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Arthur Dove (painter) American, 1880 - 1946 Moon, 1935 oil on canvas Overall: 88.9 x 63.5 cm (35 x 25 in.) framed: 94.6 x 69.2 x 5.1 cm (37 1/4 x 27 1/4 x 2 in.) Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth 2000.39.1 Not on View |
In the summer of 1933, after much hesitation, Arthur Dove moved back to his family home in Geneva, New York, in order to escape the grinding poverty that was sapping his ability to focus on his painting.1 Supported, in part, by Duncan Phillips, who sent a stipend in exchange for paintings, Dove enjoyed a remarkably productive period during his years in Geneva (1933-1938), which also coincided with a renewed interest in painting.2 He had abandoned his extensive experimentation with collage and in February 1932 decided "to let go of everything and just try to make oil painting beautiful in itself with no further wish."3 Once settled in Geneva, he continued these explorations by carefully examining his technique. He had always been fascinated with the materials of his art--he often ground his own pigments--and had avidly read such books as Jacques Blockx's Compendium of Painting and Maximilian Toch's Materials for Permanent Painting. In October 1935 he read, as he told Stieglitz, "every inch" of Max Doerner's recently translated Materials of the Artist.4 Intrigued by Doerner's description of the use of resin oil color and resin oil color with wax, which the author wrote produced colors with "a misty, pleasingly dull and mat appearance, and great brightness and clarity," Dove immediately began to experiment with these materials.5
This painting, made during the fall of 1935, depicts a tree covering the glowing moon. Derived directly from the landscape and light of the Finger Lakes region, the painting is composed of earthy colors, with shades of brown, yellow, green, and red ranging in intensity from pale muddy tones to richly saturated hues. Like other works from 1935, Moon incorporates some of Doerner's lessons. Painted with short, thinned, almost translucent brushstrokes over underlying hues of different intensity, Moon has a surface that seems almost to throb with luminosity and energy. But this technique also creates the impression of an all-enveloping atmosphere, like "walking on the bottom under water,"6 where the air surrounding objects is as weighty, charged, and meaningful as the things themselves.
With its highly simplified composition, Moon looks forward to works that Dove would create in Geneva in 1936 and 1937. During these years, spheres and columns, the sun, the moon, and tree trunks came to dominate his imagery as he sought to create a "definite rythmic [sic] sense." He was interested not in "geometrical repetition," but in making his works "breathe as does the rest of nature" by using "the play or spread or swing of space [that] can only be felt through this kind of consciousness."7
Although the natural rhythms that Dove captured and the shapes he explored are undeniably sexual, often phallic in form, such allusions were not Dove's intention. Rather, he sought to construct independent aesthetic forms that are real unto themselves and speak of his experiences of nature. In the fall of 1935 these experiences were grounded in the glowing, exuberant, even euphoric feelings that enveloped him in the light, colors, atmosphere, and almost palpable energy of the Geneva landscape.
But he also strove to reveal the presence of the divine in the natural world. Moon, with its Redon-like, all-knowing eye and its tree that connects both the terrestrial and celestial worlds, speaks both of his symbolist heritage and his then-current fascination with theosophy.8 In Moon, Dove's spirit strove to burst forth into the light of the heavens, while his strength, his nourishment, and indeed his inspiration were firmly rooted in the ground.
(Text by Sarah Greenough, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)
Notes
1. Letter from Dove to Alfred Stieglitz, 18 May 1933, as quoted in Ann Lee Morgan, Dear Stieglitz, Dear Dove (Newark, Del., 1988), 271. See also Dove to Stieglitz, 17 November 1932, Morgan 1988, 253, when he wrote, acknowledging a check from Stieglitz: "'Whew'! That was a close shave that time. Much! obliged. Almost spoiled a painting yesterday, but think it will come right when I go at it a bit more cheerfully today. When you get down, your mind begins having dialogues with itself while you're working. Like trying to establish a new form. And the old form bobs out and takes a crack at you and you say--To hell with form, it is just a medium of exchange, like money,--go on painting--but you need some."
2. For a full discussion of the relationship between Dove and his patron Duncan Phillips, see In the American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O'Keeffe, and Stieglitz (Washington, 1995).
3. Dove to Stieglitz, 1 February 1932, Morgan 1988, 237.
4. Dove to Stieglitz, 1 October 1935, Morgan 1988, 341. For further discussion of this issue, see Morgan 1988, 210, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, "Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938," in Debra Bricker Balken, Arthur Dove: A Retrospective (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 103-105.
6. See Dove to Stieglitz, 18 May 1933, Morgan 1988, 271.
7. Dove to Elizabeth McCausland, 3 or 13 May 1933, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Elizabeth McCausland Papers, reel D384B.
8. See Sherrye Cohn, "Arthur Dove and Theosophy: Visions of a Transcendental Reality," Arts 58 (September 1983), 86-91.