FA157 American Early 20Th Century Painting and Photography
FA157 American Early 20th Century Painting and Photography:
Roots and Legacy of O'Keeffe and Stieglitz
Professor Nancy Scott - Fall 2015 Mandel G10 MWTh 11:00 AM
The course will focus on the development of modernism in early 20th century
American painting and photography. We begin with the trend toward Realism, centered in New York in the early twentieth century. We will study the epoch-making Armory Show of 1913, and proceed to a focus on the art and careers of photographers and later, painters, who exhibited with Alfred Stieglitz in his three galleries over a period of thirty years. Stieglitz’s early work in photography, a style called Pictorialism at the turn of the century, established his decisive impact in advancing photography as a fine art
from the 1890s.
Not only did Stieglitz work to advance photography, and American modernists, but at his gallery Stieglitz introduced European avant-garde artists to America, from Cézanne and Rodin to Picasso and Braque. The time from 1910-15 is especially important for the independent pathways toward abstraction taken by two singular artists of the Stieglitz Circle—Arthur Dove, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
O’Keeffe’s early stylistic evolution toward abstraction, her later
retreat to realism in the painting of flowers and architecture, and the evaluation of her sources and relationship to photography will all be set into the larger cultural context of the period.
The course offers the opportunity to study a heady mix of artists--painters,
photographers, and related authors of the period. These early American modernists, all of
whom exhibited or discoursed with Stieglitz at the 291 Fifth Avenue gallery in New
York, stamped the period as a legendary one in the first “white cube” gallery, An American Place.
We will use museum collections in the area, notably the MFA, Boston, to study the richness of early 20th century American modernism, and its source material in European precedents. Also, we have access to study works from the Rose Art Museum and the Farber Library’s Special Collections, including a little-known group of Southwestern art and artifacts.
Course Requirements:
Requirements for completion of the course are: all written assignments, visual
analysis and research papers; also final take-home essay in lieu of Registrar exam.
• Research paper of c. 10-15 pages covering a topic of compelling interest to the
student, and chosen in consultation with the instructor. Outline and thesis
statement with provisional bibliography, due November 19th; final paper due
December 9th with oral report. (25%)
• Final class presentations on the semester project will be Dec. 7-9th. (10%)
• 3 short response papers, typed and submitted as listed in syllabus, accompanied by discussion of major observations and findings raised; (average 2-3 pp in length-15%). Other research discussions on assigned topics (no paper).* See separate
description hand-out, titled Assignments American Painting and Photography, posted on LATTE, topic with listing of due dates.
• One museum analysis paper (20%): You may choose the painting, sculpture or artifact for your visual analysis. These may come from the MFA 20th Century collection on view in the new American Wing; or materials at the Rose or in the Library’s Special Collections. Due October 31.
Separate instructions for Visual Analysis guidelines and museum paper on
LATTE.
• Final take-home essay. (20%)
Good attendance ad general preparedness (10%= invaluable-makes all the other
percentages high!)
Recommended for purchase: Scott, Nancy, Georgia O’Keeffe: Critical Lives, Reaktion Books (London, 2015).
(Other Museum catalogues and art books can be quite expensive, so that all required readings will also be on Latte. Please purchase selectively, according to
your budget and interests. No books were pre-ordered through the Brandeis bookstore.)
FA157 “Georgia O’Keeffe” Weekly Assignments
Week beginning:
August 27 Introduction to the art of Georgia O’Keeffe and her times
Scott, Georgia O’Keeffe, Introduction: Pioneer, Independent spirit, Visionary, pp. 1-7 (available in preview on amazon.com).
N. Scott, “Following in the Footsteps: The Georgia O’Keeffe Trail.” Art New England, 2001. LATTE.
1) August 31American Realists: From the Eight to the Ashcan School
Bjelajac, D. American Art: A Cultural History (2005), ON RESERVE.
