Marsden Hartley's tribal esthetics

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/558070 MARSDEN HARTLEY'S TRIBAL ESTHETICS

by

Virginia Witte Miller

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF ART

In Partial Fulfillm ent of the Requirements For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS WITH A MAJOR IN ART HISTORY

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

1 9 8 7 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fu lfill­ ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The Uni­ versity of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

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This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

Sheldon Reich Professor of Art ©1988

VIRGINIE WITTE MILLER

All Rights Reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... iv

ABSTRACT . vi

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. THE A R T IS T ...... 8

3. WRITERS AND ARTISTS ...... 14

4. INDIAN ART IN HARTLEY'S WORK (FRANCE AND GERMANY) . 33

5. RELATED WORKS IN TAOS AND SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO . . 45

6. HARTLEY'S WRITINGS ABOUT THE AMERICAN INDIAN . . . 5 6

7. WHAT NEW MEXICO MEANT TO HARTLEY ...... 68

8. INTERVENING YEARS ...... 73

9. RETURN TO MAINE ...... , . . . 87

10. SYNTHESIS OF OPPOSING FORCES ...... 96

11. CONCLUSION...... 103

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 105

iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

Figure

1. Marsden Hartley, Indian Pottery (Jar and Idol), 1 9 1 2 ...... 3

2. Marsden Hartley, Indian Fantasy, 1914 4

3. Marsden Hartley, Indian Composition, 1914 . . . 5

4. Marsden Hartley, American Indian Symbols, 1914 . 6

5. Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 2, Arrangement, Hieroglyphics, 1914 11

6. Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 49, B e rlin , 1914 . 12

7. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Toilers of the Sea, before 1884 17

8. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marine, n.d...... 18

9. Marsden Hartley, Musical Theme, Oriental Sym- phony, 1912-13 ...... 26

10. Marsden Hartley, Eight Bells Folly, Memorial for Hart Crane, 1933 .■....'...... 30

11. Max Weber, Mexican S tatuette, 1910 ...... 34

12. Marsden Hartley, Primitive Symbols, 1912 .... 36

13. Marsden Hartley, Landscape No. 3, Cash Entry Mines, New Mexico ...... 47

14. Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, 1923 . . 48

15. Marsden Hartley, Blessing the Melon, The In­ dians Bring the Harvest to Christian Mary for Her Blessing, 1918 50

16. Marsden Hartley, El Santo, 1919 ...... 52

iv V

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS--Continued

Page

17. Marsden Hartley, Santos: New Mexico, ca, 1918- 19 ...... 54

18. Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, 1920 . 70

19. Marsden Hartley, Purple Mountains, 1925-26 . . 75

20. Marsden Hartley, Rock Doxology, Dogtown, 1931. 77

21. Marsden Hartley, Earth Cooling, Mexico, 1932 . 80

22. Marsden Hartley, Northern Seascape, Off the Banks, 1936-37 83

23. Marsden Hartley, Adelard the Drowned, Master of the Phantom, 1938-39 ...... 84

24. Marsden Hartley, The Lost Felice, 1939 .... 85

25. Marsden Hartley, Camden H ills from Baker's Island, Penobscot Bay, 1938 89

26. Marsden Hartley, Hurricane Island, Vinalhaven, Maine, 1942 ...... 91

27. Marsden Hartley, Mount Katahdin, 1942 .... 93 ABSTRACT

Marsden Hartley's essays on American Indian a rt­ is try formulated theories developed later in his painting.

His early life and reading prepared him to be sympathetic to the mysticism, symbolism and pantheism he found in

Indian culture. An interest in primitive art was stimu­ lated by contact with modernist artists in New York,

Paris and Germany. He shared a favorable opinion Of the

American Indian with many of his writing colleagues. A lonely wanderer and ex-patriate much of his life . Hartley experienced many stages in a r tis tic development, absorb­ ing lessons of European a rtis ts , but maintaining his in d ivid u a lity and consciousness of his American origins.

Eventually returning to Maine, he produced paintings that have a sense of integration, balance and resolution of con flicting elements of style, achieved with an acceptance of the sense of place and id e n tifica tio n with the land he had seen in Indian religion and ceremonials and advocated for American a rtis ts .

vi CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Marsden Hartley's interest in the American Indian culture played an important part in his development as an a rtis t. This interest, aroused early in his career, grew naturally as it related increasingly to his own artistic concerns and, in a series of a rticle s on the American

Indian, published between 1918 and 1922, he indicated the directions that he would eventually follow in his art, leading him to the creation of his most successful work.

Hartley wrote in "Red Man Ceremonials" (1920b, p. 14),

"The redman proves to us what native soil w ill do. Our soil is as beautiful and distinguished as any in the world. We must therefore be the discoverers of our own wealth as an esthetic factor and it is the redman that offers us the way to go." Identification with his own

"native soil" would prove to be a vita l concern of Hart­ ley's later painting.

In what Hartley saw of Indian life, in the

Indians' nature-oriented religious celebrations, in their devotion to the earth around them, in the Indian integra­ tion of art with daily life, and in the emphasis on physi- c a lity , on the necessary participation of the human body

1 2

in the sp iritu a l acts of Indian ceremonials (Waters 1950,

pp. 17-34, 343), he found principles that were inherently

related to his own beliefs. When he was finally able to

take these ideas, to which he had given formal recognition

in his w riting of the prim itive peoples of New Mexico, and apply them to the subject of his native Maine, Hartley achieved his real maturity as a painter.

Long before he visited New Mexico, an interest in primitive art had become a factor in Hartley's work. By

1914 he had completed a number of paintings in Europe that were d ire ctly related to the art of the American Indian

(Figs. 1,2,3,4). Hartley's attraction to primitivism corresponded with his a ffin ity for modernism, for i t was modern a rtis ts in Europe who f i r s t saw the relevance of trib a l art to the changes which modernism was bringing to the creation of art. As William Rubin has stated, "The early twentieth-century emancipation from the restrictions of a perceptually based art encouraged a variety of aes­ thetic attributes that parallel those of tribal art"

(Rubin 1984a, p. 62). To these European a rtis ts , prim itive art seemed pure and authentic, arising out of the needs and emotions of the people, and devoid of alien influences.

In referring to primitive cultures, Kandinsky wrote, "Just like us, these pure a rtis ts wanted to capture in the ir works the inner essence of things, which of its e lf brought about a rejection of the external, the accidental" 3

Figure 1. Marsden Hartley, Indian Pottery (Jar and Idol), 1912. Oil on canvas, 19 3/4 x 19 3/4". Private Collection. 4

Figure 2. Marsden Hartley, Indian Fantasy, 1914. Oil on canvas, 47 x 38V • North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. 5

Figure 3. Marsden Hartley, Indian Composition, 1914. Oil on canvas, 47 1/8 x 47". Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York. 6

Figure 4. Marsden Hartley, American Indian Symbols, 1914. Oil on canvas, 39 x 39". Private Collection. (Kandinsky 1982, p. 128). Picasso, who experimented ex­ tensively with forms derived from tribal art in such paintings as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, was drawn to the art of prim itive cultures because he "sympathized with its direct, simple and reductive solutions" and saw how it could "help him to build a modern art that would share the quintessential and universal quality he recognized in tribal sculpture" (Rubin 1984a, p. 53). In defining prim­ itivism , a characteristic which he claimed had existed in modern art before the discovery of tribal art, Robert

Goldwater called i t an attempt "to infuse new lif e into art by breaking away from current and accepted formulas... and to renew the essentials of art" (Goldwater 1967, p. 261).

Hartley's first favorable impression of the art created by primitive cultures most certainly was en­ couraged by the enthusiasm with which i t had been accepted by modernist a rtis ts he met in Paris and Berlin.'*' In the same manner that trib a l art appealed to these a rtis ts , as a reflection and affirmation of their own newly developing ideas. Hartley found in the esthetic expressions of the

American Indians a v ita lity and harmony that called forth a response from his own inner nature.

1. The Blaue Reiter a rtis ts , who were fascinated with American Indian art, undoubtedly strengthened Hartley inclination toward this aspect of primitivism. CHAPTER 2

THE ARTIST

A consideration of some of the aspects of Hartley's

personality may help to explain why the traditional beliefs he found among the Indian tribes were so enthusiastically accepted by him and so eloquently advocated in his w riting.

A lonely and insecure childhood (his mother died when he was eight and his father remarried and moved to Cleveland,

leaving Hartley behind with a sister) (Haskell 1980, pp. 9-

10)* le ft him feeling shy and abandoned and with very nega­

tive feelings about Maine. In his adult years he became a

restless wanderer, never staying long in the same place

and always searching, i t seemed, for a sense of belonging.

His career as an artist was a precarious one of financial

instability that did not always provide him with enough money for mere subsistence. Hartley's insecurity was com­

plicated by his homosexuality, which meant that he would

always remain something of an outsider from traditional

family life. In his relationships with other men, he knew

not only frequent rejection (Marling 1981, p. 105) but

1. Unless otherwise noted, details of Hartley's .life have been derived from this biography.

8 9 was deeply affected by real tragedy, as in the death in

World War I of Karl von Freyburg, his German o ffic e r friend. Von Freyburg and the young Nova Scotian, Alty

Mason, whom Hartley knew much late r and whose death at sea he mourned in 1936, were men who represented for him the beauty and strength of the young masculine body, an ob­ session of Hartley's throughout his lif e . A history of painful adjustments and loneliness, without a place where he could feel at home, or a continuing close relationship with another person made Hartley particularly sensitive and receptive to the security afforded by a benevolent surrogate family, as he must have seen the Indian trib al society to be. Hartley's need to belong was also shown in his love of pageantry, so much a part of Indian re­ ligious expression, with its invitation to lose oneself and be caught up in the emotions of a crowd.

