The Blasted Tree: A Visual Metaphor

 

On a recent walk through the woods I saw that a large tree had two of its limbs shattered, possibly by a lightning strike. The breaks looked violent, with jagged edges, and an aggressive split. It's startling to see this damage amidst calm, leafy trees. And yet, it's a part of nature's cycle of destruction, decay, and regrowth. I wrote about this pattern here. Seeing this tree made me think of all the images of blasted trees in landscape paintings, and their meaning within those landscapes. 

Jacob van Ruysdael, Landscape with a Half-timbered House and a Blasted Tree, 1653

In her essay on Romantic landscape painting in Hyperallergic, Allison Meier writes:

What's important is that the tree is usually still living, leaves clinging to its battered branches. To the Romantics, it represented the cycle of nature, from death to life, all at once. 

Thomas Hearne, Blasted Tree Near a Lake, 1803

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, (1818), Victor Frankenstein describes himself as a blasted tree:

But I am a blasted tree: the bolt has entered my soul, and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be – a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity,  pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself. 

William Blake, Blasted Trees and Flattened Crops, 1821

The idea of the blasted tree has great emotional weight. In Blake's wood engraving the tree is so much like a storm-tossed human figure, bent by the wind, with a few leaves clinging to its outstretched arms. 

Frederic Church, Storm in the Mountains, 1847

A solitary tree, its trunk split and broken, stands high above a turbulent landscape. It is as though Church is pointing to pride and resilience in the face of turmoil. 

Jasper Cropsey, Blasted Tree, 1850

Like in the Church painting, Cropsey situates his damaged tree high up on a precipice, overlooking a dark, foreboding landscape. This painting feels despondent to me, the blasted tree crushed, the light in the sky nearly obliterated. 

Lawren Harris, North Shore, Lake Superior, 1926 

In this painting––the only one I could find on this theme from the 20th century––Harris presents a more optimistic vision of a solitary damaged tree. The tall, central tree is bathed in light; its curving forms reach skyward, an evocation of positive striving. In the history of the arts, our relationship with nature has provided many metaphors, including this one of the blasted tree. Simon Schama wrote a brilliant book, Landscape and Memory, on the various myths and strong cultural connections that we have to the different landscapes surrounding us. In his introduction he wrote:

...the various ecosystems that sustain life on the planet proceed independently of human agency...But it is also true that it is difficult to think of a single such natural system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture...And it is this irreversibly modified world, from the polar caps to the equatorial forests, that is all the nature we have.

New Drawings, Larger and Smaller: Freedom and Intuition

#57, egg tempera and graphite on paper hand toned with distemper, 15 x 15 in.

While I was thinking about the writing for this post, a couple of concepts related to art making came to mind: freedom, and intuition. First freedom: for me, one of the great things about being an artist is being able to do anything I want with my work, to change its direction, change ideas, mediums, formats, styles. Of course this can have implications outside the studio, such as losing a gallery when work changes direction, but I insist on my freedom of action. It has allowed me to try new ideas, such as these drawings based on Islamic design, which I began making three years ago. 

#58, egg tempera and graphite on paper hand toned with distemper, 15 x 15 in.

I love the way these drawings have allowed me to explore color in a way that is completely different from that of my paintings. The patterns that emerge from the basic design have been varied and often surprising.

#59, egg tempera and graphite on paper hand toned with distemper, 15 x 15 in.

