Musings On The American Art Scene From The Creation To Pop-Op-Bop Art By The Famed Late Novelist John Updike- A Quick-draw Summary

Musings On The American Art Scene From The Creation To Pop-Op-Bop Art By The Famed Late Novelist John Updike- A Quick-draw Summary    

By Laura Perkins

This volume is exclusively Updike’s take on American art since colonial times, maybe before so some of the paintings from the early days can be dismissed out of hand since it is well known that the Puritan ethic frowned upon sex, sexual expression and naked bodies except for the ministers who preached the so-called good word who kept what passed for sexually provocative paintings in their private chambers. (one of the male Mather clan, Pericaval, from that preacher crowd, had quite a cache when they opened his private closet in the basement wall of the church he pastored at in Melrose about thirty years ago blowing the ethic, if not Max Weber, out of the water). Naturally if you deal with the long history of American art then the first serious name, a name well-known in Boston art circles, is the Tory traitor and rat John Singleton Copley who fled America for the sweet bosom of Mother England and some well-paid assignments painting risqué portraits of upper- class women showing plenty of shoulder and for the times that sweet tightly bunched bosom everybody thought was reserved for Mother England. Fortunately, I, we don’t have to spend much time on this since we only claim our theory for the 20^th century.* Praise be.

*For those not in the know my, our, the “our” part being my co-writer and muse Sam Lowell have staked out our space on 20^th century art, serious 20^th century art, as driven by all kinds of sexual and erotic themes in the post-Freudian world.   

We can easily pass over the Hudson River School boys like Cole and Church and their wide-eyed visions of the American pastoral and their Garden of Eden predilections which nowadays would be unrecognizable for the most part since much of it is littered national parks or federal reserve land. As with botanist and proto-flower child Martin Johnson Heade he of hummingbirds and lush flower fame since I will be damned if I can link him with Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensual, fleshy florals. The long and varied career of Winslow Homer is another story if you look beyond the famous farm and field material with two-wayward boys trying to figure out the meaning of life, his serious illustrations during and after the American Civil War and some seaside scenes. A strong argument can be made for the homo-erotic nature of his famous Undertow. Nobody has claimed, and I have asked Sam who uses the English poet W.H. Auden as a guide who kept close tabs on the matter of who belonged in what Auden called the “Homintern,” that Homer’s proclivities headed in that direction but in the closed world, read closet, that gays and lesbians were confined in the matter is hardly closed. Especially when you factor in Homer’s close relationship with the acknowledged gay poet Walt Whitman and his rough trade crowd in D.C. and New Jersey. In any case this is the time for another provisional disclaimer that art, some art, some serious art was driven by sex and sensuality before the 20^th century it just generally in the case of painters like Homer very subtle, and very driven by coded symbols like flowers and stormy seas in lieu of pressed together bodies.

We can put Thomas Eakins in the same boat, or should in his case, scull since he had done an endless series on hunky guys rowing up and down mad rivers, as Homer as a guy who was disturbed by his times but not quite sure of what he wanted to paint except beyond oarsmen graphic scenes in what passed for medical schools in those days. James Abbott McNeil Whistler though is another matter and it seems to me to not be merely coincidental that Updike has taken up Whistler cudgels, as much of a rogue as he was. Whistler can clearly, in fact must be clearly tagged along with a few others before the 20^th century by sex, as legitimate forerunners of the sexual explosion later. In his case not only on the canvas. I have already, thanks in part to Sam and his arcane knowledge of ancient history, written Whistler off as a pimp when reviewing his The White Girl with its deeply symbolic wolf’s head and fur which has been an “advertisement” for sexual availability since the days of the Whore of Babylon. This time out Updike wants to garner in some observations about Whistler’s long series of paintings dubbed with color names and centered, appropriately, on the night as an early devotee of “the nighttime is the right time” which was shorthand for “art for art’s sake” in his book. Of course we, Sam and I, and couple of the interns had a big laugh over that one since every lame artist and art critic has used that as a back-up to the search for the “sublime” as their working theory of what drove a painter to paint what he or she painted. Updike’s main contention though is that Whistler couldn’t make it to the modern since his palette was limited (limited by his pressing dough question when he didn’t have enough for paints even on credit and had to send some mistress of the time out onto the streets or castles to hustle up some business. The night time is the right time is right). 