An interest in mysticism was characteristic of

Hartley from his earliest days as a solitary child wonder­ ing about the "magic of existence" (Hartley 1921a, p. 5).

In 1907 he worked during the summer at Green Acre, a colony in Maine frequented by artists, theologians, and mystics and there, as Haskell has noted, he "was introduced to formalized Eastern re lig io n ." It was at this time that

Hartley 1 earned of the Bahai fa ith , which teaches that all religions are "manifestations along the route to one

'unified world faith" (Levin 1985, pp. 16, 20). Because 10 of this early tendency toward mysticism, the mystical aspect of trib a l religion held a strong appeal for him. He had rejected his youthful idea of entering the ministry but religious mysticism continued to have meaning in his life, a meaning he expressed in art.

The exaltation of nature was an emotional concept that was reinforced for Hartley by his perception of Indian life. Looking back on his childhood, he writes of the early discovery of his joy in nature, "I was merely taught by nature to follow as i f led by a rare and tender hand, the then almost unendurable beauty that lay on every side of me" (Hartley 1921a, p. 4). A love of nature and close identification with it were basic elements of Hartley's painting, developed even more strongly in his late r work in Maine.

Symbolism was of great concern to Hartley, especi­ a lly in the paintings done while he was in Germany. Those in his Amerika series (Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5) (he purposely spelled America in the German way, with a "k"), contain many symbolic references to the American Indian culture, while his Painting No. 49, Berlin, 1914 (Fig. 6) is a symbolic depiction of the German m ilita ry corps, with helmet, iron cross, and significant numbers 8,9, and 24.

His demonstrated interest in symbolism helps to explain why he reacted favorably to the symbolic aspect of Indian art and ritual . 11

Figure 5. Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 2, Arrangement, Hieroglyphics, 1914. Oil on canvas with painted frame, 42^ x 34 3/4". William H. Lane Founda­ tion, Leominster, Massachusetts. 12

Figure 6. Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 49, B e rlin , 1914. Oil on canvas, 47 x 39V . Private Collection. 13

Charles Caffin has referred to Hartley's repressed spirit and emotions because of inherited Puritan tradition and his escape from i t in the expressionism of the paint­ ings he did in Paris and Berlin (Caffin 1914, p. 22).

Paradoxically, the Puritanism of Hartley's New England background drew him even closer to Indian culture, as the earthiness of tribal expression counteracted the straight- laced tra d itio n from which he had already started to break away when he moved to New York and then to Europe.

Gail Levin has observed that for many a rtis ts of the 1910s and 1920s, Indians "became mythic symbols of an e a rlie r, less corrupt age" (1984 b, p. 104). Certainly the

Indian culture, with its gentle and ancient traditions, must have appealed to the romantic side of Hartley, who saw the Indian as the "noble savage" who represented "Amer­ ica's lost spirituality" (Martin 1981, pp. 59-60) . CHAPTER 3

WRITERS AND ARTISTS

In the course of Hartley's life and artistic career, there were writers and artists whose influence either con­ tributed to the development and integration of his inner­ most beliefs or strengthened convictions he already held.

Among these were many who evoked an appreciation of the

American Indian culture as an element to be considered in the contemplation of American lif e and art.

Hartley's interest in expressing the spirit of

America began early in his lif e . While s t i l l a young art student at the turn of the century, he was given a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays. He late r called this the "greatest book" of his lif e (Haskell 1980, p. 10) and this may well have been true because i t started him on his journey to reach an identification with nature in his own land and to become sensitive to nature's sp iritu a l aspects.

Hartley must have been encouraged in his desire for an art based on American experience and consciousness, one that would not be an im itation of European tra d itio n s, by the urging of Emerson that, because these were "new lands, new men, new thoughts," Americans should depend on th e ir own

14 15 insights and revelations and not try to see through the eyes of others (Emerson 1940b, p. 3).

Further amplification of these beliefs was possible in New Mexico, where Hartley perceived the American Indians as living in close harmony with nature and with a pure rev­ erence for their own land. Emerson1s transcendental philos­ ophy emphasized the in tu itiv e and the sp iritu a l over the merely empirical (1940c, p. 252), a tendency that became a lasting and vital part of the art created by Hartley, even though at one stage in his development he tried to deny this (Hartley 1928a,pp. 70-73). In New Mexico, Hartley ob­ served the close connection of the American Indian to in ­ tuition and mysticism. The Indian sanctification of nature as a sp iritu a l to ta lity was seen by Hartley as an example of the nature worship expounded by Emerson: "The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God"

(1940b, p. 34). Emerson called for an art that was not an escape from lif e but an acceptance of life in all its aspects, so that "the distinction between the fine and useful arts [would] be forgotten" ( 1940a, p. 314) and thus prepared the way for Hartley's later insight into

American Indian beliefs.

The qualities that Hartley saw in the work of Al­ bert Pinkham Ryder, the mysticism, the contact with the

American spirit, and the simple authenticity of expression. were sim ilar to those that brought about his interest in the American Indian culture. Writing of his impressions on first seeing a painting by Ryder, Hartley said:

I knew little or nothing about Albert Ryder then, and when I learned he was from New England the same feeling came over me in the given degree as came out of the Emerson1s Essays when they were f ir s t given to me--I fe lt as i f I had read a page of the Bible. All my essential Yankee qualities were brought forth out of this picture and i f I needed to be stamped an American this was the first picture that had done this--for it had in i t everything that I knew and had experienced about my own New England. . . .1 had been thrown back into the body and being of my own country as by no other influence that had come to me. (Wheeler 1974, p. 61)

Ryder was a visionary painter in whose work

"inner re a lity was paramount and natural forms just the means to an end" (Novak 1979 , pp. 214, 218). Ryder's romantic evocation of mysterious, hidden meanings in his lonely and sometimes turbulent seascapes (Figs. 7 and 8) appealed to Hartley's mystic sense.

Hartley recognized Ryder as a painter of truly

American inspiration and wrote in his 1936 essay on Ryder,

"What gave him his personal and national power was his

New England g ift of penetration into the abysses of lone­ liness" (Hartley 1936, pp. 266-67). The blunt, raw sim­ p lic ity and directness in Ryder's paintings evoked the untamed roughness of the vast American continent, repre­ senting not just the visual aspects of sea and land but 17

Figure 7. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Toilers of the Sea, before 1884. Oil on panel, 11% x 12". The Metropoli­ tan Museum of Art, New York. 18

Figure 8. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marine, n.d. Oil on board, 13^ x 10". Private Collection. an essence of the wild, inner s p ir it of America. Bram

Dijkstra has called Ryder the one great American painter of the past who had been able to "capture some of the inner correspondence between his s p ir it and his native ground" (Dijkstra 1978, p. 113). Ryder's creation of an art that was faithful to his own particular heritage, to the land in which he was born, differentiated him from a rtis ts who remained subservient to European models and therefore Hartley could see in Ryder the same close identification with his origins that he found in the

American Indian.

In addition to the mysticism related to the Ameri can s p ir it which Hartley admired in Ryder, there was in

Ryder's work, he said, "a sense of pattern and austerity"

(Hartley 1921c, p. 41). Duncan Phillips recognized Ry­ der's influence, as well as that of the American Indian, on Hartley's painting when he wrote that Hartley's "real and deep sources of inspiration were the aboriginal Ameri can designers and the great isolated American artists"

(P hillips' 1944, p. 83). Although Hartley's painting was to undergo many changes and influences in his years of development, his reverence for Ryder continued throughout his life. His attraction to the American Indian culture seemed a natural and logical affirmation of the beliefs inspired by Ryder. 20

While on tour with an acting company around 1905

in Philadelphia, Hartley became acquainted with Horace

Traubel, who was the friend and biographer of Walt Whit­ man, and was introduced by him to Whitman's writings and

philosophy (Haskell 1980, p. 12). In Whitman's rousing poetry. Hartley found the juxtaposition of soul and body, of spiritual and physical, the same unity that he later found demonstrated so well in Indian ceremonials. In 1922

Hartley wrote of an Indian dance:

When a man can so attune his body that every part of i t not only aspires but accomplishes the per­ fect fusion of the song, the poem, and the dance, then he may be said to achieve the perfect notion of what a real religion should be, what the, s p ir it ­ ual universe is meant to signify ( 1922, p. 113).

Hartley could have been expressing here one of Whitman's

foremost beliefs, that soul and body are one. Whitman wrote:

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most sp iritu a l poems. And I w ill make the poems of my body and of m ortality. For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and of immortality (Whitman n.d., p, 15).

Whitman's celebration of the human body conformed with

Hartley's lifelon g appreciation for beautiful masculine

bodies, including those he saw performing Indian dances,

and his feeling that a love of the spiritual and of the

physical implied not contradiction but a sublime union of

the two. This conviction corresponded to Hartley's 21 insistence in his painting on the use of concrete, physical forms to express sp iritu a l meanings.

