painting of the month

The Green Parrot -- Vincent van Gogh, 1886

Pictured: A Study in March (In Early Spring) -- John Wm. Inchbold (1830-1888)

abstractly postal

I just wrote a Suite101 blog bit about the U.S. Post Office's latest visual arts series being issued tomorrow, with ten paintings by Abstract Expressionist (or Abstractionists, as one of my professors used to call them) notables like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Arshile Gorky. Chicago native Joan Mitchell is the lone female in the group and the Suite101 post is mainly about her. In terms of Gorky, he was born Vostanik Manoog Adoyan on April 15, 1904 in Armenia; he survived his homeland's horrific genocide, immigrated to America and reinvented himself as Arshile Gorky. His work was fascinating and haunted yet often vibrant with color; his later life was troubled with personal problems and devastating physical ailments and he hung himself in 1948 surely just to escape it all. His featured painting among the Abstract Expressionist stamp series is the intriguingly-titled 1944 The Liver is the Cock's Comb (Albright-Knox Art Gallery), pictured here.

the small-towner, the farmer and the ozark hillbilly

I tend to like the American Regionalists, because of their historical context and the epic kind of declaration that their artworks send forth. I've written Suite101 articles on Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry's John Brown mural, but I found it interesting to read Robert Hughes' section on Regionalism in his juicy 600+ page art history American Visions book. The myth of Regionalism tends to be that it sprang up naturally from the earth like Benton's wheaty inspiration pictured here, reasserting America's presence in art and rejecting European "isms". Apparently it was a more calculated egg hatched within the mind of Mr. Maynard Walker; Walker was from Kansas originally, but by the 1930s he had established himself in New York as an art dealer. Walker figured that making art more accessible and "homegrown" would tap a whole new audience and could exploit social anxieties during the Great Depression.

Regionalism promoted America's past and future energy and gave art back to the people. Or so the general buzz went, particularly Time Magazine's December 1934 feature on Regionalism with Benton on the cover. But Benton himself would confess that the real deal was that: "A play was written and a stage erected for us. Grant Wood became the typical Iowa small-towner, John Curry the typical Kansas farmer, and I just an Ozark hillbilly. We accepted our roles." And they kept those roles throughout the rest of their careers, even when Regionalism lost its initial momentum. Over the years, however, the collective dynamic of Benton, Curry and Wood resurged and became important in a different sense -- still mythic and exaggerated, but perhaps in a uniquely mythic and exaggerated American way.

(Image: Wheat -- Thomas Hart Benton, Smithsonian American Art Museum)