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Parrot Lady In Philadelphia Exhibit The Demuth Foundation’s watercolor, Aviariste – that stout lady entertaining with her bevy of colorful parrots – has been loaned to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for an exhibition titled “On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theater and Film in Early Twentieth Century American Art.” It opened on February 8th and will run through April 20th. The watercolor, dating to circa 1912, was one of several that Demuth attempted to destroy, by ripping them into fourths when his dealer, Charles Daniels, proved less than enthusiastic. Daniels’s assistant, Alason Hartpence, rescued them from the waste basket. Subsequently restored, Aviariste was purchased by the Foundation at auction in 1995. It has become one of the favorite pieces in the permanent collection. Mark Hain, Assistant Curator at the Academy, suggests that the lady is in good company in Philadelphia, for the exhibition includes six other works by Demuth: four on loan from the Museum of Modern Art; one from the Walker Institute in Minneapolis, and one from the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In addition to the seven pieces by Demuth, the exhibition includes art by Mabel Dwight, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn, Reginald Marsh, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. The exhibition originated at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, curated by Patricia McDonnell, a specialist in early American modernism at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The Pennsylvania Academy’s website observes that these artists “jettisoned an academic style and pursued a progressive manner of painting. Aggressive asymmetry, vast zones of unmodulated surfaces, fast brushwork, skewed points of view, discordant cropping, and bright hues” to reflect “the animated modern scene they observed in popular American theaters.” The exhibition also includes sheet music, posters, playbills, magazines, old film equipment, vaudeville costumes, photographs of popular performers, some early film footage, a storefront nickelodeon “kinetoscopes,” and other artifacts to illustrate what might be called the golden age of vaudeville. Demuth, who revelled in painting the performers he’d seen at the Old Colonial Theater in Lancaster, is right at home.
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