Because Whitman's poetry arose out of his native land, Hartley praised him for his "freedom from character­ is tic s not one's own" (1921c, p. 35). In Whitman's paean to.America:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else (Whitman n.d., p. 10). and in many other verses, he upheld his native land in an all-encompassing embrace. Whitman raised to an even higher pitch Emerson's call for Americans to respect their origin. Hartley's observation of Indian celebrations must have seemed further proof of the value of native ex­ perience, g lo rifie d in the poems of Whitman.

Rhythm that aroused emotions and penetrated to the soul was a characteristic of Whitman's poems that related them to the insistent beat of Indian dances. Repetition almost to the point of hypnotism infuses many of Whitman's lines:

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land, land of Vermont and Connecticut! Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks! (Whitman n.d., p. 20).

Rhythm is also apparent in Hart!ey's Amerika series, paint­ ings that pre-dated his observation of actual Indian ceremonials. In Indian Composition (Fig. 3), he has paint

ed ,row on row of Indian heads at the top of the picture in

a curving sweep that implies continuing motion. In Ameri-

can Indian Symbols (Fig. 4), lines of triangular tepees re

treat rhythmically from the center to the outer limits at

le ft and rig h t. Rhythm had a special appeal for Hartley,

in his paintings and his poems; the compelling rhythms of

Whitman's verse and the long persistent drumming of Indian

ceremonials evoked in him a sympathetic response.

A belief in the spiritual and mystical attributes

of nature attracted Hartley to the pantheism he perceived

in American Indian re lig io n . His reading of Whitman was

therefore one of the steps in the natural progression that

would lead him through the experience of Indian religious

celebrations and, later, to his reconciliation with the

sp iritu a l power of nature in his native Maine.

The L ittle Galleries of the Photo Secession,

founded in 1905 by Alfred S tie g litz , proved to be of la s t­

ing importance in Hartley's development as an a r tis t. The

gallery soon became known as 291, its address on Fifth

Avenue in New York City, and i t was here in 1909 that

S tie g litz gave Hartley his f ir s t one-man show. I t was

probably as a member of the Stieglitz group that Hartley's

appreciation for the American Indian culture began. The group of a rtis ts in S tie g litz 's c irc le were in the forefront of modernism in America, giving Hartley further incentive to grow in the direction he had already chosen for himself.

The influence of Stieglitz was especially signifi­ cant for a rtis ts , including Hartley, who wanted to develop a tru ly American form of modernism. To the c r itic Paul

Rosenfeld, Stieglitz was the "purest example of an artist in tune with his time and his country" (Dijkstra 1978, p. 125). Hartley's Amerika series'of paintings of Ameri­ can Indian motifs was called by Edward Abrahams an example of his effort to "portray in painting the 'mystical cul­ tural nationalism' of 291" (1982, p. 110). Stieglitz's brand of artistic nationalism differed strongly from that of the American Scene painters who appeared in the late

1920s and 1930s, being based more on what the a r tis t fe lt about his American subject matter and the "sp iritu a l in ­ tensity" (Rose 1975, p. 31) with which he related i t to real lif e than on a simple devotion to American subjects.

S tie g litz , an admirer of the American Indian, had included a Gertrude Kasebier photograph, The Red Man, in the f ir s t issue of Camera Work in 1903 and late r printed an a rtic le about her favorable treatment of the Indians.

Paul Rosenfeld was expressing basic ideas of S tie g litz when he deplored the fact that Americans, who were immigrants in the ir own country, "had no eyes for the land they lived in ," were oblivious to the destruction of the natural environment and thought only of what p ro fit could be made from the land (Dijkstra 1978, p. 123). S tie g litz and many of the artists and writers associated with him saw in the indigenous people a closeness to the s o il, a reverence for th e ir own environment and a desire to live in harmony with i t which they greatly admired.

In 1910 Max Weber, another 291 a r tis t, was pro­ ducing s t i l l life s showing pottery and figurines done by

Pre-Columbian natives of Central America. In w riting of

American Indian and other prim itive art in Camera Work,

Weber said that he found "Chinese dolls, Hopi Katcinas

(sic) images, and also Indian quilts and baskets and other works of savages (to be] much fine r in color than the works of the modern painter-colorists" (Weber 1910, p. 51)

Hartley's experience at 291 helped him recognize the value of primitive art; this would later be useful in his appre­ ciation of the American Indian culture.

When Hartley arrived in Paris in April 1912, a new phase of his career began. At Gertrude Stein's salon, he soon renewed his acquaintance with the work of Cezanne,

Matisse, and the Cubism of Picasso. Hartley had seen ex­ hibitions of these a rtis ts ' works at 291. Cubism played a part in Hartley's introduction to the esthetic value of prim itive art. By 1907 Picasso had perceived and begun 25 to incorporate in his work both the magical and the ideo­ graphic character of tribal masks, as William Rubin has noted (1984b, p . 255).

After some preliminary experiments, however, to which Hartley gave his own vigorous interpretation, as in

Musical Theme (Oriental Symphony) 1912-13 (Fig. 9), he realized that his closest affinity was with the expression­ ism of the German a rtis ts whose work he became fam iliar with while living in Paris. When he first became aware of the art of the Russian-born Wassily Kandinsky and ob­ tained a copy of Per Blaue R eiter, Kandinsky's newly pub­ lished magazine, at Clovis Sagot's art gallery. Hartley was moved to 1 earn more about the accomplishments of this

Munich-based group. While article s in Per Blaue Reiter discussed prim itive art as the expression of inner fe e l­ ings, Hartley found that Kandinsky's treatise. On the

Spiritual in Art, went even further to say that primitive peoples "wanted to capture in th e ir work the inner essence of things" and that this "internal necessity is spiritual"

(Kandinsky 1982, pp. 128, 176), arising from mystical sources and in tu itio n s. Barbara Haskell has observed that the mystical leanings of the German artists led Hartley away from the inte lle ctua l ism which was of primary impor­ tance to the French (Haskell 1980, p. 26).

His interest aroused by Per Blaue Reiter Almanac,

Hartley visited the Trocadero Museum of prim itive culture 26

Figure 9. Marsden Hartley, Musical Theme, Oriental Sym­ phony, 1912-13. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 31 3/4". Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts . 27

in Paris and wrote to Stieglitz that he was "taking a very sudden turn in a big direction owing to a recent v is it to the Trocadero (Hartley 1912). He was gaining new insights and inspiration from his contacts with primitive art.

Hartley traveled to Munich, where he met Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and then to Berlin, where he reacted very favorably to the intense pre-war atmosphere of Germany in

1913. His love of pageantry was satisfied by the frequent military demonstrations, as it was to be later in New

Mexico by Indian ceremonials.

The Blaue Reiter a rtis t Franz Marc was profoundly moved by the art of "prim itive peoples" and wrote to his friend August Macke that, "We should seek the rebirth of our artistic feeling in this cold dawn of artistic intelli­ gence" (Gordon 1984, p. 375). Primitive forms appeared as an expressive influence in Marc's animal paintings. Macke, who produced several paintings using American Indian sub­ ject matter, wrote in Per Blaue Reiter Almanac that wooden trib a l masks or an Alaskan ch ie fta in 's cape "speak the same powerful language as the chimeras of Notre Dame and the tombstones in Frankfurt Cathedral" (Macke 1974, p. 89).

Through Hartley's contact with these artists in

Germany, who were involved in exploring the possibilities

in tribal art, his own interest in the art of primitive, cultures was reinforced. Many of Hartley's essays express and continue the basic ideas of Alfred S tie g litz on the development of a tru ly American form of expression. In this he was joined by Waldo Frank, who wrote a number of books on the Ameri­ can social condition. In Our America of 1919, Frank said that America must know its e lf by going to the basic mate­ ria ls of lif e , identifying with one's native ground, and attuning oneself to a place, rejecting the overweening domination of materialism. In his view, "The Indian. .. lived in a spiritual world so pure and so profound, that the heel of the pioneer has even now not wholly stamped i t out" (Frank 1919, p. 109). Hartley, too, linked man's sp iritu a l origins to the earthly environment which pro­ vides him with his means of expression. Frank and Hartley show in the ir writings of the same period that each was impressed by the example of the American Indian culture and used i t as an image of the more harmonious and pur­ poseful way of lif e to which America should aspire.

Another of Hartley's friends who shared his fe e l­ ings about the American Indian was the physician, poet, and essayist, William Carlos Williams. In the American

Grain includes a chapter on Daniel Boone in which Williams praises Boone for accepting the American wilderness on its own terms. "Filled, with the wild beauty of the New

World," he writes, Boone "sought only with primal lust to grow close to i t , to understand i t and to be part of its mysterious movements--!ike an Indian" (Williams 1925, p. 136). As Hartley did, Williams found significance in the Indians' relation to the land and saw the lesson that newer Americans could take for themselves:

To Boone the Indian was his greatest master. Not for himself surely to be an Indian, though they eagerly sought to adopt him into their tribes, but the reverse: to be himself in a new world, Indian!ike. I f the land were to be possessed, i t must be as the Indians possessed i t (Williams 1925, p. 137).

Williams felt that the original colonists, by.trying to conquer the land and make i t into a semblance of the Old

World that was left behind, had rejected the opportunity to receive the wonderful bounty the new land offered to those who knew how to accept it . In the opinion of many a rtis ts who headed west in the f ir s t half of the twentieth century, what remained of the real America was to be found in the re la tive ly untouched areas of the west.