But freedom to begin something must also mean freedom to end it, and I'm now feeling that I've reached the end of my interest in working with this drawing format. When I look at the work itself, I think "oh no, you must keep going", but when I was working on this last group (one drawing ended in the trash) I was no longer happy in the making of them. For me, pleasure in working is very important, which doesn't mean that there isn't struggle or disappointment or uncertainty, but that the work brings satisfaction during its process. I began to feel with these drawings that I no longer wanted to draw the underlying pattern; it was like pulling teeth, to use a cliche. So, for now––because I never know what I'll want to do in future––these are the last of this series.

sd 49, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I don't yet feel at a dead end with these small, painterly drawings. I began doing them about a year and a half ago, using small pieces of paper left over from tearing down large sheets for the Islamic-based drawings. I am still enjoying the process of painting with distemper––glue size (I use gelatin) and pigment––on hand made paper, and then adding a small shape or gesture in egg tempera paint. In the sd 49 the small blue rectangle at the bottom is painted in egg tempera.

sd 50, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

With these drawings, so different from most of my work––only my potato prints have a similar aesthetic––which is ordered and planned. These works might be said to have more intuition involved.

sd 51, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

Intuition: "an ability to understand or know something without needing to think about it or use reason to discover it, or a feeling that shows this ability." (Cambridge Dictionaries Online) It is certainly true that I am using more of an intuitive sensibility to paint, in distemper, the wide swath of dark red and more translucent red beneath and then to add the dark red line in egg tempera.

sd 52, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

Nothing is planned in these drawings; I am looking at the colors I have mixed with size, and with wide brushes apply them. But how much of intuition in art really is just that and how much comes from understanding and experience and years of working and looking?

sd 53, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I feel that I couldn't have made these drawings (and I'm not claiming great quality for them) years ago, because I wouldn't have had the tools, of the hand or the eye or the mind.

sd 54, egg tempera on paper painted with distemper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

So, these drawings continue to interest me in that they challenge an aspect of my art personality that doesn't often have a chance to be used. And they are a way of playing with pure color. I am thinking I might try them a little larger, at 10 x 10 inches, but for that I might have to buy some much larger brushes....

Käthe Kollwitz's Krieg (War): The Power of Images

Frontal Self Portrait, 1922-23; woodcut

The horrors of war are unfortunately ever present; Käthe Kollwitz's images of the emotional and physical ravages of WW I could represent many wars, and they are harrowing. A large group of Kollwitz's drawings and prints associated with her series of seven prints––Krieg (War)––is now on view at the Davis Museum of Wellesley College, and I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to see them. I had previously seen one or two, and many in reproduction, but standing in front of actual drawings and prints on the theme of war was very moving. You can see from her self portrait that she has an uncompromising vision.

Pensive Woman, 1920; lithograph

Pensive Woman is a heart rending image, so simple yet speaking so clearly of hopelessness. The evening before seeing this show I watched the Netflix film Beasts of No Nation, an overwhelmingly horrifying view of war in an unnamed African nation, and the child soldiers forced into that war. Still shaky from that experience, the Kollwitz works struck me even harder than they might have otherwise.

The Widow, 1918; soft-ground etching with hand additions in graphite, charcoal, and brush and gray wash.

The slightly open mouth, the sunken eyes, the large open hands, all express grief; that expression is heightened by the depth of black of the widow's dress.

Three states of The Parents, 1922-23; woodcut

Kollwitz's youngest son was killed at the beginning of WWI, in 1917, on a battlefield in Flanders. A few years later her grief became art: two parents supporting each other in their mourning. The exhibition was interesting in that it presents various states of the final prints for the series, plus drawings. They are a worthy companion to Goya's Disasters of War.

Trial proof for a discarded version of The Parents, 1922-23; woodcut

I love this deep deep dark version of this image. In her diary she noted that "pain is very dark".

 The Parents, 1922, Plate 3 from Krieg; woodcut

However, the version Kollwitz chose for the series was more open, though still powerful.

Mothers Protecting Their Children, 1918; charcoal on laid paper.

Another strong theme was mothers trying to protect their children. In this drawing the composition is spread outwards.....

The Mothers, 1921; india ink and opaque white watercolor.

.....but we can see how Kollwitz intensified the image by having the women huddle together, trying to form an impenetrable mass.

The Mothers, Plate 6 from Krieg, 1922; woodcut

In the final woodcut, the whites highlight the fearful faces, the enclosing hands.

