Marsden Hartley’s Berlin Abstraction relies so much on us to decipher the movement set forth by line and form in the overlapping patterns of the composition. Where does your eye go first? Where does it rest after a few seconds? Or does it rest at all?
Marsden Hartley, Berlin Abstraction, 1914/1915, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.21
While the painting is an abstraction, it is also a portrait of a specific person, of a generation, and of a city. Painted sometime between October 1914 and November 1915, Berlin Abstraction is part of Hartley’s War Motifs series, initiated shortly after the death of his friend and probable lover, Karl von Freyburg, a German officer killed in the early days of World War I. Hartley would keep one of von Freyburg’s epaulets, or shoulder pieces, from his military uniform, with him the rest of his life.
To close out Pride Month, please join me in taking a close look at Berlin Abstraction to contemplate Hartley’s work, his relationship with von Freyburg, and his life in Berlin. “I have every sense of being at home among Germans, and I like the life color of Berlin—it has movement and energy and leans always a little over the edge of the future.”