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The Buffalo News
MOVING WATER
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When: Through July 7 Where: Burchfield-Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave. Admission: Free, donation requested Info: 878-6011
This impressive collection of works by watercolor masters of the last
century should open some eyes to the range and vitality of what must
certainly be the Rodney Dangerfield of art media. In the early years of the 20th century, watercolor was considered a
uniquely American medium for a variety of reasons - not all of them
flattering. Its improvisational nature was viewed as a metaphor for the
restless American spirit and love of all things speedy. This fondness for
spontaneity is reflected in the styles of artists in the show such as
Marguerite Zorach, Arthur B. Davies and George Luks. Luks was a prominent member of the Eight, a group dedicated to - among
other things - free and rapid brushwork. His "The Screecher, Lake
Rossignol, Nova Scotia" depicts a small boat near the shore of a
churning river, its waters turned into layered swirls of briskly applied color
that play on watercolor's transparency and brilliance. The effect is at once
delicate and powerful. The view of watercolor as somehow lightweight is belied by the brooding
density and compositional complexity of Dong Kingman's nocturnal
"Chatham Square." Centered around a cluttered train platform, this
complex tangle of towering buildings, riveted girders, poles and traffic
lights is even more impressive if one fully appreciates how truly unforgiving
watercolor is. Another kind of virtuosic execution happens in the many Charles Burchfield
works included. Burchfield's standing as one of the most inventive and
influential watercolorists of the 20th century is only strengthened when
viewed among his peers. Work after work stands out. From his meticulously
observed genre painting "Country Blacksmith's Shop" to his wildly
inventive "The Insect Chorus" - in which the viewer is both
attracted and repelled by the menacing shrubbery - Burchfield demonstrates
his dominating prowess in a difficult medium. Watercolor was also widely touted as the ideal medium to satisfy America's
obsession with natural beauty, particularly the landscape and floral variety.
Under the impact of modernism, many critics of the period derided such
subjects and their treatment as trite and sentimental. Burchfield, along with
Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, Stuart Davis, John Marin and others, were to
prove them wrong. These artists freely depart from established conventions, almost as if
watercolor's reputation as a less serious medium actively invited
experimentation. Stuart Davis, for instance, makes the trip from realism -
with the archly amusing "Servant Girls" - to audacious geometric
abstraction in the boldly colored "Black Roofs." Demuth's
beautifully muted "Lady Fingers" is a triumph of restraint, while
Marin's cubist "Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower
Manhattan)" projects a raucous visual excitement. By the 1950s, the dominance of abstract expressionism, with its emphasis
on force and grandeur, made the intimacy and delicacy of watercolor seem
dated. The latest works in the show - by William Palmer, Sonja Sekula, Will
Barnet and others - reflect the growing concern for expressive abstraction.
They represent watercolor's last stand as a viable and dynamic movement. |
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