The Widow II, Plate 5 from Krieg, 1921-22; woodcut

This is the most awful image of all....

The Survivors, 1922-23; charcoal on laid paper.

....and for the survivors, pain and grief, though with a steadfast will to survive. Why oh why do we do this to ourselves over and over and over again?

Tony Smith's Gouaches: A Minimalist at Play

Untitled, ca. 1960; gouache on corrugated cardboard, 5 1/4 x 6 1/8 in. 

I love being surprised by a new aspect of an artist's work. Tony Smith is known mainly as a minimalist sculptor who worked with simple, monumental, black-painted geometric forms (see the last image in this post). These seven very small, colorful, informal gouaches were therefore quite unexpected. They were on view at Matthew Marks Gallery's small space  at 502 W 22 St (until Oct 24); the show is not mentioned on the gallery website, so I am grateful to the artist Cary Smith for telling me about it. They are painted on ordinary materials––cardboard and brown paper––and are wonderfully casual. Shapes––curving and straight-sided, all quite irregular––are contained within loosely drawn rectangles whose boundaries are marked with charcoal. The drawing on cardboard is the only one to combine several shapes within the rectangle. Three shapes are geometric, with one, an intense blue, allowing a curling curve within its square. Smith worked as an architect for many years, and this drawing seems almost like a fanciful floor plan.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 6 3/8 x 5 1/2 in.

Although there's a casualness to the drawing, the color relationships are sensitive and spot-on. The blue-gray and the cool dark red are perfectly matched: the dips into blue become red breasts, the blue curve a head with raised arms. Or...just an amusing shape, however you see it. The brown paper––which has laid lines on it, so maybe it was a little fancier than cut from a bag––has a delightful dip at its lower right, and its edges are far from straight. I imagine Smith, quickly cutting a bunch of small pieces of paper, not caring that the edges wobbled, piling them up to be ready for small sketches.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 4 1/2 x 5 in.

This drawing is the only one that in its geometry refers to Smith's sculpture. The rich red and brown, the searched for edges, the small reddish rectangles within the brown, move the drawing beyond a simple study.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.

There's a beautiful balance between the forms and their placement on the paper. With work this seemingly simple, it's tempting to think it's easy to do, but I think that its very simplicity makes it much harder to pull off successfully; each element can go wrong with just a slight shift, throwing off the drawing's balance.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 6 x 5 in.

This drawing is the quirkiest of the group, with a tension between the jagged outline and the inward curve; it feels ready to explode.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 6  x 5 3/4 in. 

The gray form is another architectural reference, as in the first drawing above. Any somber reading of it is belied by the pink surround.

Untitled, ca. 1960; set of six gouaches on paper, 7 1/4 x 6 in. 

Lastly, intertwined gray and red spirals; first the red takes precedence, then the gray. The drawing is off-beat, not smooth and regular, which gives this small work tremendous energy, and charm.

Marriage, 1961; steel, painted black, 120 x 120 x 144 in. 

image courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery

The sculpture above is more typical of Smith's important work. His sculpture has tremendous presence and power, but I'm glad he also did some lighthearted, buoyant drawings.

At the Met: George Caleb Bingham, a Classicist in the American West

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845; oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/2 in. 

Two figures and a small tethered animal (a bear cub) float in the soft, luminous space of a river, their forms and that of their small boat crisp and clear in front of the receding planes of trees. This beautiful painting, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was featured, along with fifteen of George Caleb Bingham's river paintings and many drawing studies, in a recent exhibition Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River. In her book American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience, Barbara Novak quotes Mark Twain on being on the Mississippi, writing that could be describing the painting above:

.....the water is glass-smooth...there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying.....You  have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it. 

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri detail

"....the tranquillity is profound and deeply satisfying...": this is a quality in these river paintings by Bingham, even those with active motion in them, such as The Jolly Flatboatmen below. It comes from the extreme clarity of form, with outlines that are sharp and well defined, and with planes that recede––foreground, middle ground, background–––in an orderly progression. These are traits of classicism in painting, along with the triangular compositions of most of these paintings; according to the Encyclopedia Britannica classicism consists of "harmony, clarity, restraint, universality, and idealism". 