Ch 7: Modernist Art and Politics, 1905-41. “Modern Realists,” pp. 300-07
2) Sept 2-3: The Armory Show and its cultural impact
Bjelajac, “Modernism and Political Radicalism, The Armory Show”
pp. 318-21 [RESERVE]
Bjelajac, Ch. 7: “Stieglitz, Photography and 291”, pp. 307-314 [RESERVE]
Greenough, “Alfred Stieglitz, Rebellious Midwife…” Modern Art and
America, pp. 23-53.
September 9-10 O’Keeffe biography discussion. How does one write about the life
of a famous artist? Sources, balance of art and life, cultural influences and historical events.
Scott, ch. 1 “Family Untied” and ch. 2 “Breakthrough- Charcoal Landscapes,” PP. 16-54.
O’Keeffe, “Catalogue Statements” from MSS. 1922 and her 1923 first show “Alfred Stieglitz Presents” (B. Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, scans on LATTE).
For reference: Bjelajac, “Modernist Art and World War I; Synchromism,” pp. 321-25.
Background Reading: Sanford Schwartz, “When New York went to New Mexico,” Art in America (1976).
S. Peters, Becoming O’Keeffe, Ch 1, “Starting all over New,” pp. 29-61.
B. Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 1916-29. U. Chicago Press:
1989), “Introduction” and “The Background and Early Reviews,” pp 3-26.
Screening: Perry Miller Adato, Georgia O’Keeffe (excerpts).
September 14-15, 2015 Rosh Hoshanah No classes
September 17: Who and What was the Stieglitz Circle?
How I came to know Stieglitz: introduction to the Stieglitz Circle
Short Reports and response papers due on the “circle” – (9/17: Thursday)
Choose from one of the following:
Early American painters: Alfred Maurer, Max Weber, John Marin, Marsden Hartley,
Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Abraham Walkowitz.
Early Photo-Secession photographers: Edward Steichen, Clarence White,
Gertrude Kasebier, F. Holland Day.
[The youngest, last protégés of 291: Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand;
In later years, Charles Demuth (1925-35); Ansel Adams (after 1936); Todd Webb.]
Give brief summary on the artist’s life; turn in typed, printed copy of your findings.
Sept 21 and 24: [Yom Kippur – No class on September 24]
Themes of America— The “American-ness” of American painting:
From the natural paradise to the “triumph” of American painting; issues of European influence
9.21: N Scott, O’Keeffe, ch 3, “Painting in Canyon: ‘Between Heaven and Earth,’” pp. 55-76
Bjelajac, Chapter 7: “Influence of Futurism,” pp. 314-18
(includes Marin and O'Keeffe).
9.24: Watson Forbes, “The All American Nineteen.” The ARTS (January 1930).
B. Novak, “Georgia O’Keeffe and American Intellectual and Visual
Traditions,” The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Catalogue (1997), pp. 73-98.
Wanda Corn, “Spiritual America,” The Great American Thing: Modern
Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, pp. 3-40.
Background reading (bring to class for reference): E. A. Jewell, MoMA review of Nineteen Living Americans, New York Times.
Elizabeth H. Turner, “O’Keeffe as Abstraction,” in Barbara Haskell, ed. O’Keeffe: Abstraction, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, 2009), pp. 57-68 (tba).
September 28 Sukkot - No class Monday
September 29 (Tuesday) BRANDEIS Monday Rose Art Museum class:
Rose Art Museum class to be scheduled this week. Focus on John Marin,
Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Stuart Davis and Paul Strand.
View and discuss the Rose’s painting Musical Theme by Marsden Hartley,
(1912-13) and other early modernist works.
Discussion of Modernism: The First Wave, Rose Art Museum catalogue
(1963). Prepare for the Rose visit.
October 1: class field trip to Boston Greenway: Lecture by Prof Scott on Janet Echelman “As If It Were Already Here.” Details to be announced.
October 5 Shmini Atzeret No Class
October 7-8 Focus on Photography: Alfred Stieglitz, photographic oeuvre from early period to 1921.
Scott, Ch. 4, "A Portrait: Woman" pp. 77-95.
Questions to answer for class discussion: How does O’Keeffe meet Stieglitz? When does Alfred Stieglitz exhibit modernist American art at his 291 Fifth Avenue Gallery for the first time? What is the impact of his renewed creative work? What and where does O’Keeffe exhibit in New York for the first time?