Hartley's relationship with the poet Hart Crane, whose life ended tragically in suicide, was illustrated poignantly by the painting Hartley called Eight Bells

Folly (Fig. 10) which depicted in symbolic terms the c ir ­ cumstances of Crane's drowning. They had known each other over a period of years in New York, in France, and in

Mexico, where Hartley spent a year on a Guggenheim Fellow­ ship in 1932-33 (Haskell 1980, p. 93). 30

Figure 10. Marsden Hartley, Eight Bells Folly, Memorial for Hart Crane, 1933. Oil on canvas, 31 5/8 x 3 9 V • University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 31

Both Crane and Hartley were eager to express the

American consciousness in their work and, with a shared interest in primitivism, it was natural for them to take as an example the North American Indian. The importance of

Hartley's influence on Crane in this instance is expressed by Robert Martin, "Crane was guided in his development to­ ward a recognition of the Indian as a kind of national id, a source of natural and sp iritu a l depth, by the example of his friend, Marsden Hartley" (Martin 1981, p. 55). The two men shared a desire to express American content in the form of European modernism. Both explored in poetry the power and spiritualism of Indian ritual dances. Hartley in "The

Festival of the Corn," 1920, and Crane in "The Bridge,"

1930. In asking for guidance to sp iritu a l harmony, Crane w rite s :

But I must ask slain Iroquois to guide Me farther than scalped Yankees knew to go (Crane 1933, p. 37).

Martin calls the red man "an erotic figure for Crane's affirm ation of ecstatic vision expressed through the body in the manner of Whitman"(Martin 1981, p. 61).

The influences and counter-influences working be­ tween Hartley and many of his friends and associates show that Hartley was not alone in extolling the in trin s ic value of the American Indian culture as an example to all

Americans of the way to achieve harmonious liv in g and integrated art forms. As Robert Burlingame remarks, the influences received by Hartley in painting and poetry were those which spoke to the rightness of beliefs he had held in s tin c tiv e ly from the beginning and they only served to

"confirm his o rig in a litie s " ( Burlingame 1954, p. 402). CHAPTER 4

INDIAN ART IN HARTLEY'S WORK (FRANCE AND GERMANY)

The f ir s t appearance of references to American

Indian art in Hartley's work was during his stay in Paris in the early summer of 1912. There he painted Indian

Pottery (Jar and Idol) (Fig. 1), a still life that bears a d is tin c t resemblance to Max Weber's Mexican Statuette of 1910 (Fig. 11). Hartley's painting shows an Acoma

Indian pot and, just as Weber had done, he placed in the left-hand side of the picture a small figure that is an example of primitive art. This wooden carving is reminis­ cent of the work of the Kwakiutl Indians of North Ameri­ ca's Northwest Coast (Levin 1984a, p. 457). What appears to be a reclining animal in the lower right, with curving bulk and bluish color calling to mind the animal paintings of Franz Marc, would seem to represent nature as one part of a symbolic diamond which forms the composition of the painting, uniting man, art and nature with the intellect embodied in the nameless book at lower center. At the same time that he was experimenting with Cubism, Hartley created this straightforward, painterly arrangement of objects which evoked in its shadowy forms the mystic lure

33 34

Figure 11. Max Weber, Mexican Statuette, 1910. Gouache on cardboard, 29 x 24". Private Collection. of trib a l art now beginning to take its place in his ar­ tistic vocabulary.

Also in 1912, Hartley did several charcoal draw­ ings of Primitive Symbols, one of which is shown in Fig.

12, in which he incorporated some of the American Indian motifs that he may have seen at the Trocadero Museum in

Paris (Levin 1976 , p. 90). Many of these images, such as the eight-pointed star, the zigzag line, and the corn stalk were soon to appear in the cubist abstractions ex­ emplified by Musical Theme (Oriental Symphony) of 1912-

13 (Fig. 9) painted in Paris. In these pictures, we see the beginning of the much more powerful treatment of

Indian symbolism that will be an important part of Hart­ ley's creative work in Berlin.

Upon arriving in Berlin, Hartley was immediately entranced by the imperial German culture. The o rd e rli­ ness, the cleanliness, and the m ilita ry pageantry he found there gave him a sense of satisfaction that had previously been unknown to him.* Hartley loved the simultaneous fe e l­ ings of anonymity and of belonging afforded by ritu a l and

1. The politics of the era was of little interest to him; in fact, an apolitical nature was characteristic of Hartley throughout his life (Halasz 1980, p. 126). 36

Figure 12. Marsden Hartley, Primitive Symbol $ , 1912. Charcoal on paper. Illu stra te d in Sandra Gail Levin, "Wassily Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde 1912-1950," Ph . D . d i s s . , Rutgers University, 1976. crowds. Excited by parades, he said they were bursting with organized energy and tension, were voluptuous and

sexual (Haskell 1980, p. 140).

It was on Hartley's second trip to Berlin (March

1914 to December 1915) that he painted the series of four

pictures based on the American Indian culture. In New

York he had seen the American Indian collection at the

American Museum of Natural History. In Paris i t was the

Trocadero; now it was Berlin's Ethnological Museum that

gave him further motivation and material for the Amerika 2 series. Aware of the great attention paid by Europeans

to American Indian art and culture, he also knew that

August Macke, as well as others in the German Expression­

is t movement, had been using American Indian motifs as

early as 1910 (Levin 1984a, p. 457). In addition. Hart­

ley's desire to emphasize his American identity may have strengthened his impulse to create these paintings. An­ other possible reason for Hartley's painting Indian themes was that they represented an affirmation of human dignity and a gentle way of lif e , in the face of the impending

2. Gail Levin has commented on the vastness of the Berlin Museum's collection of American Indian art and on Hartley's discovery there that motifs such as eight- pointed stars and the iron cross, already favorites of his, had actually been used by various Indian tribes. catastrophe of World War I (Haskell 1980, p. 42). After the war had started. Hartley wrote to Stieglitz that he wanted to be an Indian, that the true expression of human dignity would be to paint his face with the symbols of the race he adored, "go to the west and face the sun forever"

(Hart!ey 1914b) .

The Amerika paintings were a combination of the formal approach of Synthetic Cubism with the vivid , emo­ tional coloration of German Expressionism. Objects re­ lating to the American Indian culture form geometric patterns creating a sense of rhythm and movement. The patterns combine in an overall decorative appearance. All the Amerika paintings are dated 1914 and all are moderate­ ly large canvases, at least 39 x 39", appropriate to the dynamic quality of their style. Hartley combined motifs in accordance with his own artistic spirit, not hesitating to join aspects pertaining to d iffe re n t Indian tribes in one harmonious whole.

In discussing Indian Fantasy (Fig. 2), Gail Levin has observed that the overall color scheme of red, green and yellow with a black background and white details is very sim ilar to that of the headdress of a Hopi Kachina doll in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and that Hartley also adopted from this headdress the central arch, the eight-pointed stars enclosed in circle s, and the stick 39

figures, one of which appears in the mandorla at the lower

center of Indian Fantasy (Levin 1984a, p. 459). Levin also

discovered that a wooden eagle, a primitive sculpture from

Vancouver Island, B ritish Columbia, was on display in the

Berlin Museum when Hartley was working on this painting

and may have been the model for the large bird at the top

of the picture. Dr. Levin sees the frin gelike depiction

of the bird's wings and feathers as related to an illus­

tration of a Chilkat Indian chieftain's cape that ap­

peared in Per Blaue Reiter Almanac (Levin 1984a, p. 459).

Hartley's fa m ilia rity with this design is suggested by his

later writing of the American Indian that "he is one of

the essential decorators of the world. A look at the totem

poles and prayer robes of the Indians of Alaska w ill con­

vince you of that" (Hartley 1920b, p. 10). Indian canoes with abstract designs and Indian tepees were also part of

the Museum's collection.

The triangular shape of the tepee which dominates

every one of these paintings had a prominent place in

Hartley's repertoire of symbolic colors, shapes and num­

bers. Kandinsky, in his On the Spiritual in A r t, viewed

the triangle as a symbol of the mystical striving of the

spirit, the pinnacle sometimes attained by only a single

man, often an a r tis t, who had gone beyond the lim ited

understanding of his contemporaries (Kandinsky 1982, 40

p. 128). Hartley used this triangle or pyramid shape over

and over in his work, especially to give form and mysti­

cism to the mountains he loved to paint, the mountains with which he identified so closely in his later work.

The triangle is a universal symbol, related to the

other great emblems of the world, such as the c irc le , the

square, and the cross, and in Christianity it represents

the Holy Trinity. It consists of two opposing, irreconcil­

able points that are pulled upward to become one in a sub­

lime, synergistic union. It is a form that achieved added

significance in relation to Hartley's later observations

of Indian celebrations and beliefs in New Mexico. In

these he saw the reconciliation of physical and spiritual,

of masculine and feminine, of all the opposing forces,

creating a transcending unity, full of power and meaning

and leading to a harmonious way of lif e . In modern Indian

ceremonials, triangular flin t arrowheads, representing the

gathering of all energy toward one goal, are laid around

the circula r fireplace to point to the sacred east (Waters

1950, p. 421). The triangular form in this painting is

the central unifying element. Its powerful upward thrust

is a counter to the more fluid horizontal lines, as it

rises from the ground-rooted physical aspects of Indian

life to lead to a point of contact with the al1-powerful

spiritual forces above. 41 The absolutely frontal and symmetrical composition of Indian Fantasy seems to re fle ct Hartley's view of Ameri­ can Indian culture as harmonious, peace-loving, well- ordered, a successful integration and balance in which each separate part is a piece of the whole. Nature and man live together in mutual respect. Fish provide the In­ dian with food, trees are material for canoes, and hides are used for shelter and clothing. Before the benevolent

Father Sun, the huge eagle, embodying a holy s p ir it and messenger to the gods (Waters 1963, pp. 57, 132), spreads sheltering wings over all below. It is a picture of exal­ tation, trust, and belief, expressing in bold terms, in simple, large forms, and in a color scheme familiar to the

Indians' own art, the mystic rapport which Hartley felt with their age-old spiritual beliefs.