Self-Portrait, 1834-35; oil on canvas, 28 3/8 x 26 11/16 in.

Bingham brings an American form of classicism, mixed with a careful attention to actuality, but seen through a primitive eye. He began as a portrait painter, and you can see in this early self portrait a combination of flatness and crisp precision that is akin to that of early itinerant portrait painters. 

The Concealed Enemy, 1845; oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 36 1/2 in. 

Although mainly self taught in the Missouri of his childhood, Bingham traveled to Philadelphia in 1838, when he was 27 years old, and spent three months there, where he must have seen many contemporary American works, and also European paintings, drawings, and prints; he may have also traveled to New York to see the National Academy annual. It wasn't until 1845, though, with The Concealed Enemy and Fur Traders, that his mature style emerged. I go into all this because it is remarkable that Bingham worked in such a sophisticated manner, close to the style called Luminist, while being far from the centers of art activity. Novak and others speculate that he may have worked from instruction books. A friend of a friend said that he was very influenced by Poussin; he saw prints after Poussin in Philadelphia. He did participate in the New York art world of the time, sending The Concealed Enemy and Fur Traders Descending the Mississippi to the American Art-Union. 

Boatmen on the Missouri, 1846; oil on canvas, 25 x 30 in.

Two men on a boat are seriously regarding us, while a third bends at his task. The precision of the light on the figures and the brightness of their three white shirts pops them forward spacially, as the landscape recedes in a dreamy haze. I love looking at the elements in the painting and seeing how carefully they are considered: the lines of oars, the diagonal of shovel handle being repeated in the movement of hat to hat to hat, and in the diagonal of clouds; the circling curves of arms; the mass of trees at left balanced by the river steamer in the far distance at the right. All of Bingham's paintings have this attention to detail.

Boatmen on the Missouri detail

The men and boys in the paintings are specific characters, worked up from portrait drawings (see below). They are real people, painted in a way that transcends specificity. 

The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846; oil on canvas, 38 1/8 x 48 1/2 in. 

This is a painting that has quiet within its motion: the triangular composition fixes the men in their positions; it is an ordered levity. At the lower part of the painting is a strong horizontal, then a broad curve, surmounted by the triangle of human activity. 

The Jolly Flatboatmen detail

One thing I love in the paintings was the addition of humble details of working life, or of objects seen on the river. A shirt, dangling its arms and held down by a stone––it was probably drying after being washed–––is above a triangle of cloth draped over the edge of the boat, its shape emphasized by a dark line. It looks to me like the shirt was a later addition, because it is now quite transparent on the right. 

The Wood-Boat, 1850; oil on canvas, 25 1/8 x 30 in. 

Sometimes the light in the paintings was of evening, with the sky darkening and the sun casting a reddish light. Here a tall vertical pole emphasizes the peak of the triangle in the composition. The two men and a boy look at us with unconcern, with friendliness, with wariness. 

Young Wood-boatman, for "The Wood-Boat", 1850; brush, black ink, and wash over pencil on off-white wove paper; 11 3/4 x 8 7/8 in.

Here is one of the studies for the painting above. Bingham's drawings are very lively, full of presence, and very personal.

Watching the Cargo, 1849; oil on canvas, 26 x 36 in.

Watching the Cargo is another painting with beautiful evening light, a red glow suffusing everything. The two men sit calmly regarding us while a young man is busily blowing on a fire to get it started. The clouds piled up behind the mass of cargo emphasize the diagonal of tented cargo to man in red shirt, to fire-maker, while the distant hills create an opposing movement. 

Watching the Cargo detail

On the far right is a piece of tree trunk, possibly washed up by the river, or brought there by the men to use as firewood. It has a personality all its own, and it has the important function of carrying our eye to the right hand side of the painting.

