Art people struggle when discussing the work of famous artists. They don’t want to come off as snobs and most likely have positive thoughts about increasing museum attendance. Plus, you never know how the pendulum will swing in these matters. In this bear art market, one of the artists that has seen a sudden increase in interest at auctions is Bob Rossthe TV painter of those “happy little trees”. Just wait until the kids on TikTok discover the work of Thomas Kinkade.
“Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is the institution’s attempt to drag Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961) off the postcard shelf and back into some arguments. Anchored by 33 works from SAAM’s decennial collection spree and organized by Leslie Umberger AND Randall Griffeythis makes the case for Grandma Moses as a progressive figure. Here is an uneducated farm that took a brush in the late seventies, was 80 years old when the immigrant merchant Oto Kallir gave her her first show in 1940. She became the most famous American woman painter of her time – adored by the public, sold on branded cigarette tins and postcards. She was despised by Clement Greenberg‘s New York, which confronted him Jackson Pollock for the title of the most famous and lost artist. Staged in Washington against the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it depicts a life spanning Lincoln to Kennedy as an icon of the nation.
|
“Grandma Moses: A good day’s work“ |
Maybe she was the kind of artist we deserve. After all, it was very simple. Take it Calhoun (1955), which shows the Dudley farmhouse where Moses lived for eight years in Virginia, with the neighboring farm of the title just across the street. In a green field drained of enthusiasm it shows 12 white farmers picking and processing cotton with a late model gin. Moses and her husband went south in 1887 because there was work to be had after emancipation. Another artist might have put some darker shades into this work, but there is little to show that these terrible men are working hard for the first time in their lives. Cotton springs from the ground begging to be plucked, while luscious trees and various farmhouses bring prosperity. This is not propaganda, it is simply the way she and many people saw the world.
The subject may be similar in The plantation (1952) but has more three-dimensionality and a different feel. It would mostly be made of rolling green hills, if it weren’t for the black holes in every building that absorb the eye with their mystery. This likely refers to Selma, a Greek Revival plantation house she could see from her last farm in Virginia, whose owners reported a resident ghost, a Confederate soldier killed inside by a Yankee. Moses painted it for Harry Truman and gave it to him personally when he left office. “Truman is a country boy like my sons,” she said, the only person to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, twice.
Yes, it’s possible she knew more than she let on. A fire in the forest (c. 1940) is an extraordinary, expressionist take on the subject. She captures the chaos of the event through detailed attention to the different types of fire, the orange that licks the grain, the blood red that devours the monoliths. She pays no less attention to the types of smoke. It is one of her best works, and remarkable in her work for the absence of people in it. Perhaps she would have been more universally adored if she had built her career painting big angry trees.
More exhibition reviews
