Sunday, April 21, 2019

Peabody-Essex Museum with Oliver, Jackson's artwork

The PEM continues to produce exhibitions which are the rival of any of the largest museums, especially in their ability to illustrate, educate, and disturb.  This is an exhibit not to be missed.  It gathers some of the greatest artists and their work in landscape, and brings it into our present state of the destruction of our environment.  It is a  profoundly scary story, and Oliver and I came away with both elated and somber emotions.
The art should be seen in the environment of the museum, and the spectacular way in which the PEM has organized the art.  It is a masterpiece of curating.

Pacific Northwest Coast, probably Haida
Rattle, 19th. century
PEM


Carl von Linne (Carolus Linnaeus) 1707-1778
Systema naturae (A General System of Nature,
through the Three Grand Kingdoms of Animals,
Vegetables, and Minerals, 1735
Missouri Botanical Garden Library

How incredible to see an authentic Linnaeus, one of the greatest of scientests,
and the founder of our modern classification system!


Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859
Geography of Equatorial Plants, Physical Tableau of the Andes
and Neighboring Countries  1807
Missouri Botanical Garden Library

And in the same exhibit (!) von Humboldt, the founder of Biogeography, or
the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in space and time.
If I remember correctly, Aubrey and Maturin, in the great, great series of novels about 
the British navy by Patrick O'Brien, were always doing research on their voyages for Humboldt.



Diego de Vlaldes (Didacus Valades)  1533-1582
Illustration of the Great Chain of Being, in "Rhetorica Christiana"  1579

I will have to do some research on this.


John James Audubon  1785-1851
Carolina Parrot
from "The Birds of America"
PEM
This species is extinct. 


Pemonscot artist
Powder horn, before 1815
PEM


Oliver admiring:
Charles Willson Peale  1741-1827
George Washington at the Battle of Princeton


Thomas Cole   1801-1848
A View of the Mountain Pass Called
the Notch of the White Mountains
(Crawford Notch)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.


detail of above

Thomas Moran  1857-1925
Lower Falls, Yellowstone Park
Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma


Frederic Edwin Church   1826-1900
Cayambe
New York Historical Society


detail of above

detail of above

Martin Johnson Heade  1819-1904
Gremlin in the Studio II
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn. 

What an unusual surprise from  Heade!  The great painter of detailed hummingbirds 
and flowers from S. America, and now, this!

detail of above


Martin Johnson Heade
Newburyport Marshes, Approaching Storm

Albert Bierstadt  1830-1902
Mount Adams, Washington
Princeton University Art Museum

Of course, you would hope to see, in an exhibition of this nature (pun), a good 
representation of Bierstadt, who, when I was younger, was the painter I most admired above all others. 



Albert Bierstadt
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Valerie Hegarty   Born 1967
Fallen Bierstadt
Brooklyn Museum

When you first see this, you are so startled!  And then you realize it is intentional, and is 
a  pointed rebuke of Bierstadt, whose paintings (at least from the viewpoint of the curaters) invited the
surge Westward, despoiling of landscape, and destruction of the indigenous people.


Frederick Law Olmsted  1822-1903
Calvert Vaux   1824-1895
Greensward Plan for Central Park
New York City Municipal Archives

Like the Linnaeus,  how very cool to see an Olmsted original


David Gilmour Blythe   1815-1865
Prospecting
Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

James Hamilton  1819-1878
Burning Oil Well at Night, near
Rouseville, Pennsylvania
Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington, D.C.


Thomas Moran  1838-1926
Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia
Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa

What a stunning, and surprising piece of art by Moran, most famous for his landscapes.


detail of above


George Bellows  1882-1925
Cliff Dwellers
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Bellows' gritty art is so powerful and riveting.




David Bradley   born 1954  Ojibwe
American Dream II
PEM




Artist in Michigan
Men Standing with  Pile of Buffalo Skulls,
Michigan Carbon Works  1892
Detroit Public Library


Lakota artist
Buffalo robe, 1882
Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology


Georgia O'Keefe  1887-1986
The Lawrence Tree
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford


A:shewi (Zuni Pueblo) artist
Jar, before 1900
PEM



Morris Louis
Intrigue
Princeton Univ. Art Museum


Alexander Hogue  1898-1994
Crucified Land
Thomas Gilcrease Foundation


Dorothea Lange  1895-1965
Ex-Tenant Farmer on Relief Grant
in the Imperial Valley, California
Princeton Univ. Art Museum


Three generations of Wyeths, exhibited side by side
N.C. Wyeth  1882-1945
Roping Horses in the Corral
Private Collection


Andrew Wyeth  1917-2009
My Hound
Private Collection


Jamie Wyeth  born 1946
Portrait of Lady, Study #1
Private collection


Alexis Rockman  born 1962
Aviary
Private collection

Of all the "disturbing" art of the exhibit, this one affected me the most. 
The grim landscape, the mutated creatures, all had to have been 
influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, both in subject matter, and in the colors used.
I've learned that Rockman worked with Ang Lee to develop art work for
the movie "Life of Pi"


detail of above

detail of above

detail of above
Somehow, this creature was the most painful to look at. 

The next four photos are from Newburyport, where Jackson had an overnight at 
the Unitarian church.  The overnighters spent a lot of time doing art.  
Some examples to follow, including Jankson's.






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