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THE POSTER PORTRAITS IX: ARTHUR DOVE Abstractionist, Expressionist, Modernist, Surrealist, Synaesthesiast – all these apply to the career of Arthur Dove. With equal accuracy he may be described as unappreciated, misunderstood, ignored, desperately poor, and hard-working. Clearly, this is an artist of great complexity, but Charles Demuth’s poster portrait of Dove illuminates many of his qualities and contradictions. The two artists would have known each other through their mutual admirer and advisor, Alfred Stieglitz, although there is no record of an actual friendship between them. Indeed, Demuth’s friend and fellow Lancaster artist Robert Locher believed that Demuth’s cooled when Dove deserted his wife to run off with Helen Torr, the wife of painter Clive Weed, another friend from Demuth’s Three years Demuth’s senior, Dove was reared in Geneva, New York, of which he later observed in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz: “Everyone in Geneva is dead or dying or just walking around.” Even so, as he roamed the woods and fields of upstate New York he developed a life-long affinity with nature. After preparing for a career in law, at Hobart College and Cornell University, he switched to art, much to his father’s consternation. This was a time in America when art and artists were held in contempt, if not disapproval. However, the elder Dove changed his mind when his son began making money doing illustrations for magazines like Harper's, the Saturday Evening Post, and Century. Early on, however, he felt the urge to give up commercial illustration and devote himself to fine art. In 1907 -- the year that marked Demuth’s first trip abroad -- Dove and his wife made the ritual trip to Paris, paid for from his savings and a gift from his family, where he enjoyed the heady company of other American painters, although there is no record of his having encountered Demuth at that time. Dove needed to be in the country, close to nature, so he and his wife spent much of their time in the South of France. The paintings he did during this period reveal the influence of Impressionism, with vivid and swirling colors he seems always to have liked. His return to New York in 1909 marked an important event in his life when he was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz at the photographer’s 291 Gallery. Stieglitz was the patron saint of new American art and proved to be a spiritual father to Dove. World War I put an end to 291, but in l915 Stieglitz opened the Intimate Gallery, succeeded in 1930 by An American Place. Here he showed the work of "The Seven", as he called his roster of artists: Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, his wife Georgia O'Keeffe, photographer Paul Strand, and himself. Early in his career, Dove had turned to abstraction. He wished to express in painting the feeling that an object aroused in him, and he dropped any attempt at representation. In 1912 he had his first one-man show at 291. Stieglitz later said the show was over the heads of the American public, which thought Dove’s work demonstrated what was wrong with American art. Dove organized his abstractions by means of circles swelling around each other with angular “force lines” between them, creating a feeling of restless activity. As America's first abstractionist, he received both notoriety and respect from the show but little money. Dove was unable to support his wife and son by art alone, so he bought a small farm near Westport, Connecticut, to raise vegetables and chickens, but the farm’s demands left him little time for painting. Moreover, his marriage failed when he met Helen Torr, called “Reds,” also a painter. Dove left his wife to live with Reds on a houseboat and, later, a 42-foot yawl. After a visit with the proverbial poor but happy pair of artists, Georgia O’Keeffe recalled that she had occupied the only chair on the boat. |
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