Indian Composition (Fig. 3), another in the Amerika series, emphasizes the circle, placing it in juxtaposition with the triangle, the central, dominating form. Circles appear within circles. The ancient form of the kiva of the Pueblo people is a c ircle . Circles are used in Indian art to represent the earth, the sun, the moon, the path followed by the sun, and the Road of Life (Waters 1963, pp. 166, 189-90). Hartley adopts this basic.symbol of

Indian culture and uses it in an abstract way, as well, to provide a counter force to his triangles. Circles 42 ungrounded by visible support seem to flo a t on the surface of the painting. But they have strength in color and in the sharpness of the ir outlines and they are heavy with meaning.

A river flows gently through this symbolized In­ dian village from the le ft. Fires blaze warmly in front of tepees, while articles of daily use lie on the ground.

The animal reclining placidly and undisturbed in the com­ pany of man is very like those that Hartley would have seen in the paintings of Franz Marc. Nearby, an Indian chief smokes a peace pipe. The Indian figures, though dressed in war bonnets, seem contemplative and secure in the ir own world. The center tepee reaches into the heavens to meet the sun which spreads its glowing aura from a pat­ terned circle to a huge semi-circle where Indian heads are joined in flowing rhythm. The b r illia n t patterns and symbols create a kind of glorification and blessing for the earth. With colors and starkly contrasting geometric patterns like those of Indian rugs and pottery. Hartley has created a tribute to their way of life.

In another interpretation of the same theme. Hart­ ley gave to American Indian Symbols (Fig. 4) the dramatic colors and symmetry and exact fro n ta lity of the other

Amerika paintings. This one, however, is even more con­ centrated on the Indian figure in the center who is seated 43 guru-1 ike before the open flaps of a tepee. The shape of his headdress endows him with an almost Egyptian look

(Janson 1962 , colorplate 2, p. 42) and with the lotus position of a Buddha figure, a touch of universality has been given to this introspective man. He seems lost in so lita ry meditation, out of communication with the other two figures who are turned away and seem to serve only as ritual attendants.

Directly behind the large tepee in the center is a rounded, bulging shape which suggests the earth on which men and tepees are located, with their aspirations reach­ ing- to the heavens. The triangle here is repeatedly em­ phasized by the line of tepees overlapping each other and all pointing forcefully to the sky. They may represent the rising of the thoughts of the central figure to the very top of the scene where the point of the center tepee meets an eight-pointed star. More of these stars enclosed in circles and surrounded by haloes of lig h t signify the sp iritu a l world above.

Whereas Indian Composition gave almost equal prom­ inence to the c irc le , American Indian Symbols is dominated by sharp angles in siste n tly pointing upward. Movement from bottom to top of the picture is strongly emphasized and is the one basic force that the painting suggests, with no distractions from small side or background scenes. The 44 wavy vertical line on the left side of the picture and the checkerboard-patterned right-hand strip serve as abstract borders only, taken from motifs of Indian design.

The fourth painting in the Amerika series. Painting

No. 2, Arrangement, Hieroglyphics (Fig. 5), is much more abstract and leads d ire ctly into the symbolic s t i l l life s and the German military paintings that soon followed. Ab­ solute symmetry is still observed in this painting, with a fla t, orderly arrangement of forms confronting the viewer in a bold overall design. Hartley has kept the central triangle motif, as well as the circle within circles, the small wavy and zigzag lines and the stick figure shapes that appeared in other paintings in this series. A sem­ blance of a human form stands in the center of the t r i ­ angle, or tepee, but i t is more geometric and stylized than any of the Indian figures in the other Amerika paint­ ings. This painting served as a transition from the paintings on Indian themes to the exploration of the strong impressions Hartley was receiving at this time in

Berlin, in his personal lif e and in the public lif e of the wartime c ity . The symbolism and abstraction of the

Amerika series developed into even more complex and dy­ namic expression in the paintings that came out of his

Berlin experience. CHAPTER 5

RELATED WORKS IN TAOS AND SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Like many of his contemporaries, both in and out of the S tie g litz group. Hartley fe lt the attraction of the highly proclaimed painting opportunities in the American

Southwest. In June of 1918 he settled in Taos, New Mex­ ico, where his friend Mable Dodge had already established a kind of refuge for avant garde writers and a rtis ts . The cosmopolitan Mable Dodge had become an ardent admirer of the Pueblo culture of the Taos area and in 1923 married

Tony Luhan, a Taos Indian.

Hartley's stay in New Mexico was not an altogether happy one. He expressed scorn for the ea rlie r generation of Taos a rtis ts , s t i l l prominent and very much on the scene, whose academic, illu stra tio n -o rie n te d style clashed with his modernist approach to art. They, in turn, were not pleased with his seeming arrogance and le ft him fe e l­ ing alienated and alone.

After a move to Santa Fe in October 1918, Hartley was s till restless and discontent, always searching for the congenial environment that proved so elusive fo r him.

He found i t hard to come to terms with the New Mexico

45 46 landscape, although he called i t "a livin g example of the splendor of the ages" and reacted with excitement to the wonder of its colors (Haskell 1980, p. 58). Hartley dealt with the scenes that surrounded him during his time in Taos and Santa Fe, first in soft, naturalistic pastels and later, after he had left the Southwest, in more expressive, rhythmic o ils , such as Landscape No. 3, Cash Entry Mines,

New Mexico, 1920 (Fig. 13).

In Berlin in 1923 he was still creating recollec­ tions of New Mexico and here, as in Landscape, New Mexico,

1923 (Fig. 14), the forms seem tortured and turbulent, constantly in motion, with an unsettling rhythm that threatens to destabilize and engulf the sensitive specta­ tor. While many of these New Mexico landscapes are suc­ cessful paintings, they lack the grandeur, the calm, and the willing identification with nature that characterizes

Hartley's later works. In New Mexico, he was moved to respond to the natural environment but he sometimes saw i t as hostile and he did not accomplish the resolved, a ll- f u lf illin g intercourse with the land that came with his final return to Maine.

Landscape was vita l and pivotal to Hartley's work, which passed through many stages before reaching its greatest success. Therefore, his treatment of the New

Mexico landscape was part of an unfolding process that 47

Figure 13. Marsden Hartley, Landscape No. 3, Cash Entry Mines, New Mexico, 1920. Oil on canvas, 27 3/4 x 35 3/4" . Art In stitu te of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 48

Figure 14. Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, 1923. Oil on canvas, 21 3/4 x 35 3/4". Equitable Life Assurance Society, New York. 49 brought him ever closer to his final achievement. But for one abiding reason, New Mexico could not be his true place of haven: powerful as this land was, even overwhelming in its impression on him, i t was not his land and he s t i l l had miles to travel and much time to spend before he found his real destination to be in the place of his beginnings, in the rugged wilderness of Maine.

In addition to landscapes. Hartley did other work in New Mexico that was directly related to his feeling for prim itivism and for the art of native peoples. Blessing the Melon, The Indians Bring the Harvest to Christian Mary for Her Blessing, 1918 (Fig. 15), is painted in the style of a retablo,! a traditional Mexican folk art representa­ tion of a religious figure, also made by the Hispanic people of New Mexico. As Barbara Haskell points out, these small altarpieces came into the hands of a rtis ts and collectors at whose homes Hartley undoubtedly saw them (Haskell 1980, p. 59). In his painting, he has in ­ tentionally used the primitive forms and simple patterns of these stylized figures with their frontality and ab­ solute symmetry and th e ir framing of parted curtains.

1. The term retablo properly refers to an altar- piece. In popular usage, i t has come to be applied to these small examples of Hispanic religious folk art. 50

Figure 15. Marsden Hartley, Blessing the Melon, The In­ dians Bring the Harvest to Christian Mary for Her Blessing, 1918. Oil on composition board, 32k x 23 7/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The flowers and especially the melon show the tangible

aspects of nature to which these converted Christians

related their religion. In truth, they have only di­

verted their prayers for fe rtility and good harvests

from their pagan gods to the Catholic saints, a change on

the surface which did little to disturb their underlying beliefs. The rounded concreteness of the melon, its stripes forming a counterpart to those in the statue's dress, combines with the spirituality of the haloed figure to show the bond between physical and sp iritu a l , between

nature and religion, that was so basic to Hartley's be­ lie fs and to those he saw demonstrated in Indian cere­ monials. The abundance of the melon was nourishment for the body, while the saintly glory in the figure of Mary fed the spirit. The colors are strikingly gay and cheer­

ful, befitting the celebration of a bountiful harvest.

