Monday, September 12, 2016

American Painting (1910-1930) in Madrid

Childe Hassam
Plaza de la Merced, Ronda
1910
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Frederick Carl Frieseke
Hollyhocks
ca. 1912-13
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Edward Henry Potthast
Beach Scene
ca. 1915
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

"Hence, the notion of a happy, gentle, sensual, jubilant sexuality is never to be found in any text. Where are we to read it then? In painting, or better still : in color."

 Roland Barthes (1975) translated by Richard Howard

Walt Kuhn
Bathers on a Beach
1915
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Max Weber
Grand Central Station
1915
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

John Marin
Abstraction
1917
watercolor
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Maurice Prendergast
Autumn
ca. 1918-23
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Edward Hopper
Girl at a Sewing Machine
ca. 1921
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Lyonel Feininger
Lady in Mauve
1922
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Georgia O'Keeffe
Abstraction : Blind I
1921
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 

Abundance

O, despite our certain fate ... the bewildering
overflow of our lives! How it pours
over into great parks, stone men shouldering
the balconies, flanking the broad doors;

or the brazen bell that every hour will take
its bludgeon to the dullness of the day,
or that column  that one column  in Karnak
outlasting the temples' near-eternity.

Today, those same abundances will race
past us, agents of pure haste  from the blind
white morning to the undark, bloated night.

The frenzy passes off, and leaves no trace,
But they'll live on, those lovely arcs of flight,
and their inscribers. If only in the mind.

 from Orpheus : a version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus by Don Patterson (Faber & Faber, 2006)

Patrick Henry Bruce
Painting : Still-life
ca. 1923-24
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Reginald Marsh
The Battery
ca. 1926
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Arthur Dove
'Orange Grove in California' by Irving Berlin
1927
oil on cardboard
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Charles Demuth
Love Love Love : Homage to Gertrude Stein
1928
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

I am grateful for the excellent reproductions from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.