Three exhibitions at the Fenimore Art Museum

Maurice Prendergast - Landscape with Figures 1910-12 oil on linen

Hurricanes notwithstanding, it’s a nice time of year for a drive to Cooperstown - and with three special exhibitions all ending soon at the Fenimore Art Museum, there’s plenty of reason to make the trip now.

Fans of the Mexican proto-feminist painter Frida Kahlo will be entranced by a traveling show titled Frida Kahlo: through the lens of Nickolas Muray, which centers on pictures of the enigmatic artist taken throughout her 10-year love affair with the Hungarian-born, New York City-based photographer.

Nickolas Muray
Classic Frida (with Magenta Rebozo)
1939 carbon process print

Augmented by inkjet prints of titillating ephemera such as lipstick-kissed letters, the show is not much more than an illustrated soap opera, strangely cool yet passionate, though Muray’s estimable skills with both classic black-and-white and early color technique are brilliantly on display. It’s easy to see from this collection why people such as Salma Hayek and Madonna find Frida so irresistible, though I was equally repelled by the degree of self-indulgence in evidence. If you’re intrigued, you must hurry: The show ends on Sept. 5.

On view through Sept. 11 is a fine, small exhibition of Edward Hopper’s early work titled a window on Edward Hopper, in which the Fenimore has collaborated with the nearby Glimmerglass Festival to reveal the roots of the painter whose work inspired an opera that was mounted there this season.

Though the opera’s performances have ended, the art exhibition stands alone as a valuable investigation into the development of one of America’s foremost painters, and it features some of his really outstanding graphic work that might easily be overlooked if it were in a different context. But here, with just two full-scale oil paintings, and five watercolors to compete with, Hopper’s etchings are a revelation, and his earlier studies are worth the time to examine.

Edward Hopper - Night Shadows 1921 etching

Anyone familiar with the artist’s work will gain insight from the rare display of drawings, going back to his student years and including some commercially oriented illustration (Hopper the painter was 40 before museums began acquiring his art). It’s always a treat to see how an artist develops, and it’s also great fun to have a chance to look at sketches that ultimately led to more impressive finished work.

And, still, the two paintings (Freight Cars, Gloucester, an almost Cubist industrial composition from 1928 and The Camel’s Hump, a dazzling view of Cape Cod dunes from 1931) are as good as it gets; and the watercolors are simply wonderful. Go to see a window on Edward Hopper with the right expectations, and they will be fulfilled.

William Baziotes
Toy 1949 oil on linen

The Hopper show, which draws heavily from a collection formed by Edward W. Root that is now housed at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute in Utica, is a good setup for the highlight of this trio of exhibitions, Prendergast to Pollock: American Modernism from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, which is also drawn from Root’s amazing collection.

Spanning about six decades of painting, Prendergast to Pollock is a mouthwatering showcase of exquisite work by both famous names and also-rans, organized into loosely tied groups of landscapes, still lifes, figures, and abstracts. Not unlike the current New York, New York! Show at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls (reviewed here), this show surveys the transition of styles in American art during much of the 20th century from Impressionism to abstraction, and it demonstrates what an auspiciously astute collector Root was.

The highlights of this exhibition are almost endless. The show opens with a Fauvist-colored masterpiece by Maurice Prendergast, but I skipped by it until I was stopped dead in my tracks by three modestly sized Arthur Dove paintings that still shimmer with energy more than 70 years after they were made. A single piece by William Baziotes, small and playful, is mesmerizing, as is a surprisingly small and energetic Mark Rothko from 1947, before he homed in on his mature style of large blocks of color. Nearby is a similarly patchy and transcendent Arshile Gorky.

Charles Burchfield
House and Tree by Arc Light 1916
watercolor

Charles Burchfield is represented by three paintings as well, all watercolors, two of which date to 1916 but seem much fresher, as his work always does. Stuart Davis and Theodoros Stamos sit side by side in an asymmetrical, yet perfectly balanced pairing, while other great moments are provided by lesser-known painters, such as Morris Kantor, whose 1929 Ode to the Antique is deliciously surreal, and Charles Howard, whose stylized cityscape exploits great skill with form and color.

I do have one quibble with the show: No women are represented in this selection and, though Root collected very few women artists, that is an oversight in 2011. But the installation is a great success, due in part to the careful selection of medium grey, royal blue, and acid green for the background colors on various wall panels. It continues through Sept. 15.