In a sim ilar painting, El Santo, of 1919(Fig. 16),

Hartley has depicted a retablo in what would appear to be an exact duplication of its original primitive form. But

its importance lies in the intimacy of its setting, dis­ armingly askew on the wall, in a homelike atmosphere, with a colorful cloth and a plant nearby. The bringing of religion into the everyday, physical world was an aspect of the Catholicism of these New Mexican peoples

that appealed not only to Hartley but to other a rtis ts Figure 16. Marsden Hartley, El Santo, 1919. Oil on canvas, 36 x 32". Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 53 of the time as well, as Julie Schimmel has pointed out

(Schimmel 1986, p. 131). And here again, the natural world is juxtaposed with a religious emblem by including

near the santo a growing plant in a black pot. Hartley certainly observed the love of Hispanic people for their land, related, as Schimmel says, to the pagan character of their version of religion (1986, p. 131). For suste­ nance and peace of mind, the god they called upon for help was closely related to nature and Hartley was sensitively attuned to this distinction as he painted this simple but penetrating view of a way of life.

A still life also pertaining to Hispanic New

Mexico Catholicism is Santos: New Mexico, ca. 1918-19

(Fig. 17), in which Hartley has placed three Small wood­ en carvings of saints, the center one identified as St.

Joseph by Julie Schimmel (1986, p. 128). The small size of these figures is emphasized by the lower half of a human figure in the background. The hand directed toward the center figure shows with what ease a person could pick up and hold one of these santos, how intimate and available they are, and how close and personal and physical a rela­ tionship with them could be. Their simple, doll-like quality shows that they belong to a people with a simple, direct view of religion and their hieratic, frontal dis­ play and brightly decorated costumes show that they are 54

Figure 17. Marsden Hartley, Santos: New Mexico, ca. 1918- 19. Oil on composition board, 31 3/4 x 23 3/4". University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. important as holy figures. Hartley painted these still fifes with great sympathy and understanding for these

Hispanic people and for the earth and heaven quality of the religion which these artifacts represent. CHAPTER 6

. HART LEVS WRITINGS ABOUT THE AMERICAN INDIAN

It was part of Hartley's complex and. gifted per­

sonality that he was an accomplished w riter as well as an

a r tis t, that he had keen powers of observation and the

a b ility to formulate ideas and express them with c la rity

and vision. In essays and poetry, he dealt with many

topics and disclosed a great deal about himself.

The first of Hartley's writings on Indian subjects was an essay entitled "Tribal Esthetics" which appeared

in The Dial magazine of November 16, 1918. His subject

is the corn dance, which he describes as "an organized

rhythmic conception and esthetic composition, spirit and

body harmonized to symbolize certain laws, fa ith s, even

creeds....It is wholly a bodily conception of a beauti­

fully lofty spiritual idea" (Hartley 1918b, p. 400).

Body and spirit together, for Hartley, are the creators of

art and religious expression. Profoundly moved by the

Indian dancers, he calls them "artists of the first de­

gree" (Hartley 1918b, p. 400), rhythmic bodies responding

to beautiful sound.

Hartley was also intrigued by the complete in ­

volvement of the Indian spectators in the activite s of

56 the dance; the reverence with which they watched the per­ formance showed the complete integration of art into their daily lives, a union from which more "c iv iliz e d " man had moved away. In poetic terms. Hartley expressed his fe e l­ ing that these dances were the history of our native land,

"written in the very language of the sun and moon and the sky, the birds and the flowers, rain and running rivers"

(1918b, p. 400). Their esthetic creation had, as Kan­ dinsky said of the art of prim itive peoples, evolved out of their own spiritual necessity and was completely their own spontaneous expression, with no regard whatever for what was going on in the rest of the world. To Hartley, these were people:

In accord with the universe, wanting l i t t l e or nothing from a world of invented subterfuge, being the equal of the very dawn and the going down of the sun, vastly superior to all the hosts of vulgarities with which we, who belong to the newer civilization, befool ourselves (1918b, p. 401).

He extolled the "anciently splendid ritual" (1918b, p. 401), as he deplored its loss to modern lif e .

In January 1920, Hartley wrote an essay called

"Red Man Ceremonials: An American Plea for American Es­ th e tics." I t was an ironic fact that, while he spent a great deal of time in Europe both before and after this essay, one of his strongest motivations as an artist was to create an art that would be tru ly American. He saw 58

among the Indians, alone of all the Americans, true respect

for what he called the "poetic aspects of our original

land" (Hartley 1920b, p. 7), something that had gained too

l i t t l e recognition in the culture of the world at large.

Others had painted the American landscape, but the Indian

lived with it in a spirit of true identification. He was a part of the spirituality of the land and had:

Indicated for all time the. symbolic splendor of our plains, canyons, mountains, lakes, mesas and ravines, our forests and our native skies, with their animal inhabitants, the buffalo, the deer, the eagle, and the various other living presences in th e ir midst (Hartley 1920b, p. 7).

For this reason, he calls the red man the "one tru ly in ­ digenous re lig io n is t and esthete of America" (1920b, p. 7).

Here Hartley combines art and re lig io n , a natural union

for him since, in his own experience, art was his religion and closeness to the land was important to both art and

re lig ion.

Hartley admires the red man for being a master of

sign ifica nt gesture, an art that makes use of symbols and

pantomime related to Indian mythology and daily a c tiv itie s

and therefore more meaningful than gesture that is ac­

quired or adopted. Tribal rhythm has an authenticity for

him, based as i t is on pageantry related to birds and

animals and natural vibrations.

The greatest lesson of all from the red man, one which Hartley took unto himself, was "to be ourselves in 59 a s till greater degree, as his forefathers have taught him

to be himself down the centuries" (Hartley 1920b, p. 7).

Hartley was a man who had long been in search of a role and

an environment in which he could find fu lfillm e n t. The

Indians taught him, not to settle in their country and imi­

tate the ir ways, but to find what was true for him in his own country and to pursue i t with all hi $ heart.

When Hartley f ir s t arrived in New Mexico in 1918,

there was talk of a government edict to bah Indian dances

(Burlingame 1954, p. 126). In this essay. Hartley stands

firmly-in favor of the right of the Indians, as well as

that of all other people, to act in accordance with per­

sonal needs, in other words to perform their ceremonials without interference from those who would see these as merely barbaric, pagan outpourings. He regretted the loss,

not only to the Indians, but to all America, of the wisdom of an ancient culture, depreciated through forced assimi­

lation. The Indian satisfied spiritual needs through

dance and ritu a l; without these expressions, he would be

physically and emotionally deprived. As an artist. Hartley

upheld the necessity for unhampered, natural, personal

expression, a condition that sponsored true creativity.

In a jibe against racial prejudice. Hartley ob­

serves, that the black man has not yet assumed his rig h tfu l

place in America, but he goes on to press the case of the red man as a contributor to American culture with the au­ thority of ages of living on the land. Hartley acknowl­ edges modernism's debt to authentic prim itive cultures when he says, " I t would seem to me to be a sign of modern­ ism in us to preserve the livin g esthetic splendors in our midst" (Hartley 1920b, p. 13). He proposed that Ameri ca should graciously receive the g ift of this indigenous.

American genius and use i t to form an esthetic conscious­ ness native to America.

"The Scientific Esthetic of the Redman, Part I

(Hartley 1922, pp. 113-19), discusses "The Great Corn

Ceremony at Santo Domingo." In contrasting the ceremonies of the Indians with those of the Pern" tentes, a New Mexico sect that believed in achieving religious repentance through s e lf-to rtu re . Hartley brings forth his be lie f that

"religion in order to be a factor in experience must be pleasurable" (1922, p. 113). How far he has come from the influence of New England Puritanism! The Indians celebrate life and the glories of the body, while the

Penitentes dwell on its evils. Hartley could not be more emphatic in his preference for a religion of beauty, of song and poetry, of thanks for all the good bestowed on the earth, including the physical body. The redman can accept the intrusion of C hristianity as another manifesta­ tion of goodness, but his own religion is much more cosmic, unconfined and all-encompassing. C hristianity can only be a part of his celebration of the wonderful order and spirituality of all nature.

A scientific esthetic was invented by the red man, according to Hartley, because of his own particular needs.

Like the true artist that he is, "he has sought incessant­ ly for the precise value in his body and mind and soul which would correspond to what the sky and the cloud, the earth and the sun look to his acutely microscopic eye"

(1922, p. 115). With this sentence. Hartley shows how close the a ffin ity was between his own strivings as an artist and his observations of the red man's religious expressions. The Indian's esthetic science was made up of symbols for all the elements in nature. The great a r tis t, and the Indian, says Hartley, see the lif e , the spirit of existence, in all things. Art in ancient times

"sprang from the whole race" (1922, p. 116), unlike the modern-day situation where the a r tis t is out of the main­ stream of life. To Hartley, Indian artistry reflects the ancient tradition. Hartley says that the artist of today should be a leader in bringing his nation to a conscious­ ness and acceptance of art as v ita l to all human e x is t­ ence. He believes that the artist could find no better example to follow than that of the red man, his dances. 62 his use of symbolic gesture, and his personal devotion to the scientific esthetic he has evolved.

