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 20th 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 20th century art, serious 20th 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 20th
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 20th 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 20th
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 20th
century I have worked on the idea that such art is fully in accord with my
general theory about sex and eroticism in serious 20th 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.
The CIA and the U.S. Justice Department tried to destroy the life of Jeffrey Sterling. Now, after two and a half years in prison, he’s trying to rebuild it.