The Fenimore also offers permanent exhibits from its world-class collections of folk art and American Indian art, and has beautiful, accessible grounds on the shore of Otsego Lake – altogether, a destination worth setting aside a good chunk of time to explore.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Edward Hopper - Freight Cars, Gloucester 1928 oil on canvas

John Singer Sargent at Fenimore Museum

It's amazing how tastes change in art. When John Singer Sargent first exhibited his portrait of Madame X, the poor response to it led him to threaten quitting the business. Now, it is not just his most famous painting, it could easily be considered his best - and, to my 21st-century eye, most of what he did after it would not be missed even if he had made good on that threat.

Though the monumental portrait, now a jewel in the crown of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is not included in John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, two revealing sketches made in preparation for it are (one is reproduced above). Also belonging to the Met, these are joined by an impressive roster of works on loan from public and private collections spread across much of the United States, for an exhibition that will only be hosted by the Fenimore.

I was most drawn to a corner of the gallery where the little pencil sketches of the "unpaintable ... and hopeless[ly lazy] ... Madame Gautreau" (her actual married name) have plenty of fine company in the form of works from Sargent's early years. There we find quickly but expertly executed studies such as the demure oil on paper titled Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl and the slightly naughty oil on canvas Carmela Bertagna, both created when Sargent was still in his early twenties.

Another strong early work from this time period, titled Head of an Italian Woman, required a very short trip from its home at the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, and is somewhat inappropriately framed in a wonderfully extravagant gold conglomeration featuring Greek columns - but its freshness survives (even more vivacious, Sargent's 1883 portrait of Madame Escudier, made in Venice shortly before the portrait of Madame Gautreau, is reproduced at right, above).

These works show Sargent as a passionate young painter, intent on his craft, afire with ambition and possibility, and not yet spoiled by too much success. The later work, done mostly of society ladies in Paris, Venice, London or Boston, strongly supports Sargent's reputation as a great portraitist, but it therefore tells us far more about his sitters than about the man himself.

What motivated Sargent to paint portraits in the first place? Why so many women, and so much attention to upper-class fashions? These questions are raised but not answered by the exhibition, which serves as much as a historical representation of Victorian and Edwardian times and tastes as it does of the artist who so vividly documented them.

After pondering these thoughts for a time, I did a bit of research, and found certain insights. Sargent, though American by citizenship, was a lifelong expatriate. Born in Florence to a comfortable (but hardly wealthy) family, he was educated there, then in Paris; ultimately, he made London his home, visiting the U.S. regularly to do commissions, but never actually living there.

Perhaps his outsider status caused him to strive to be accepted in higher circles of society. Certainly it enabled him to successfully observe and record their styles and personalities, but a portraitist is always an outsider nonetheless. Equally intriguing is the fact that Sargent never married; rumors of his sex life have not been proven, but various sources suggest he was homosexual.

Nothing unusual in that time or ours: A charming, talented gay man, beloved by fashionable, older ladies, and happy to flatter them in his paintings (as in Mrs. Abbott Lawrence Rotch, 1903, reproduced above, at left), Sargent was rewarded with wealth, fame, and access to higher society. Clearly, he wanted all that - perhaps he did, and was able to achieve it because he identified with his subjects in a way that their husbands surely could not.

John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women will remain on view at the Fenimore through Dec. 31. The exhibition is augmented by a free cell-phone tour and accompanied by an amply illustrated color catalog.

Also on view at the Fenimore (but just through Sept. 6), is a major, historic photography exhibition In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers.

The show, which was created in 1989 and traveled the world for the next three years, is stuffed with 50 years of iconic images, including Dennis Stock's portrait of James Dean walking in the rain; Jacqueline Kennedy in tears at her husband's funeral, by Elliott Erwitt; Sebastiao Salgado's antlike gold miners; and a peace demonstrator fighting fire with flowers by Marc Riboud (below).

All the pictures in the show are in black and white; most are printed in the classic Magnum manner, with black borders, and many represent a style of artistic photojournalism that Magnum made ubiquitous, beginning with the inimitably incisive and graceful work of one of the agency's founders, Henri Cartier Bresson. It is both timeless and very much of its time.