New exhibits featured in the Addison Gallery of American Art this winter include “John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury,” which highlights American artist Marin’s abstract cubist paintings and “Land, Sea and Sky: Contemporary Art in Maine,” which focuses on the work of several contemporary artists in Maine.
The Addison will host a Gallery Talk on the “John Marin” exhibit in this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. with guest curator Debra Bricker Balken.
John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury
Bold geometric lines and soft-textured brush strokes are characteristic of the abstract works by John Marin (1870 – 1953).
This exhibit, guest-curated by independent curator Balken, focuses on Marin’s late work from 1933 to 1953, the last two decades of the artist’s life.
Balken said, “The show aims to position Marin as an ongoing innovator of modernist ideas and to position him as a precursor of abstract expressionism.”
Marin’s works are exhibited in the two front galleries on the first floor of the Addison.
While the right gallery primarily displays Marin’s free and abstract depictions of the sea, the left gallery mainly showcases his intricate and illustrative use of a variety of thick and thin lines.
In the right gallery, the oil paintings of the coastline in Maine combine abstract wild and distorted elements to depict seascapes.
In “Wave on Rock” (1937), for example, Marin completely fills the canvas with thick brush strokes and leaves no spaces unpainted. Although this method of painting abstractly utilizes varying colors and direction of strokes, Marin evokes the sense of a wave colliding with and splashing onto the rock.
Kate Cardamone, a visitor from Natick, MA, said, “There’s no horizon here. The whole painting is just filled up with this sea and the vibrancy. Most people put some horizon line, but he did not [put in a] horizon. He broke the rules. Just the strokes are so joyful.”
The left gallery features Marin’s abstract work, rendered in a mix of gray, blue, red and white brush strokes that depict New York’s skyline. In “New York At Night, No. 3” (1950), Marin created an accurate representation of a chaotic city with complicated, intersecting lines.
Marin dabbed blue, brown and white colors onto the painting to depict the sky, sunlight and clouds. He outlined the buildings with quick black brush strokes to portray the scene of New York City.
Balkin said about the experience of curating the “John Marin” exhibit, “I hope [the viewers] take away some sense that not only was John Marin one of the primary modernist figures of the 20th century, but [that] he was also a highly original artist throughout every phase of his career. I respond to the way in which he was able to really stretch these languages of modernism. Especially in his late phase and reposition himself as a current artist and that is very difficult to do for someone at the end of his career.”
Land, Sea and Sky:
Contemporary Art in Maine
Complementing the “John Marin” exhibit through its subject matter, the exhibit “Land, Sea and Sky: Contemporary Art in Maine” contains paintings by numerous artists from Maine. However, these paintings are done in a realistic style that contrasts with the abstract art featured in the “John Marin” exhibit.
The paintings in Marin’s exhibit “Contemporary Art in Maine” hang along the hallway and in the back gallery on the first floor of the Addison. The exhibit features works by nine contemporary landscape painters: Dozier Bell, Katherine Bradford, Alan Bray, Terry Hilt, Michael Lewis, Dennis Pinette, Vivien Russe, Susan Shatter and Robert Solotaire.
According to Brian Allen, Director of the Addison Gallery and curator of the exhibit, “Contemporary Art in Maine” was curated with the intent of complementing John Marin’s depictions of the coastline. Allen hoped to convey the transition of American representations of the coastline and the sea over time.
“[The exhibit] started with the John Marin show. So many of the pictures in the John Marin show are scenes of life in Maine, landscapes and seascapes, and also we have a great collection of works by Winslow Homer, which is not exclusively Maine subject matter, but is predominantly the art of Maine. We have so much Maine subject matter, so I thought, ‘Ok, so we’ve got great 19th century pictures of Maine. Marin’s are from the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. Why don’t I look at the art of Maine now?’ I was not surprised that there were many subjects that kept coming up,” said Allen.
The paintings featured in the exhibit utilize diverse artistic styles to portray the scenes of Maine realistically.
Russe’s acrylic painting, “Scarborough Beach,” (2011) demonstrates this realistic approach to painting. Beneath a swirling blue sky above a turquoise-colored seashore, the front ground of the painting is a white pillow painted in great detail. The pillow almost invites the viewer to lie down for a nap by the coast.
In the oil painting “Burning Complex” (1999), by Pinette, a burning wooden structure stands on snowy grounds, as a raging orange fire envelopes the dull grey sky.
In response to the “Contemporary Art in Maine” exhibit, Allen said, “I hope [the viewers] take out an understanding that American art is really a continuum. You can look at themes in American art in the 19th century, and you can trace them to the 21st century. They’re still as vitally important, and these themes are still as rich as they were in the 19th century.”
“The landscape and the seascape have always been very important to Americans. For example, in Italy, there is almost no 19th and 20th landscape tradition, but in the United States, there is. So I hope people look at Maine art and think about these continuing themes. These shows all complement each other,” continued Allen.
Allen will give a lecture on Maine as an enduring subject in American art in conjunction with the exhibit on Sunday, March 18th at 2:00 p.m. in the Museum Learning Center (MLC).
