Arthur Dove: Reality and Abstraction

Stuyvesant Square, New York, 1907 (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)

Landscape, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, 1908-1909 (Private collection)

Dove, Landscape, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, 1908-1909 (Private collection)

Renoir, Les Vignes a Cagnes, about 1906. (Brooklyn)

The Lobster, 1908 (Amon Carter Museum)

Matisse, Dishes and Fruit, 1901 (Hermitage)

Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908 (Hermitage)

Dove, The Lobster, 1908 (Amon Carter Museum)

Alfred Maurer, Still Life with Flowers, about 1915 (WAM)

291 Gallery, Alfred Stieglitz (founded 1905)

1910—Younger American Painters

The dry bones of dead art are rattling as they never

rattled before . . . . A score or more of painters and

sculptors who decline to go on doing merely what the

camera does better, have united in a demonstration of

independence—an exhibition of what they see and

dare express in their own way—that will wring shrieks

of indignation from every ordained copyist of “old

masters” on two continents and their adjacent islands.

January 26, 1913, Sunday Times, Armory Show

Abstraction no. 2, 1910/1911(Private collection)

Abstraction no. 3, 1910/1911 (Private collection)

Nature Symbolized No. 2, about 1911 (Chicago)

Kandinsky, Improvisation (Sea Battle), 1913 (National Gallery)

Kandinsky, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), 1912 (Met)

O’Keeffe, Dove, and Stieglitz

The American “Ideal”

1905 –Stieglitz first gallery at 291 Fifth Ave, NYC opens, commonly called 291

1917—Closes 291

1921— Stieglitz retrospective with 145 photographs, 1/3 portraits of O’Keeffe, at Anderson Gallery

1923—first solo O’Keeffe show at Anderson opens, on January 29, featuring 100 works

1925—

Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans at Anderson Gallery: 159 Paintings and Photographs

Stieglitz’ new gallery the Intimate Gallery opens

1926—Dove had one-man show, first in 14 years at Intimate Gallery

“I discovered Dove and picked

him out before I was picked out

and discovered. Where did I see

him? A reproduction in a book.

The Eddy book. I guess, a

picture of Fall leaves. Then I

trekked the streets looking for

others.” Georgia O’Keeffe,

1962

Arthur Dove, Silver Sun, 1929 (Chicago)

Arthur Dove, Swing Music (Louis Armstrong), 1938 (Chicago)

Georgia O’Keeffe, White Shell with Red, 1938 (Chicago)

Feminine vs. Masculine Arthur Dove, Penetration, 1924 (Vilcek Foundation)

Paul Rosenfeld, “virile and profound talent…a tremendous muscular tension is revealed in the fullest of the man’s pastels…a male vitality is being released…and in everything he does, there is the nether trunk, the gross and vital organs, the human being as indelicate processes of nature have shaped him.”

John Marin, Sunset, Casco Bay, 1919 (WAM)

“Though she might well have sold the collection

or broken it into single-artist groups or into

thematic sections or chronological surveys, she did

what seemed “natural”: she divided the collection

into a few representative samplings of the artists

Stieglitz had supported, thereby perpetuating, by

deed of gift, the configuration of a preeminent

American modernist circle.”

Wanda Corn, The Great American Thing

1912-Dove moves to the farm in Westport

1918-1920, farming in Westport, Conn, moves back to NY to do commercial illustration for $$$

1920-leaves Florence Dove for Helen Torr

1924-move to a yacht on the Long Island Sound

1932-Dove marries Torr

1933-1938, move to Geneva

1938-back to Long Island, Centerport

1939-Dove has heart attack

1944-health really starts to decline

1946-Stieglitz dies in the summer, Dove in the fall

Arthur Dove, Forms

Against the Sun, about

1926 (WAM)

Arthur Dove, Boat Going Through Inlet, about 1929 (Terra Fnd)

Arthur Dove, Sunrise in Northport Harbor, 1929 (WAM)

Arthur Dove, Red Sun, 1935 (Phillips Collection)

Centerport, Long Island

Dove, July 12, 1942, 1942

(WAM)

approx. 190, summer of ‘42 and ‘43

Dove, August 17, 1942 (a), 1942

(WAM)

Dove, August 17, 1942 (b), 1942

(WAM)

Alfred Stieglitz, Spring Showers, The Coach, 1902

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalent, 1926

Helen Torr Dove, Centerport, New York, after 1976 (Heckscher

Museum of Art)

Arthur Dove, High Noon, 1944 (WAM)

Arthur Dove, Partly Cloudy, 1942 (University of Arizona)

Arthur Dove, That Red One, 1944 (MFA, Boston)