dr. Valerie Livingston were largely responsible for the organization, curatorship, and mounting of this exhibition. They include: Christine Catafalmo; Erin Kennedy; Tim La Pointe; Victoria Long; Jennifer Messimer; and Brooke Ollinger.
Edward S. Curtis Photographs of the North American Indian 1907-1930
Jan. 30 – Feb. 28, 1999
Pima Matron. Edward S. Curtis. Photogravure from The Indians of North America, Volume II. 1907. 14.375 x 11.69"
Collection of the Payne Gallery of Moravian College.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the North American Indian became a cultural curiosity, scrutinized by such painters and sculptors as Charles Russell and Frederic Remington in remarkable reconstructions of prairie life that caputred the hearts of the American public. It was the time of the Wild West Show; it was the minting of the Buffalo Nickel, to mention a few commonly recognized commentaries on the presence of the Native American culture in our midst. In the spirit of this movement to acknowledge the indigenous people of the U.S., a photographer from Seattle sought to document some eighty Indian tribes by producing a "faithful" rendering of their appearance and folklore. Edward S. Curtis, a prominent studio photographer, determined to recreate the romantic past of days of Indian lore at a time when warfaring and hostilities toward the white population was safely relegated to melodrama. Curtis began his "cataloging" procedure by effecting a sense of inclusivity among various tribes, photographing men, women, and children in costume performing routine tasks, recreating Indian-like activities, and simply posing for their portrait.
Over a period of twenty-three years, Curtis was able to publish these photographs bearing the title The North American Indian, which was amplified by his commentary. Twenty volumes of Moroccan leather-bound text provided an extraordinary document of his efforts accompanied by twenty folios each containing thirty-five large photogravure prints; the image were printed in a coppery tone on fine ivory paper. The effect was dramatic. The impact shared a similar intent to that of the mid-19th century documentation of the American Indian, painter George Catlin: to preserve a vanishing culture for posterity. Curtis defined his task: The pictures should be made according to the best of modern methods and of a size that the face might be studied as the Indian's own flesh.... The pictures were to be transcriptions for future generations that they might behold the Indian as nearly lifelike as possible as he moved about before he ever saw a paleface or knew there was anything human or in nature other than what he himself had seen.
The subject of Curtis's photographs were seldom unaware of the camera. Dressed in native costume, sometimes with props provided by the photographer, young maidens and elderly chieftains alike contributed to the record of themselves somberly and, on occasion, winsomely. A young woman from the Pima tribe disguises a moment of laughter as she is caught with a woven basket balanced precariously on her head. An ancient tribesman presents the silence of his station wearing the feather bonnet that marks the position of importance. Closeup portraits identify individuals of note: Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and Geronimo, whom Curtis had met at the White House during Theodore Roosevelt's inagural procession.
Among the portraits Curtis also included staged activities: mounted Indians in a war party and sham battles similar to the Wild West Shows. In these photographs the reflection of popular taste for the warfaring Great Plains tribes appears as the focus of Curtis's images. On occasion Curtis was criticized for developing stereotypes of "Indianness," but a reading of the accompanying text suggests his awareness of this aim, perhaps demonstrating their small hope for the future as long as they retain the instincts of their past. There is a poignancy in these photographs that seeks an audience, more intent than by accident.
Curtis's project was expensive. To produce in the highest available technology the limited edition of photographs and text, Curtis sought funding amongst his family, friends, and, eventually, President Theodore Roosevelt and financier J. Piermont Morgan. Morgan was so fascinated with Curtis's proposed endeavor that he pledged $15,000 per year for five years to cover the cost of production to be repaid in sales and books. Curtis was summarily engaged not only to make field trips to gather images of the Native Americans, but also to serve in the capacity of publisher and salesman to recoup the funds by selling subscriptions in advance of each volume's publication.