Part II of "The Scientific Esthetic of the Redman"

(Hartley 1922b, pp. 137-39) is a shorter essay, devoted mianly to the physical aspects of the Fiesta of San Geron- imo at the Taos Pueblo. Hartley describes in detail the handsome physical attributes of those who participated in the traditional foot race. Sinewy, muscular, a th le tic , and blueblack of hair, these young men are likened by

Hartley, in easy grace and speed, to panthers bursting with energy (1922b, p. 138). He praises them for keeping the ir bodies in such good condition, for having pride in their physical well-being. Paintings done in Hartley's later years show again how fascinated he was with the beauty of the male body. He painted no pictures of the

Indians engaged in dances or races, but this essay serves as a word picture, evoking very graphically the strong figures straining their muscles in competition. Hartley's writing often supplemented or coincided with subjects he

treated in o ils , but here he creates in words alone a masterly depiction of a scene in Indian life. He likens

the men to acrobats, another group of people he admired,

for the ir superb muscular rhythm and a g ilit y . The sym­

bol i sm of the race, as well as the p h ysica lity, was not

lost on Hartley. He writes that "you expect speed from 63

the runner whose head is crowned with eagle down, and whose

thighs are brushed with eagle's wings. It is a language

that is near to nature" (1922b, p. 139).

Of all the poetry written by Hartley, "The Festi­

val of the Corn," published in 1920, deals most d ire ctly

with his feelings about native American religion. The

corn dance is celebrated on the feast day of Santo Do­ mingo, whose wooden image is brought from the church to

become part of the ceremony. This combination of a pagan

festival with the veneration of a Christian saint provides

an opportunity for Hartley to compare the two religions

and C hristianity looks pale and weak at the side of the

ecstatic, throbbing, colorful rhythms created by the

Indian dancers. The poem repeats over and over that i t

is the corn that is really being celebrated, while the wooden Santo Domingo, in spite of halo and bronze g ild ­

ing, seems lifeless and ineffectual until briefly aroused,

in the eye and mind of the spectator, to join the danc­

ers, then slipping back again into immobility. The

earthy v ita lity of the Indian dancers makes an overpower­

ing impression as they act out the ir prayers for the corn:

I t is you they are singing f o r , young corn! I t is for you they are dancing, the red young bodies flushing with an old flame of the sunset. The red of the west is coming up out of th e ir loins, up out of the ir boyish and g irlis h breast- flanks. Red sparks are fa llin g from th e ir carved lips (Hartley 1920a, p. 62). The insistent rhythm of the poem is trance- inducing, geared to the rhythm and sexuality of the dance i t s e l f :

Beat of the tom-tom in my ears! Thud-thud of multitudinous red feet on my solar plexus! Red fire burning my very eyelids with young red heats! The last saps of the red- man are pouring down my thighs and arms. The young red blood is dripping from the flanks of laughing red bodies aching with the sensuousness of the passing pagan hour (1920a, p. 63).

Hartley uses the colors red and blue to express sensuality:

Blue prisms dangling from red bodies-- B1ue corn-juice dripping, drop by drop, over the edge of luscious young red lips (1920a, p. 63).

He contrasts this with the grey of the milk served up to the passive C hrist-child, whose image is combined with that of Santo Domingo.

It is easy to see how this Indian ceremony with its strong ties to the earth and its exaltation of power­ ful physical bodies would cause Hartley to be critical of those Christians who would negate the physical side of life. As his own artistic theories evolved, he found that for him true art must be grounded in physical reality

And this was not the fi r s t time he had set forth the be­ lie f that religion, to have any value, must involve the physical body. This was not so much a rejection of

Christianity itself, since some of his own paintings did have Christian themes, as i t was a criticism of what he felt were distortions of it by sects such as the Peniten- tes or Puritans who treated body and soul as separate e n titie s.

Hartley's repeated re frain , "Dance, Domingo,

Dance," is reflected in Hart Crane's "Dance, Maquokeeta!" from his poem, "The Bridge," a s im ila rity noted by Robert

K. Martin (1981, p. 57). The case of the spectator- narrator caught up in the hypnotic rhythms of primitive sound and sight is another a ffilia tio n of the two poems that was brought out by Martin as he quoted from "The

Bridge:"

Spears and assemblies:black drums thrusting-- 0 yelling battlements,--!, too, was liege To rainbows carrying each pulsant bone: Surpassed the circumstance, danced out the siege! (Martin 1981, p. 57)

"The Festival of the Corn" also shows that Hartley had absorbed and incorporated the restless, compelling turbulence of the rhythm of Walt Whitman. As stated ear­ lier, Hartley's admiration for Whitman began at an early age and was part of the development that led to his in te r­ est in the American Indian. Whitman's hymns to the human body were in fin ite in the ir reach and began with his ex­ hortation to himself:

Come, said my soul, Such verses for my body le t us w rite, (for we are one) (Whitman n.d . , fly le a f). Hartley's celebration of the Indian dancers shows a rela­ tionship to Whitman's glorification of the earth:

Smile 0 voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liq u id trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains m isty-to p t! Earth of the vitreous pour of the fu ll moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the rive r! (Whitman, ir.d. , p. 45).

Hartley and Whitman shared a feeling for the physicality of all sp iritu a l expression and for the primeval power of throbbing rhythm.

Vachel Lindsay, w riting in the 1920 s, captured a sim ilar mood of intoxication and energy in his poem, "The

Ghosts of the Buffaloes," a vision of long-dead Indians rising to ride again on the plains where the s p irits of the lost buffaloes thundered by:

With bodies like bronze and te rrib le eyes Came the rank and the f ile , with catamount cries.

They rode out in in fin ite lines to the west. Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam, S pirits and wraiths, the blue was their home, The sky was the ir goal where the star flags are furled, (Untermeyer 1936, p. 260).

The twenties was a time when prim itivism had an appeal for many of the artists and writers who were especially concerned with the ir ide ntity as Americans. Hartley was one of the leaders in this e ffo rt and, as can be seen in his poetry, the subject matter of the primitive American

Indian inspired the use of earthy, beating, primitive rhythms to appeal emotionally to the readers' senses. art, as well as in literature, it was felt that not sim ply imitation and illustration of the primitive was the goal, but the actual use of primitive technique. CHAPTER 7

WHAT NEW MEXICO MEANT TO HARTLEY

The months spent by Hartley in Taos and Santa Fe were an important part of his development process.^ Al­ though i t may have seemed at the time that he gained noth ing there and was glad enough to leave what he called the

"chaos" of Taos (Haskell 1980, p. 59) and later to avoid another cold winter in Santa Fe, his writings speak for the very positive lesson he carried away from his contact with the native American culture there.

The early members of the Taos Society of A rtists, men like Joseph Sharp, Oscar Berninghaus, and E. Irving

Couse, discovered in the Indian and his surroundings an inspiring source of subject matter and became dedicated to making a record for all time, before it disappeared, of the Indian way of life . Using Indians as models, they painted them in th e ir native dress, often as they per­ formed simple, traditional tasks. To these artists, the

Indian was the last vestige of a vanishing era in America

1. Many important a rtists from the east were a t­ tracted to Taos and Santa Fe in the f ir s t half of the twentieth century, creating a significant art colony in this part of the Southwest.

68 and they saw his simple, natural , tradition-based life as an id y llic one. With these feelings Hartley seemed to be in accord. But he differed greatly with them on the artis tic use to be made from this contact with the Indian cul­ ture.

Many of these painters had been trained in the academic style that was a holdover from the nineteenth century. Some had worked as illu s tra to rs before being motivated to take up fine art in th e ir new environment.

It was natural for them to bend every e ffo rt toward pre­ senting their subjects in the most realistic way. But to

Hartley this style of painting was mere imitation and it clashed with his own more penetrating approach. Along with other members of the S tie g litz group, a rtis ts such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove, he fe lt that the a r tis t of America should strive not simply to portray scenes of American lif e , but rather to probe his own inner feelings and reach for the essence of the thing observed.

And in Hartley's paintings, expressionism dominated natu­ ralism and color was the tool of feelings. For him, the landscape had to live and breathe, fu ll of mysticism and wonder. In his Landscape, New Mexico of 1920 (Fig. 18), large, sim plified forms convey the impact of a very power­ ful and somehow mysterious scene. Like Georgia O'Keeffe, whose paintings of New Mexico are much more than 70

Figure 18. Marsden Hartley, Landscape, New Mexico, 1920. Oil on composition board, 25 5/8 x 29V1. Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico. conventional landscapes, Hartley managed to capture the

s p ir it of the land, as i t appeared to him. He never

painted scenes of the Indians but his work glows with a

reverence for nature which is at one with his perception

of the Indian sense of place.

At the Indian pueblos of New Mexico, Hartley saw

sp iritu a l feelings put into physical form in the dances which the Indians had been performing down through the ages. In his view, they had retained the closeness to

the earth, to all nature, to their physical bodies, that

had been gradually Tost by more "civ iliz e d " peoples. And

the a b ility to keep in touch with the roots and sources of

life gave vitality to their actions and made their dances

into true art. I t was this closeness to livin g energy and

to the land of America that Hartley wanted for his own

painting and, indeed, advocated for all American a rtis ts .

As has been said before, Hartley did not adapt well to the environment he found in New Mexico and could

never think of this southwestern area as his own. What

he took away from there, however, and used to great ad­

vantage in his la te r career, was the lesson to be oneself

to the greatest possible degree. This was a precept for

the Indians' own development and Hartley was able to carry

i t over into his. Having been a wanderer all his lif e and

an outsider without a family lif e or a place that was really home to him, he needed very much both to accept himself and to be accepted. For many years he had been unable to come to terms with the unhappiness of his early lif e in Maine and he had seemed to reject id e n tifica tio n with his home state. But, as his writings about the In­ dians affirm , love of one's native land exerts a very strong pull, especially on one as sensitive as Hartley.

