American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe

At the MoMA from 17 Aug 2013 to 26 Jan 2014

The standard narrative of Modern art’s development begins in France, around 1860, and proceeds from Manet to Monet to Cézanne. Picasso is next in line, followed perhaps by Mondrian, whose abstraction is often understood as the culmination of Cubism. As far as American art is concerned, the story does not usually begin until 1913, with the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York, which is seen as bringing Modernism to the US. Even then, America’s role in the evolution of Modernism is generally considered a secondary phenomenon, with American artists lagging behind their European counterparts until the mid-century emergence of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Changing Landscape Although this story is broadly true, it is sweeping. That is the argument of the exhibition “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, organised by the curators Esther Adler and Kathy Curry. The show looks at American art in various media from 1915 to 1950, charting the changing visual and intellectual interpretations of modern life through the work of artists such as Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis and Charles Sheeler.

“There is a perception that Modern art lived in Europe until New York became the centre of Abstract Expressionism,” Adler says. “But MoMA had a tremendous history of promoting and exhibiting early American Modernism. In some ways, the exhibition is a way to recapture that past.” In Adler’s catalogue essay for the exhibition (which is supported by the MoMA Annual Exhibition Fund), she explains how the museum’s founding director, Alfred Barr, far from relegating American art to the European sidelines, firmly believed in its independent status.

Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad, 1925
 

“Many of us feel today that there is a great virtue in being an ‘American’ painter as opposed to one whose work shows foreign influences,” Barr wrote in a 1933 essay on Edward Hopper. Adler says the artistic and cultural environment of the time was one of “trying to define an authentic national culture”, adding that “there was a great need for American curators and critics to separate this work as being American and only American, as being distant from Europe”. Although nationalism may seem today to be politically suspect, it is to be recalled that America is still a young country with a relatively short cultural history to draw on. The enduring legacy of this art is its contribution to that ever-expanding story.