William Agee and Whitney Museum and 1930 American Art Exhibition
Early on American Abstract Art on Prove
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January 22, 1978
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Although the word "Synchromism" doesn't even so come trippingly off every art‐earth tongue, information technology's showing signs of revival. The outset American avant‐garde manner of painting to become attention in Europe, more than than 60 years ago, Synchromism, a coinage out of Greek for "with color," was ane of the earliest attempts to construction pictures solely of color and abstruse shapes—and now the increasing interest in early American modernism is bringing it dorsum into focus.
So much in focus, in fact, that this sterling yankee "ism," conceived past Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald‐Wright, American expatriate artists active in Paris before World War one, is starring in an impressive new evidence that opens Tuesday at the Whitney Museum of American Fine art. Called "Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910. 1925," the exhibition was hatched, researched and assembled past Gail Levin, an associate curator at the Whitney who feels that many of the issues dealt with past the Synchromists "are vital ones for young artists today."
Though at that place have been shows on the subject during the past 2 clecadesmost notably, William Agee's pionering "Synchromism and Color Principles in American Painting, 1910‐1930" at the Knoedler Galleries in 1965—the current exhibition is the first comprehensive one, and joins a growing number of such shows past art historians that are helping to improve our opinions of earlier 20thcentury American fine art.
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The Whitney exhibition, which puts Russell and MacDonald‐Wright in context with other American painters who shared some of their aims, comprises no less than 190 paintings by 32 artists, ranging from such well‐known names as Thomas Hart Benton and Georgia O'Keeffe to those rescued from the dustbin of history, similar William Yarrow, Jan Matulka and Carl Newman.
It is the first major bear witness assembled by Miss Levin, a 29-year-erstwhile fine art historian who has been "steeped" in the catamenia since her days as a graduate student at Rutgers. Her aims are clearly defined: "to put Synchromism in proper historical context, to show that was a more important current in the evolution of American art after the 1913 Armory Show than has ever before been recognized, and to accept a really close look at the p'.‐enomenon of American color painting in this epoch."
Though it affected other artists, Synchromism was basically a two‐man motility. As Miss Levin tells the story in the meaty catalogue, she has written for the show (published by George Braziller, $xi.95 newspaper, $22.l hardbound) Russell and MacDonald‐Wright met in Paris in 1911 while attention classes in painting taught by a Canadian with the k name of Ernest Percyval TudorHunt, an avant‐class color theorist.
Russell, the older of the two—who, fittingly plenty, was subsidized by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. founder of the Whitney Museum—had studied sculpture in New York with James Earle Fraser. He so studied painting with an untraditional instructor, the Ashcan artist Robert Henri, before settling in Paris in 1909. There, he met Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, who introduced him to Matisse. The future Synchromist took up the study of sculpture with Matisse, and was influenced as well past the sculpture of Michelangelo and the paintings of Cezanne, Monet and Picasso.
Meanwhile MacDonald‐Wright, from a well-to-exercise Virginia family, had arrived in Paris in 1907 at the historic period of 17, already equipped with a wife and a female parent-in-constabulary. In the Usa, he had also learned Robert Henri's slashing technique of painting from a Henri associate, and had come, like Russell, to admire Cezanne.
But Russell was the real thinker behind Synchromism; after much refinement, his theories led him to the idea of translating the receding and projecting forms of sculpture into two dimensions by the use of color. He began to exercise "abstract" sketches of Michelangelo's sculptures and, seized with evangelism about his notions, took the idea of a "motility" from a 1912 exhibition by the Italian Futurists at the BernheimJeune Gallery in Paris. The two men outset exhibited together as Synchromists notwithstanding at a Munich gallery in June, 1913, and accomplished their ambition to show in Paris with an exhibition in the autumn of 1913 at the establishment gallery of Bernehim‐Jeune.
One of the early excitements of putting together the prove, Miss Levin recalls, was finding the rare, original posters that the ii had made for their shows in Munich and Paris—each begetting a colorful manus‐painted abstruse motif. Both were brought in past fine art historians owning copies, who had heard of the planned prove.
She as well had fun excavation out some of the show's more than recondite artists. A flower painting past the artist William Yarrow, for example, and a highly chromatic nude by Arthur B. Caries were found in the attic of a Philadelphia collecting couple, and one of the show's "nigh terrific" discoveries has a screen with a ocean motif in whites and pinks designed by Thomas Hart Benton for sportsman'due south den in Lung Island.
An important issue raised by Miss Levin in the bear witness is the difference between Synchromism and Orphism, breed of color painting developed around the same time by the French art- ists Robert and Sonia Delaunay. "In that location was groovy rivalry," she says. "Each claimed they did it first. When I visited Sonia Delaunay [now 92] recently in Paris, she noted that she had used the word, `Synchrome' in a poster advertising a show of her work in 1913. Her husband had used the term 'action synchromique' in an article written in 1912, merely non published until early in 1913 in a German periodical. Russell used `Synchromism' as early equally 1912 in his journals, simply they've never been published until now, when we've excerpted them for the catalogue. And then who did first is still controversial."
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But MacDonald‐Wright and Russell felt their art was different from that of the Delaunays in any instance, she explains. "The Synchromists were concerned with form and a boring unfolding of their imagery; the Delaunays were interested in the immediate, simultaneous perception of their forms through colour harmonies."
And she adds, "Sure Americans, such as Patrick Henry Bruce and Arthur Burdett Frost Jr., were directly influenced past the Delaunays. Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Dasburg [now living in New Mexico at age 90, and interviewed on videotape by Miss Levin for the show] actually responded to the impact of Russell's and MacDonaldWright'south theories. And even so others, like Georgia O'Keeffe and Max Weber, experimented independently with color abstraction without theorizing about information technology. In this show, I'd like to clear up who the Synchromists were, who their direct followers were, and which of their contemporaries were dealing with similar problems but were not Synchromists or followers."
Miss Levin, who delights in pointing out to less keen‐eyed viewers the subconscious sculptural figures inside the abstract forms of some Synchromist works, latched on to Synchromism in 1975 While researching her dissertation on the early modernist flow. Looking for paintings past a little‐known artist named Konrad Cramer, she came across catalogue in which the ownership of two Cramers was attributed to a New Jersey collector.
"I went to see him," she recalls, "and he asked if I was interested in Synchromism. I said, 'yes, but there's very little material on it.' He began opening drawers and closets and showed me tons of Morgan Russell notebooks and papers from a collection that Russell had left with an artist friend in France when he returned to America in 1996. I thought immediately, 'that's a museum show.' "
That led to her doing a small bear witness for the Museum of Modern Art in 1976, "Morgan Russell: Synchromist Studies-1910-1922," commissioned by William Rubin, the museum's director of painting and sculpture. Later that year, hired past the Whitney as curator of its Edward Hopper Collection, and mindful of the early on support that the Whitney'due south founder had given to Russell, Miss Levin proposed the present exhibition. "I've had a great time doing it," she said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/22/archives/early-american-abstract-art-on-show-american-abstract-art.html
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