Reading: Floyd Dell, Women as World Builders (1913), chapter on Isadora Duncan, pp. 41-51.
October 8th: 2nd assignment and report due: The “291” Gallery and Camera Work; the relation to European Modernism; the rival aesthetics of painting and photography in early 20th century America; Stieglitz’s aims and goals in defining photography as a
fine art.
October 8: Thursday: Visit to Special Collections, Brandeis Library.
Reading: Bjelajac, “Harlem Renaissance,” pp. 335-39.
Introduction to the African-American figures of note depicted by Carl Van Vechten, and the cultural icons he documented: Miro, Dali, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Gertrude Stein, Horace Pippin, Dr. Albert Barnes and Langston Hughes, as well as Stieglitz and O'Keeffe.
[See assignments: paper on the Carl Van Vecten photographs due Oct. 14.]
October 12-14: O’Keeffe in the 1920s
Scott, O’Keeffe , Ch. 5 “The Nimbus of Lustre,” pp. 95-113.
1925 exhibition of the Seven Americans exhibition. Who were the artists on view in 1925? And what new art was being shown?
Resources for Seven Americans: Wanda Corn, The Great American Thing: Modern
Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, ch. 4 “And the Home of the Brave…” pp. 193-227.
Tools and sources: The catalogue raisonné: Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: The Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols. Yale University Press, (New Haven and London: 2000).
NB: for Wed., Oct 14th: Each student should come to class with at least three- four works chosen, and ready for presentation in class. Use the readings, and the Lynes catalogue as representative / or favorite images of O’Keeffe’s various styles or motifs.
October 15: Class trip to the Morse Study Room, MFA, Boston. Class must arrive at the museum by 10:30 AM (please speak with instructor if you have a conflict about other classes/ commitments before 11-12noon that day.).
October 19: American Modernism and the Southwest: Southwestern arts, Taos and Santa Fe modernists, regionalist and Native Americans painters and photographers
Scott, O’Keeffe, Ch. 6: “New Mexico: ‘I Feel Like Bursting,’” pp. 114-133.
Busselle and Stack, Paul Strand: Southwest (Aperture, 2004), pp. TBA.
Truettner, “The Art of Pueblo Life,” ch. 3, in Art in New Mexico:
Paths to Santa Fe and Taos, pp. 59-99.
W. Jackson Rushing III "Pictures of Katchina Tithu: Georgia O'Keeffe and Southwest Modernism" pp. 19-40, in Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinim, and the Land, O'Keeffe Museum, exhibition catalogue (Santa Fe, 2012).
October 26 O’Keeffe and the Great Depression: New Mexico and New York
Scott, O’Keeffe, Ch. 7: New York and Lake George, pp. 134-62
Wednesday class, Discussion of biography: Prepare to discuss narrative and the mythic stories of the O’Keeffe life: Georgia O’Keeffe by Georgia O’Keeffe. You must use this book in the Library (reserve). Study plates/ read text in Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe [New York, 1976]. Look for breaks and discontinuities in the narrative.
Source in LATTE: Wanda M. Corn, American Art, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 2009), pp. 54-79.
October 29: Response papers and short reports:
“Streamlines and Breadlines” - Precisionism and Art Deco: What was the movement in art? Who was a Precisionist? [Was O’Keeffe?]
Tsujimoto, “Introduction,” and “What is Precisionism” in Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography, pp. 13-20; 21-25.
Bjelajac, “Art Deco and Modernity” pp. 332-5.
Background Readings: Corn, ch. 6, “Home Sweet Home,” The Art of Charles Sheeler, Precisionism and the rootedness of American art.
November 2 -5: O’Keeffe and the Southwest, Part II
Scott, O’Keeffe, ch 8: Ghost Ranch, pp. 163-74.
Charles Eldredge, et al., “The Faraway Nearby,” in Art in New Mexico:
Paths to Santa Fe and Taos, 147-180
The sense of place: Attention to the sites of her painting, and the ways in which O’Keeffe interprets, absorbs and shapes the strong desert view: geology and paleontology.
