Frye Art Museum opens 'Marsden Hartley: An American Nature'

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, March 29, 2024


Frye Art Museum opens 'Marsden Hartley: An American Nature'
Marsden Hartley. After the Storm, Vinalhaven, 1938–39. Oil on Academy board. 22 x 28 in. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. Charles Phillip Kuntz, 1950.8. Photography by Peter Siegal.



SEATTLE, WA.- Marsden Hartley’s emotive paintings celebrate the grandeur and nuances of nature as expressions of American culture. Hartley (1877–1943) spent much of his career restlessly traveling around North America and Europe. In 1937, he finally settled in his home state of Maine and, in response to the Depression-era cultural and commercial desire for all things homegrown, declared himself an American Regionalist, “the painter from Maine.” Hartley sought to define culture in nature, representing—and in the process constructing—new settler colonial myths of the American landscape.

Marsden Hartley: An American Nature features two paintings from the Frye’s collection alongside works by the artist on loan from museums and galleries around the country. Offering a snapshot of Hartley’s vast oeuvre, the exhibition highlights a shift in the artist’s approach; while earlier works portray a pristine wilderness devoid of human presence, later paintings reveal an understanding of a complex natural world impacted by humankind—specifically white settlers whose dispossession and erasure of Indigenous peoples enabled them, and Hartley, to characterize the land as an empty container ripe for development.

Hartley was greatly influenced by the American essayist, poet, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), who argued that the United States should claim its own national culture by disavowing European aesthetic traditions and rooting its identity in the abundant land it was settling. This ran counter to the pervasive colonial belief that culture is construed separately from and in opposition to nature. Hartley’s later paintings respond to Emerson’s proposition.

In some of the works on view, the rugged Maine coast is dotted with signs of industry—tamed by Hartley’s stylized organization of rocks, water, and sky—while other paintings make room for agrarian spaces, like farmhouses or lumberyards, that exist between wilderness and urbanity.

Hartley’s vision of an American identity rooted in nature mythologized white American settlers and their industries, recasting them as premodern, native inhabitants of North America. In claiming Maine as his subject, Hartley illustrates the ways in which the notion of a “region” is not only politically constructed but culturally enabled.

Marsden Hartley: An American Nature is organized by Georgia Erger, Associate Curator.










Today's News

February 13, 2023

As $1.6 million in rare photos vanished, the excuses piled up

Exhibition explores the influence of Spanish culture on the dynamic visual practice of John Singer Sargent

Praz-Delavallade Paris opens an exhibition of works by Diogo Pimentão

marcchagall.com, launch of the official website devoted to the artist Marc Chagall in March 2023

Albertina Museum exhibits Ruth Baumgarte's work in Austria for the first time

Exhibition offers a thrilling trip through Rinus Van de Velde's brain and Voorlinden collection

New exhibition 'Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes' now open at the Henry Moore Institute

Martos Gallery presents 'Passages' organized by Alex Chaves and Reilly Davidson

Hosfelt Gallery opens solo show of the work of the 87-year-old Rinzai Zen monk Max Gimblett

'Peter Buggenhout: The Ever Changing Repetition' on view at Konrad Fischer Galerie

Nenad Samuilo Amodaj presents "Hoop and Ball" at The Robin Rice Gallery

'The Harbour' by Jem Southam to be published February 2023 by RRB Photobooks

At Hubbard Street Dance, making a place for 'the other folks'

Young Fathers' music has always been subversive. Now it's joyful, too.

The prophet of urban doom says New York still has a chance

AKA, influential South African rapper, is fatally shot

Frye Art Museum opens 'Marsden Hartley: An American Nature'

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022 on show at The David Roche Foundation

Artists Hannan Abu-Hussein and Maria Saleh Mahameed are the laureates of the Rappaport Art Prize, 2023

ARCOmadrid 2023: Top quality galleries at an edition with the Mediterranean at its core

Towner 100: A year of new exhibitions is announced

US debut solo exhibition from Barcelona-based painter Jose Bonell

Price family establishes major endowment at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The Samdani Art Award - Bangladesh's premier art prize - announces first ever joint winners

Can I Put A Beverage Fridge In A Garage?

❴Cisco CCIE-RS❵ An Overview of Cisco Multi-layer Switching




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

sa gaming free credit
Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful