NRO Weekend, February 3-4, 2001
Modern Champions
Cheers for Stieglitz and the National Gallery.

By Melissa Seckora, NR editorial associate

ow good can a modern art exhibition be? How good should it be? Well, Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries is an extraordinary and epic example of just how high-quality a modern-art exhibition can be. A tremendous undertaking in size and scope, Modern Art and America, organized by Sarah Greenough at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is the first exhibition to fully portray Alfred Stieglitz's role as photographer, publisher, and gallery director in the history of American modernism. More, it is an aesthetically pleasing exhibition, both intimate and scholarly, showing the range of his talents.

To understand modern art's place in the United States, the person to begin with is Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). His name appears in almost every study of the development of modern art in America. He is a pioneer of modern art in this country. He is a legend in the American art world.

"In the modest rooms of Stieglitz's New York galleries, an intense, intellectual dialogue ensued, sparked by the avant-garde art of Europeans and later reflecting the ideals of a close-knit group of American artists," said Earl Powell, III, director of the National Gallery of Art. "This exhibition presents the same works that inspired a dramatic transformation in American art and photography in the first few decades of the twentieth century."

The story of this discussion of art and ideas is told quite perfectly by the nearly 200 works on view. Beginning with works by Rodin, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso, the history of modern art in America unfolds from room to room. The first section, "The 291 Gallery, 1908-1917," focuses on Stieglitz's introduction of European modern art to America at his gallery, the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City — or 291, as it was generally called. He founded 291 in 1905, and began exhibiting art (other than photography) there in 1907.

There were lots of firsts at 291: the first showing of Rodin's late pencil and watercolor figure drawings, including "Hell" (c. 1900-1908, pictured above), and the first exhibition of Matisse's work ever held in the United States. The first three lithographs by Cézanne were shown in 1910, followed a year later by the first one-man exhibitions of Cézanne and Picasso. In April 1912, Stieglitz displayed the world's first exhibition of Matisse's sculpture. Stieglitz's exhibitions showed a "more mature, nuanced, and layered understanding of modern art and the exhibition process itself…evident in both the 1911 Picasso exhibition and the 1912 Matisse show…. Above all else these two exhibitions at 291 drew attention to what was for many one of the most disturbing and perplexing aspects of modern art: its attack on conventional notions of beauty in the human form," writes Sarah Greenough in the wonderfully done, 600-page catalog that accompanies the exhibition. There is African sculpture here, too. Stieglitz mounted what he called the first exhibition anywhere of African sculpture, "presented not for its ethnographic interest but as art." The Gallery presents two partial reconstructions of displays of African art at 291 juxtaposed with startlingly similar polished bronze and marble Brancusi's.

Not forgetting Marsden Hartley, Paul Strand, and Georgia O'Keeffe, other works featured in the this section are Wassily Kandinsky's abstract painting "The Garden of Love (Improvisation Number 27)" (1912) and watercolors of New York's Woolworth Building by the underrated, and often forgotten modern master, John Marin. The photographic talents of Stieglitz are also on view here, including two well-known modern squares, "The Steerage" (1907) and "The City of Ambition" (1910).

The second section of Modern Art and America, "The Anderson Galleries, The Intimate Gallery, and An American Place (1921- 1946)," focuses on the galleries Stieglitz opened after he closed 291 in 1917, and around the same time the Armory Show firmly established the European avant-garde. Through works by the circle of artists known as the "Seven Americans" — Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Hartley, Marin, O'Keeffe, Strand, and Stieglitz himself — the Gallery illustrates the formation of a distinctively American form of modernism, or American avant-garde, by the first generation of American modernists.

Writes Greenough: "[D]rawing on the intuitive, non-theoretical, experiential art that Stieglitz had championed since the early 1920s, [the "Seven Americans"] created work that stressed the importance of careful, prolonged observation and of the experience of seeing itself. Their very titles reinforced their point of view." For example, Demuth presented "My Egypt" (1927, pictured above), Marin painted "My Hell Raising Sea" (1941), and Stieglitz recorded the vista "From My Window at An American Place, North" (1931).

Selected from the works once on display at the Anderson Galleries, the Gallery also presents five of the 330 photographs Stieglitz took of his wife, O'Keeffe, as well as selections from O'Keeffe's works including "Autumn Trees — The Maple" (1924, pictured below) and "Blue and Green Music" (1921). O'Keeffe appears here both as Stieglitz's love object and in the more recognizable forms of her overscale flower illustrations like "White Flower" (1926) and other magnified takes of nature like "Bare Tree Trunks with Snow" (1946).

In the exhibit's last few rooms, works represent the later years of Stieglitz's career, including his own photographs of his family's summer home at Lake George, NY. Demuth's poster portraits include "Love, Love, Love (Homage to Gertrude Stein)" (1929) and "Poster Portrait: Marin" (1926), as well as a good handful of Marin's, Hartley's, and Dove's. "Goin' Fishin'" (1925), Dove's assemblage of bamboo, denim shirtsleeves, buttons, wood, and oil on composition board, and Hartley's "Mount Katahdin, Maine No.2" (1939-1940), are among the works presented here.

In Modern Art and America, the National Gallery of Art has succeeded in presenting one of the most eye-opening, re-introductions to American modernism. Mr. Stieglitz would be proud, I'm sure, to witness the kind of attention and care that clearly went into this fine show. With the art world's current state of post-modern overload, this is quite an achievement.

The Stieglitz Score
Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries remains on view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through April 22.