Beginning in 1906 Curtis hired Frederick Webb Hodge as his editor. Hodge worked for the Smithsonian Institution and also edited The American Anthropologist. They undertook the first field trip to the lands of Apache, Navajo, and Hopi tribes, photographing peoples and their rituals and recording their ceremonies with Curtis's "motion picture machine." Throughout his subsequent years of gathering materials for his book, Curtis acquired audio recordings of the voices and music of the tribes, the earliest made on Edison Cylinders. His time spent raising money for the publication included lecures given around the country at which he introduced the music and language to scholars and other interested parties.
The first two volumes were published in 1908. President Roosevelt wrote the forward to Volume I appreciating Curtis's efforts: "The Indian as he has hitherto been is on the point of passing away.... It would be a veritable calamity if a vivid and truthful record of these conditions were not kept." Roosevelt, who had engaged Curtis to photograph his family in 1904, wrote his introduction with the intention thatCUrtis might use it to gain funding for the publication.
Very few of the Curtis publications exist intact today. Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, recieved a gift from John W. Snyder in 1951 of a complete set of twenty volumes including the twenty portfolios of photogravures. It is from this collection, courtesy of the Payne Gallery, that Susquehanna University's Lore Degenstein Gallery is priveleged to show a selection of the large photogravures. We are deeply indebted to the Director, Les Reker, for arranging this loan for us.
City Streets & Country Byways The World of Walter E. Baum
Oct. 24 – Dec. 13, 1998
Farm Near Haycock Mountain. Walter Emerson Baum. Oil on canvas. c. 1940. 30 x 40"
Private Collection.
Pennsylvania landscape painting reached its zenith in the 1910s and 1920s with the work of a number of artists trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts who sought a romantic affinity with the picturesque streams and country roads of the eastern segment of the state. Taking his cue from such artists as Edward Redfield and W. Elmer Schofield, who fondly expressed the wintry landscape in many of their paintings, a younger artist, Walter Emerson Baum, joined his love of the land near his home in Sellersville with the then-current taste for impressionism transformed from an avant-garde style to one of established tradition. Persistent in his desire to embrace both the style and the technique of his mentors, by the end of his life Baum had left a legacy of accomplishment and experiment in his vast oeuvre of paintings of the Pennsylvania land.
Baum's work and life have recently undergone scholarly investigation resulting in a broad inquiry into the artist's contribution to his Pennsylvania heritage. Art historian Martha Hutson-Saxton engages us in her extensive appraisal of the artist in her 1996 monograph, entitled Walter Emerson Baum, 1884-1956. Dr. Saxton's book is the first comprehensive approach to the subject which allows Baum's viewers to recognize the breadth of his accomplishments.
Preparing her research to accompany a large exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum which assessed Baum's style and place in American Art, Saxton subsequently curated a show that would continue the dialog in his treatment of urban and rural subjects. The Lore Degenstein Gallery is privileged to exhibit this latter collection of Baum painting which was organized by the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College and contains work lent by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as by numerous private collectors, including a large collection of paintings owned by the Berman Museum.
After Baum's death in 1956, Philip and Muriel Berman acquired roughly 1,500 paintings by various Pennsylvania artists from Flora Baum, the artist's wife. Baum's work of the early 1950s was included, which became the source for a large number of work appearing at the Berman museum. With more than 40 paintings, the museum maintains the largest institutional collection of Baum's work.
What Baum provides in his large oil paintings is an historical record of the locale as well as his exploration of style. Working as an art columnist for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and later the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin for over 30 years, Baum wrote hundreds of articles about art in the community.
His reviews were mostly positive listings of as many exhibitions and artists as he could include. Baum's aim was always to support the artist and his milieu. He knew firsthand the difficulties in trying to survive on the sale of paintings.
Clearly Baum's career as an artist and writer were only partially able to support his family of four children. To supplement his income, Baum taught art classes and eventually opened an art academy in Allentown that became known as "The Baum School." Springing from interest in the arts generated by Baum, the Allentown Art Museum was soon to be founded by his supporters.
