TAM Celebrates
80 Years
Published in
the Weekly Volcano, March 3, 2016
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| “Street Orator's Audience” by Jacob Lawrence, tempera on paper, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roger W. Peck by exchange, 1995.10. © 2016 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy Tacoma Art Museum. |
By definition, “people’s
choice” shows are always well loved. When the works the people have to choose
from include such giants of early modern art as Mary Cassatt, Jacob Lawrence,
Edward Degas and Pierre-August Renoir, how can the popular choices go wrong? On
the other hand, such shows tend toward the middle ground and overlook anything
that’s challenging. In other words, they tend to be meh. Celebrating 80 Years — People’s Choice at Tacoma Art Museum
displays much of each of those tendencies.
The show is
heavily weighted toward late 19th century European art and early
modernist American art. Dark and somber imagery dominates, but there are many
wonderfully bright spots. Lesser works by great artists are well represented,
such as Camille Pissarro’s “The Fishing Port, Dieppe, Morning, Overcast Sky”
and John Sloan’s rather boring “Street Lilacs, Noon Sun,” but there are also
some outstanding works by great artists such as the ever-popular “Heads of Two
Young Girls” by Renoir, which has popped up in many shows at TAM, and
Lawrence’s “Street Orator’s Audience,” the People’s Choice “Top Pick” award —
which proves that museum patrons in Tacoma have sophisticated taste.
The oddity of
Lawrence’s tempera painting makes it stand out. It depicts a fairly common
scene, an orator speaking to a street crowd. But we do not see the orator and
have no idea what issue he or she is tackling (other than the word “Blind” on a
sign, which provides a veiled and possibly misleading hint). We puzzle over the
expressions on the faces of listeners crowded behind a ladder that is
unexplainably placed between them and the orator. Climbing up the ladder is a
figure wearing black and white striped pants (we see only the legs).
Compositionally the black and white pants resonate with the white shirt of the
man on the lower right to create an interesting framing device. We feel more
than understand what is going on.
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| Edgar Degas Dancer Resting, Hands on the Small of her Back, Right Leg Forward, circa 1882‑1885. Bronze, 17½ inches high. Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. W. Hilding Lindberg by exchange. |
Similar to
Lawrence in style is Robert Gwathmey, whose colorful serigraph “Singing and
Mending” sympathetically pictures the downhome reality of a poor African-American
couple, the man strumming a guitar and singing and the woman mending clothes.
It is simple, rich and beautifully designed.
I have
commented favorably on the Renoir in previous reviews of shows at Tacoma Art
Museum, but it bears mentioning again if, for no other reason, for the
brilliant glow and shimmering brushstrokes of the pinks in the girls’ cheeks.
Less sentimental than the Renoir and more realistic, William Glackens’ oil
painting “Natalie in a Blue Skirt” presents a marvelous example of the same kind
of luminous paint application.
I did not
intend when I started writing this review for it to be a comparison of similar
works of art, but so much in this show begs for just that. Such as Isabel
Bishop’s etching “Noon Hour” and Raphael Soyer’s lithograph “Casting Office,”
both of which picture pairs of female figures in black and white that are
compositionally a dance of asymmetrically balanced forms both positive and
negative. And Degas’ little bronze dancers literally depict dancing but also
dance figuratively in the quirky yet realistic contrapposto of their bodies, with
particular emphasis on the negative shapes between arms and torsos.
This show can
be seen as a history of the beginnings of modernism in America with nods in the
direction of the Europeans whose work influenced the early American modernists.
It is a great companion show to What’s
New at TAM in the adjacent gallery. See it soon, because it has a shorter
run than most shows at TAM.
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