Shortly after
I started this blog I introduced a feature called the Forgotten Artist
File. I wanted to explore the work of
artists who at one time had been well-known but were currently disregarded by
art historians or forgotten altogether.
One of the artists I featured was American painter Peter Blume. Perhaps he is most remembered today for his
epic painting The Rock (currently in
the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago), but apart from this one work
his art has been little seen for decades.
This perhaps will change, though, since the Pennsylvania Academy of FineArts (PAFA) in Philadelphia is currently presenting a large retrospective of his work. Driving home the idea that
Blume is largely marginalized is the fact that this show is the first major
exhibit of his work in nearly 40 years.
The field of
art history can be incredibly selective and, frankly, exclusionary. When covering American art, for example,
historians may only choose to cover those periods and artists who, in
hindsight, were the most important in furthering new and innovative ideas. Art history texts are also sometimes limited
in size, so exclusions may merely be the victim of a limited number of
pages. When looking at American art of
the 1940s and 50s, Abstract Expressionism clearly comes out as the winner. Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko (among many
others, of course) are the artists who are mentioned today, and still engender
theoretical discourse. One could argue
that Pollock is discussed as much today as he was when he was still alive. His work was as shocking as it was
innovative, and he is rightly remembered as one of the most important American
artists of the 20th century.
But, although Pollock and the other Abstract Expressionists made lasting
contributions to American art history and art history in general, they were
hardly the only artists who were getting attention at the time. Blume, along with artists such as Charles
Burchfield, George Tooker, Philip Evergood, Ivan Albright, and Henry Koerner constituted a different art historical
narrative of the mid 20th century.
Their work was based in realism, but introduced ideas imported from
European modernism like abstraction and surrealism. They received recognition and accolades. Their work was collected by major museums
(especially the Whitney Museum in New York).
But today, they’re hardly mentioned.
Open up an art history survey published within the last 20 years and
you’re unlikely to find them listed.
It’s
surprising to see how quickly this marginalization occurred. In my library I have a copy of the book American Art of the 20th Century
by Sam Hunter and John Jacobus, published in 1972 They
write extensively about these American surrealists and acknowledge their contributions alongside the work of the Abstract Expressionists (although
this is sometimes done grudgingly- they clearly do not like Burchfield’s
watercolors). I also own a newer version
of the text, re-dubbed simply Modern Art
and published 20 years after the other book (Admittedly, these are not
identical books, but the authors are the same and many of the same
illustrations are used in both). In the
newer version, these artists have been almost completely removed, as if their
contributions to American art meant nothing.
Burchfield and Evergood make the cut, but that’s about it. Abstract Expressionism, though, gets over 10
pages. This is unfortunate, since these artists took European ideas (like
surrealism) and re-interpreted them to create something quintessentially
American. Below I’ve placed Blume’s South of Scranton next to Yves Tanguy’s Indefinite Divisibility. It’s not hard to see how European Surrealism
inspired Blume:
Show like the
current one are important because they remind us that there are many facets to
art history besides the grand narrative that art history book usually
present. These kinds of shows can
re-ignite interest in an artist that was previously forgotten or considered “minor”. This has recently taken place with Charles
Burchfield and perhaps now Blume will follow.
There’s certainly room for him
in art history, if we only know where to look.