Little is discussed about Baum's direct relationships with the artists of the Pennsylvania Academy – Redefied, Schofield, and Garber – however, in addition to the stylistic directions in his work which reflect theirs, Baum also named his son, Edgar Schofield Baum. To date no correspondence between the two artists appears in either papers of Baum or Schofield, however, it will be sought in forthcoming Schofield research.
It is an extraordinary opportunity for the Lore Degenstein Gallery to bring this exhibition to Susquehanna. We are appreciative of the efforts of Martha Hutson-Saxton and the director of the Berman Museum, Lisa Barnes, to share the exhibition with our audience. At its first venue, the exhibition was companioned by a one-day symposium in which scholars working on related research discussed their progress. Histories of Pennsylvania landscape painters from Baum's milieu continue to develop our understanding of the valuable contribution made by these artists.
Self-Made Worlds Visionary Folk Art Environments
Sept. 12 – Oct. 17, 1998
La Maison Pique-Assiette. Raymond Isidore. 1938-64.
Color photograph by Ted Degener.
Throughout the world and over the centuries the phenomenon of decorating the home environment has been practiced with a variety of intentions and a myriad of visual results including temprorary observations of festivals as well as permanent installations. To consider the artistic contribution of the latter is the underlying thesis of the curators and photographers whose work is presented in the Lore Degenstein Gallery. More than sixty photographs document the curators' world-wide investigation of the efforts of artists – largely self-taught – whose homes have become the canvas for their art. Some represent private contemplative responses; others exemplify a need for public awareness, perhaps even in the spirit of advertising a political or religious point of view.
Often the ornamentation developed out of an elaborated garden design. Raymond Isodore, a cemetary caretaker in Chartres, France, sought to embellish his home with bits of glass and broken ceramic plates creating mosaics which ornament the garden walls. As his passion grew, so further did the impact of his need to expand, finally into the house. Every aspect of the house is covered with mosaic decoration, even the furniture. Beginning his work around 1938, he continuted to work on his property until shortly before his death in 1964. The impact of Isadore's work imposes imags of the cathedral and details of nature, almost to the exclusion of anything organic in his environment.
Following a trend in the artworld today to look to "outsider art" as a sort of new frontier the exhibition celebrates the self-taught artist and the message conveyed by the work. Some of the photographs show work fraught with religious opinions, often dependant upon verbage displayed as signs or as messages on buildings. Finding public opinion negative in some instances the artist creates a message of confrontation. W. C. Rice's "Miracle Cross Garden" in Prattville, Alabama, is covered with hundreds of crosses bearing messages which engender tension with his neighbors. Alternatively, Samuel P. Dinsmoor's "Garden of Eden" in Lucas, Kansas, describes an Old Testament morality through allegorical tableaux created out of concrete. It is the oldest complete, self-taught artist's environment in the United States.
Seeking to document sites of self-taught artists has been the quest of the exhibition's curators who have identified numerous examples hoping to preserve them. Finding that most of the artists they have encountered appear to have something to say, Roger Manley, author of the accompanying catalogue, notes: They react to their own worlds of racial injustice, religious doubt, love, and loneliness. Most of them display the kind of enormous productivity that would be impossible to sustain without the commitment that comes from having a definite point of view – a point of view nurtured by its origins in a very particularized context. Manley identifies means of supproting the art through foundations and societies, charging the museum with responsibility to inspire such preservation.
In some European installations, preserving the work has been an effective goal. One of the earliest preserved environments was created in 1879 near Lyon, France by Ferdinand Cheval. It defines a type of architectural construction that suggests ancient civilizations and ritual forms. The building is four-stories tall and over eighty-six feet long, covered with figures and verbal commentary carved in stone. He called it his Ideal Palace, a tribute to his own creativity.
The contributions of eleven photographers comprise the exhibition, facilitating both an understanding of the idiosyncratic effect of the artwork and a dialogue with the artworld, raising new questions about the nature of the creative process. The catalogue of the exhibition, written by Roger Manley and Mark Sloan, will be available at the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