         

On to the 20^th century. We can dismiss Albert Pinkham Ryder out of hand since who knows what he was trying to do now that most of his works have self-destructed just because he was clueless about what paints and other products would survive on the canvass. He might have been a serious artist and maybe a contrary example to my theory but who knows since he decided, consciously decided I think to live on artistic self-immolation. Childe Hassam is another matter although it is tight and requires a certain amount of knowledge that say his famous painting of the Boston Common in the old horse and buggy days was a coded piece of work since one of the townhouses on the left was infamous as a high-end brothel run by a women who used the moniker Madame Bovary. Moreover if you look closely at the actual Common part you will see in the distance what looks like a young women soliciting a gentleman in a top hat. Beyond that I am not willing to comment on Hassam’s work except there is definitely something erotic in all those latter crazed flag-waving paintings he did to great effect.

We can pass the piece on Stieglitz since he is famous for bringing modern art to the American shores and pushing wife-to -be Georgia O’Keeffe into the limelight but is known personally for his photography, his attempts which only in the past couple of decades have been bearing fruit of having high-end photography accepted as a fine arts form. In that regard it is interesting that the National Gallery of Art in Washington has only in the recent past been displaying it huge treasure trove of photographs from the 1800s to present with retrospectives down on the ground floor of the West wing which seems to have been set aside to accommodate those works. I might add that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been doing the same in a couple of it galleries dedicated to photography. Finally it is not clear to me and therefore not worth speculating on in regard my general theory how much Stieglitz contributed, if anything to Ms. O’Keeffe’s sexually symbolic works from flowers to skyscrapers to those sensual mountains in New Mexico.    

      

Homoerotic art has a long and honored history going back to the Greeks and their full display jugs and vases if not before (some of the earlier cave art has some such phallic displays). Although I have not commented on explicitly homoerotic art work before what will be so comments on the work of Marsden Hartley, a gay man early in the 20^th century I have worked on the idea that such art is fully in accord with my general theory about sex and eroticism in serious 20^th century art. On occasion, and since this is a fairly new on-going series, not many I have alluded to the homosexual proclivities of artists like closeted John Singer Sargent and openly gay Grady Lamont but that sexual preference was not openly professed in their works. Marsden Hartley thus is the first to have painted openly homoerotic works like Sustained Comedy and Christ Held By Half-Naked Men which might have been somewhat scandalous (and brave) at the time but now are rightly seen as classics of the genre. Having brought this art into the discussion we have come full circle about the various forms of sexual expression presented in this series

While Marsden Hartley in his later career was able to “come out” in his art the legendary Arthur Dove started out practically from day one dealing with the sexual nature of his art, his heterosexual art as far as I can tell in paintings like Silver Sun and That Red One where instead of Georgia O’Keeffe vaginal flowers, penis skyscrapers and bosom mountains he using moons and sun to make his erotic substitute statements. I will be doing a separate piece on his work so I will leave the bulk of what I say for that (and Hartley’s also since Sam Lowell has something he wants to have me present about his role as a vanguard gay artist). Updike has declared him on the cutting edge of modern and that seems about right although as usual Updike shies away from drawing sexual implications from works that scream of such expression.    

I have already commented on dirty old man Edward Hopper, the king of mopes, and his leering at nubile young women who are unaware that he is painting them (and who knows what else with the young women who consented to be painted by the famous allegedly modest painter and got much more than they bargained for. In the #MeToo age it is not clear whether his modest reputation would save him from scandal, and maybe the law but nothing has surfaced yet). Jackson Pollack also has been the subject of a recent piece and needs no further comment other than somebody tried to defend him by claiming that when he was working his wore loose-fitting pants and so he had zipper problems. (Sir, check the famous videos of him working and you will see some very tight dungarees or jeans if you want to call them that so much for your vaunted defense.) Finish off with Pop Art’s Andy Warhol, king of the hill back when that counted before everything turned minimalist galore who will also get a future gloss and it only needs to be said here that he was artist first and performer and showman second. I remember somebody saying that they could “do” soup cans. Sure but who thought of the idea and who actually thought to paint common everyday items and make them works of art. Enough for now.