Anna Sayburn reviews Dulwich’s newest exhibition, and talks to visitors at the Americana Late Night about their reactions to Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s.
It would be easy to rush through the Coming of Age exhibition, skipping the earlier works and making a beeline for the ‘big names’ from the golden age of American art. But that would be to miss the extraordinary developments and shifting focus along the way, from French-influenced impressionism to bold and confident American style.
And there are plenty of delights in the early years. Fans of Winslow Homer, who remember the revelatory Dulwich exhibition of his seascapes from 2006, will love Eight Bells, so fresh you can taste the salt wind smacking you in the face. John Singer Sargeant’s lively, sunny Val d’Aosta: A Man Fishing demonstrates masterly composition and singing colours from an artist still looking to Europe.
A pretty little oil by Martin Johnson Heade neatly demonstrates the dislocation to the New World. Apple blossom, as English as any Kentish orchard, dominates the picture, until you spot the shimmeringly exotic hummingbird perched on the branch. We’re not in England now, Toto.
The few sculptures in the exhibition reward attention, too. I was very taken with the sleek silver form of Alexander Archipenko’s Torso In Space, reminiscent of the shiny chrome bumpers of classic American cars.
But the heart does rather swell with pride to see Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe and, above all, Jackson Pollock, on the familiar Dulwich walls. I’ll be back many times to stand and let myself be dazzled by Pollock’s shimmering Phosphoresence, but will also take the time to enjoy the journey that led there.
Visitors’ reactions
Keith Silvester: ‘I really liked it. I’ve never been to the gallery before but I was caught by the posters [for this exhibition]. I particularly liked the Hopper and there was one with a very architectural style [Charles Sheeler, Ballardvale Mill]. Also the acrylic piece by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was pretty amazing. What struck me was that it’s very different sort of stuff to that you normally see in the average art gallery.’
Peter Row: ‘There’s some classic stuff by people like Hopper, and so on, which is very good obviously, and a very early Whistler. It’s interesting to see the diversity of what there is. It’s well put together and interesting.’
Lesley Burch: ‘I’ll come another time and see it again. I thought there were one or two gaps – Rothko, Neumann, so I was a bit disappointed in that respect. But I really enjoyed it, especially the Winslow Homer and the Hopper.’
Marina Romiscowska: ‘I was disappointed because there’s so little of what was most important in American art – only one Pollock, one Hopper. I don’t really like the things at the beginning so much. I was expecting a lot more.’
Brenda Swaddling: ‘I absolutely loved the one with the white house [Oscar Bluemner's Radiant Night]. It was very striking, the boldness of the moonlight on the house came right out at you across the room. It was rather strange – it’s certainly not a comfortable picture.’
Picture: Courtesy of Dulwich Picture Gallery website
Loading ...
One Comment
I was looking forward to the arrival of this exhibition to Dulwich gallery and having now visited it three times.
Overall I expect it tries to do what it suggests and give a broad view of American Art over this period, however I thought it was rather disappointing. Perhaps because it tried to cover to much ground in a small exhibition. In most cases there was only one painting by each artist, and in a few cases they were not nearly the best of that artists output. There were two Homer Winslow’s but I felt only one of them captured the best of his painting. The Singer-Sargeant was one of the best paintings in the exhibition, but it would have been nice to have had one of his portraits. This and the great Childe Hassam painting showed how much American painting was influenced by the Impressionists, Though like Whistler, Sargeant was more of a European painter than an American. I’m afraid that Edward Hopper does nothing for me, however I was very struck by the Man Ray landscape, I realize that it was an early work and so it would have been nice to compare it with something that he did later. I was aware of Charles Sheeler as a great photographer, but the painting on display whetted my appetite to see more of his paintings. I did not think that the Georgia O’Keefe was that typical of her work and one of her flower abstracts would have been more representative.
In the next room there was one painting which I thought one of the best in the exhibition. It was by Alfred Maurer, a painter of whom I had never heard. I had to look him up on the internet to find more details and found that early on his career he had been very successful, but after going to France and meeting and studying with Picasso and Matisse he had assimilated the changes that they had brought to art, but was completely ignored by the American public till after his suicidal early death. I thought that the way he had used the devices of cubism and his modern approach to colour to make a very interesting still life.
This room also contained a very nice Franz Kline . However this again was not typical of his more famous black and white works, whereas Joseph Alders who is more famous for his colour filled ‘Homage to the Square’ paintings was represented by a black and white geometrical painting.
Finally in the last room we were treated to some works by the abstract expressionists. I was really looking forward to seeing a good Hans Hoffman, whom I consider one of the most important influences on American painting, but this again did not seem to be very typical of his best work. There were also some very nice modern sculptures in this room by Gabo and Moholy-Nagy.
Overall I found it was an exhibition that promised much but failed to deliver. How much better if they had concentrated on fewer painters and given us a representative collection of each. The show that they did a few years ago on Homer Wimslow was so much better .