Watching the Cargo by Night, 1854; oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in. 

Finally, one of Bingham's night paintings (sorry about the poor photo; it was hard to photograph). The light is beautifully mysterious, with both firelight and the light of the rising moon. The painting is divided nearly in half, with a triangle of land and figures and the sky and river behind it; the diagonal of a pole balances the opposite dark diagonal of land.
It was such a rich and satisfying experience to spend time with these marvelously made paintings, and to enter their world of men working on the river, ordinary lives elevated to the timeless and essential.

Anne Truitt: Sumptuous Color

Rice-Paper Drawing [17], 1965, ink on Japanese rice paper, 12 1/4 x 9 in. 

It is a great visual pleasure to see a show in which color is so saturated and rich that it transcends paint's mere physicality. The works on paper in Anne Truitt in Japan at Matthew Marks gallery were all made when Truitt, mostly known as a sculptor, lived in Tokyo from 1964-67. Although she destroyed the sculpture she made while in Japan, these beautiful drawings remain, and she said of her time there:

If I had not gone to Japan, I would not know anything. I would not know what is what.

Rice-Paper Drawing [3], 1965, ink on Japanese rice paper, 12 1/4 x 9 in. 

In the first room of the gallery were five intensely colored small works on rice paper. The color was as though soaked into the textured paper, making an effect of subtle variation within each hue.

Rice-Paper Drawing [13], 1965, ink on Japanese rice paper, 12 1/4 x 9 in. 

The colors, the boundaries between shapes, the textures, invited you to come close and linger with the drawing.

Rice-Paper Drawing [15], 1965, ink on Japanese rice paper, 12 1/4 x 9 in. 

As with Ad Reinhardt's black paintings, the more you look at these small drawings, the more there is to see: differentiations in hues become visible.

Truitt '66 [20], 1966, acrylic and graphite on paper, 11 x 6 in.

Although my favorite works were the drawings with overall saturated color––the four drawings above and three at the end of this post––there were also works exploring color shapes. In [20] above, there is a careful balancing of a hue's weight: the light blue band at bottom adds air to the composition. This drawing reminds me of Truitt's columnar sculpture, with its bands of color.

Truitt '66 [11], 1966, acrylic on paper, 27 1/4 x 3 1/8 in.

Truitt pushed the idea of shape into new dimensions: a very long, narrow rectangle is animated and  made more present by orange and blue-gray color shapes descending it; our eye has no trouble navigating the extreme length of this small drawing.

Truitt '66 [11] detail

At an intersection, the orange paint is handled differently on the top and bottom, a detail that creates solidity in a two dimensional work.

Truitt '66 [7], 1966, acrylic on paper, 1 x 27 1/2 in. 

I was so intrigued by these long narrow shapes and how Truitt was able to create a viable composition across them. We almost feel the dark blue dipping below the edge of the paper and swooping back up again.

Truitt '67 [6], 1967, acrylic on paper, 27 1/2 x 41 in. 

There is a just-rightness about the way the pink and green shapes abut and balance each other on a white sheet of paper.

Installation view at Matthew Marks gallery, of drawings pictured below.

Truitt '67 [6] was in the same room as three very saturated works. The image above gives a sense of the size of the drawings.

Truitt '67 [21], 1967, acrylic on paper, 27 1/2 x 41 in.

Truitt '67 [33], 1967, acrylic on paper, 27 1/2 x 41 in.

Truitt '67 [20], 1967, acrylic on paper, 27 1/2 x 41 in.

These three drawings are deep and luscious explorations of color. Their intensity gave me a sense of being enveloped and transported by color. As with the drawings on rice paper, the subtlety of the color/shape variations demanded attentive viewing; although not large, there was a feeling of boundless space. In 1965 Truitt wrote in her private papers:

What is important to me is not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality. 

 (Thanks to Plug Projects Blog for the quote.)