November 9-12: The Stiegltiz Circle in the 1940s: Marin vs. Pollock
Brennan, Marcia, Painting Gender, Constructing Theory: “The Contest for “the Greatest American Painter of the Twentieth Century” Alfred
Stieglitz and Clement Greenberg,” ch. 8, pp. 232-71.
Discussion: who was America’s Greatest Painter in 1950? Postwar New York and the fame of Life Magazine—Marin vs. Pollock, the criticism of Clement Greenberg. Stieglitz’s last critical battle. Also, Stieglitz’s battle with Thomas Hart Benton, America’s last conservative figurative painter of the mid-century period.
Visual Analysis Paper due Monday, November 9th.
Choose a work of art from our study thus far this term: You may use the resources of the Rose Art Museum, the MFA, Boston, or choose any of the Anglo painters, early modernist painters, photographers of Southwestern subjects, or from Special Collections: Native American watercolorists/ artists.
November 16-19 Stieglitz and O’Keeffe: literature of the period, her library, her aesthetic tastes – later interviews and interest in paintings/ museums/ collection.
Mon., November 16.Term research project plan, outline with brief biography due.
Fine, Ruth et al. The Book Room: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Library in Abiquiu. (1998).
Discussion of O’Keeffe’s literary tastes and collected library, with focus on Faust, William Carlos Williams, Jean Toomer, and D. H. Lawrence. Also from evidence of their letters: focus on O’Keeffe’s early feminism, and its roots: Floyd Dell Women as World Builders (1913), The Masses, and Randolph Bourne, Life and Youth; Thomas Hardy, feminist politics.
Nov. 19: (Thursday class) For discussion- “The Lawrence Tree.”
Bonnie Grad, “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lawrencean Vision” Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 38, no. 3/4 (1998), p. 2-19.
November 23/ Week of December 2-5:
O’Keeffe at Brandeis: 1963 Creative Arts Award, and Rose Art Museum
Exhibitions. Legacy of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe- the art of Marin, Dove, Hartley.
Scott, O’Keeffe, Ch. 9: Sky Above Clouds, pp. 174-97; Epilogue, pp. 197-203.
Further Discussion: O’Keeffe as minimalist? O’Keeffe and Ellsworth Kelly. O’Keeffe and Turrell. The question of O’Keeffe influence on Kusama. The Stieglitz circle as progenitors of American Abstract expressionism? -- questions of artistic style and evolution
Barbara Rose, “O’Keeffe’s Originality,” The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum,
exh. cat., (Santa Fe, NM: 1997), pp. 99-112.
DISCUSSION: O’Keeffe in 1946 and in 1963: Compare catalogues and texts of her 1946 MoMA exhibition, the 1966 Amon Carter Museum of Western Art exhibition, and the group exhibition in 1963 at the Rose? The Plagens article in 1966 Artforum.
Thanksgiving Break--Classes in Recess—Wednesday- Friday, November 25-27, 2015
December
December 8/9th Student reports on final research paper
Final Research Paper—Due December 12th.
Study Days Dec. 10, 2015 Final Exam Period December 11-18, 2015
Office: Mandel 210 E-Mail: Voice: X62664
Office Hours: Monday Wednesday @ 2-3:30 PM or by appointment
N. B. Classroom Guidelines and requests.
Extensions will not be granted via e-mail; you must speak with me in person about any missed deadlines, or anticipated issues. Should you have an unavoidable medical or family emergency, please present a written note after the fact with your request.
Laptops and cellphones: Please turn them off, and prepare for class discussion and participation. We have many images to study in class, and the screens of computers can be distracting to your learning, as well as to fellow students. If you have an accommodated educational need to take notes on your laptop, please speak with me privately about this, and arrangements can be made.
Plagiarism is not tolerated in this class, or at Brandeis University. You must
inform yourself about the rules of what constitutes plagiarism. Not knowing what defines
academic honesty or what constitutes plagiarism is not considered a defense against
appropriation of the ideas and words of others. This is clearly stated in our University
guidelines as published in the Bulletin, and on the Student Conduct website. Inform
yourself; if you have questions, please speak with the instructor.