I t was his final acceptance of this truth that enabled him, la te r, to return to Maine and to find there the a b ility to do what many scholars believe to be his most successful work. CHAPTER 8

INTERVENING YEARS

When Hartley le ft New Mexico in November 1919, he

returned to New York where he worked on paintings on the

New Mexico theme, derived from his pastels and from what

he remembered of the landscape there. The next years were

to be filled with more travels, a never-ending search for

sign ifica nt subject matter. The places he visite d , some more than once, included Paris, Berlin, Italy, Mexico,

Bermuda, as well as other lo c a litie s in Europe and the

United States, a l i s t that illu s tra te s the wide range of

his travels. Ne never returned to New Mexico. Frequently

he was in New York, sometimes for a period of months.

Several of the places he experienced during this time of wandering were of special importance for the development of his art in the direction that would lead him from his

Indian experience in New Mexico to the final fu lfillm e n t

of his a r tis tic beliefs in Maine.

Sojourns in Vence and Aix-en Provence between 1925

and 1927 allowed Hartley to work on an exploration of the

theories of Cezanne, the value of which he had already

acclaimed in his w ritings. He.admired Cezanne's g ifts for

73 74 selection, for leaving out all that was unnecessary, and for "seeing the superb fact in terms of its e lf, m ajesti­ cally" (Hartley 1921d, p. 32). Cezanne's paintings, as

Hartley went on to say, "are not cold studies of inanimate things, they are pulsing realizations of living substances striving toward each other, lending each other their in­ dividual a c tiv itie s until his canvases become... ensembles of animation, orchestrated life" (1921d, p. 33). A striv­ ing for the intense realization of form in space, which motivated Cezanne, seems to be Hartley's goal as well in his Purple Mountains of 1925-26 (Fig. 19). The paintings of mountains, always a favorite Hartley subject, done in

France as Hartley worked through his development as a painter, were, as Robert Burlingame has said, "germinal beginnings of later Maine production" (1954, p. 67), and prefigure the more integrated monumental scenes of Mount

Katahdin. Cezanne's concentrated devotion to his own land was an inspiration to Hartley; this sense of identification with one's sign ifica nt place was incorporated in his later paintings of Maine.

A short visit to Maine in 1928 left Hartley still feeling ambivalent about his native state and he wrote to his friend Adelaide Kuntz that New England was "lik e a f ir s t wife that one cannot help revering and yet cannot possibly live with" (Haskell 1980, p. 77). Hartley's 75

Figure 19. Marsden Hartley, Purple Mountains, 1925-26. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32". Phoenix Art Museum. 76 a r tis tic reputation had dropped seriously in the 1920s. An exhibition of his Mont Sainte-Victoire landscapes at Stieg- litz's Intimate Gallery in 1929 was a critical failure.

When he returned to Europe once more, while feigning in ­ difference to praise or the lack of it. Hartley's dissatis­ faction with his own country was mostly due to his feeling that it had rejected him (Haskell 1980, p. 77).

Summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1931 and

1934 provided Hartley with the inspiration for three series of paintings of Dogtown, an area near Gloucester, on which he was s t i l l working in 1936. Something about this lonely, rocky remnant of the Ice Age, long abandoned by its human inhabitants, intrigued Hartley. Its rugged monumentality appealed to his likin g for large, simple, significant form. In his paintings, he stressed the sculptural quality and the geometric structure of the rocks as well as the mysticism he saw in this strange boulder-strewn place. Rock Doxology, Dogtown of 1931

(Fig. 20) fits the description he wrote of Dogtown:

A sense of eeriness pervades all the place there­ fore and the white shafts of these huge boulders mostly gram*te--stand like sentinels guarding nothing but shore--sea gulls fly over i t on th e ir way from the. marshes to the sea--otherwise the place is forsaken and m ajestically lovely as i f nature had at last one spot where she can live for herself alone....No triviality enters such places as th e s e ....It is a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge--essentially druidic in its appearance--!41 gives the feeling that an ancient 77

Figure 20. Marsden Hartley, Rock Doxology, Dogtown, 1931. Oil on board, 18 x 24". Private Collection. race might turn up at any moment and renew an age­ less rite there (Haskell 1980, p. 82).

These Dogtown paintings brought out strongly Hartley's

feelings for the power of nature alone and for the special

vibrations of a certain place. They are precursors of the

paintings he did in Maine.

A Guggenheim Fellowship allowed Hartley to go to

Mexico to paint in 1932, an experience that followed in

the tradition of disappointments for him. But because of

his interest in the Indians of the American Southwest, i t

is not surprising that he found inspiration in the history of the Mayan and Aztec cultures and that he saw beauty and

value in the lif e of the indigenous people of Mexico. As was true of the Indians of New Mexico, art and lif e were

not separated for them and, in Hartley's view, this gave

integrity and authenticity to their art work. As he be­

came fam ilia r with the work in Mexico done by the Mexican moralists. Hartley found a special affinity with Jose

Clemente Orozco (Burlingame 1954, p. 177). He saw Orozco

as a natural mystic who understood his own region from the

Indians' point of view. Burlingame observes that Orozco may have strengthened Hartley's beliefs on attachment to

one's own land and reinforced Hartley's expression of the mysticism he had always fe lt (Burlingame 1954, p. 63).

In Mexico, Hartley painted Popocatepetl several

times in the manner of his Vence landscapes, Elizabeth McCausland reports, looking toward the synthesis he a- chieved later in his Katahdin pictures. (McCausland 1952, p. 46). Earth Cooling, Mexico (Fig. 21), which Hartley painted in 1932 in the hot colors of Orozco, depicts a harsh, hard, burning landscape with the tops of volcanoes red-hot against the sky. Hartley's concentration on mountains is typica l, but the colors clash vio le n tly and the landscape is somehow disturbing, as Mexico probably was for Hartley, and he was not yet dealing with the serenity that he was to achieve in his paintings of Mount

Katahdin^

Although he continued to move around as much as before. Hartley's travels, after spending the summer of

1935 in Bermuda, were confined for the rest of his lif e to North America and mostly to the northeastern part.

Before returning to Maine, he spent some time in

1935 and 1936 in Nova Scotia, an interval that was to prove important both to his a r tis tic career and to his personal lif e . The remoteness and sim plicity of the small town of Blue Rocks appealed to him. After meeting the members of a fisherman's family, the Masons, Hartley was so impressed with the quality of the ir rugged lif e that he asked to board with them at th e ir home on a nearby island. In addition to his appreciation for th e ir simple, archaic existence, in close contact with the sometimes 80

Figure 21. Marsden Hartley, Earth Cooling, Mexico, 1932. Oil on cardboard, mounted on masonite, 24% x 33 7/8". Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas . 81

violent aspects of nature, Hartley was immediately caught

up in admiration of the two strapping, muscular sons of the

family. He felt at once the longed-for security of being

part of a close-knit family, which, combined with his spe^

cial relationship with one of the sons, Alty, probably a

homosexual bond, aroused in him an enthusiasm for life

that he had not known for some tim e. The family love and

acceptance he found there, as well as the simple religious

faith of the family, made a deep impression on Hartley,

liberating him from the recurring gloom that had dogged

him for most of his life and that poverty and lack of rec­

ognition had deepened in recent years.

Just as he had been inspired by the lif e of the

American Indian he saw in New Mexico, Hartley found in

this family that had adapted so well to the wind and sea

of their precarious existence an example of a primal kind

of livin g with nothing between them and nature. The

idyllic character of this life was shattered, however, by

the sudden tragic drowning of both boys in a violent

storm that swept the coastal waters. It was only after

this accident that Hartley painted his most dramatic and

heartfelt expressions of his Nova Scotia experience.

G rief-stricken though he was, he found that what he had

gained from this b rie f northeastern interlude had enabled

him to look again upon the face of Maine and see there his true homeland. It was in 1937 that his actual return to Maine began.

In his first reaction to the tragedy, Hartley painted dark, rough seascapes that invoked the vision of

Ryder. Northern Seascape, Off the Banks, 1936-37 (Fig.

22) , is an example of these. Evidence that the older a r tis t was on his mind at this time is provided by Hart­ ley's second essay on Ryder, written in 1936 , and by a portrait of 1938-39 in which the old man stares icon-like and solidly powerful from a composition subdued enough in color to be one of his own paintings.

Hartley used this same iconic style when he paint­ ed several works that relate to the Mason family, notably

Adelard the Drowned, Master of the Phantom, 1938-39 (Fig.

23) , and The Lost Felice, 1939 (Fig. 24). Adelard, a portrait of Alty,Mason, is made up of shapes that are sim­ ple and monumental, emphasizing in a prim itive way the power and manhood of A lty, while at the same time the flower in his hair, the soft, sad look in his eyes, and the warm red background seem to radiate with the affection that existed between the a rtis t and his subject. The Lost

Felice is an even more primitive and stylized tribute to the boys who were lost. The figures could have been carved from wood, the ir faces are prim itive masks and the colors glare stridently in opposition to each other. The 83

Figure 22. Marsden Hartley, Northern Seascape, Off the Banks, 1936-37. Oil on cardboard, 18 3/16 x 24". Milwaukee Art Center. 84

Figure 23. Marsden Hartley, Adelard the Drowned, Master of the Phantom, 1938-39. Oil on academy board, 28 x 22". University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 85

Figure 24. Marsden Hartley, The Lost Felice, 1939. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 86

symbols of th e ir 1ivelihood--the fish in the bowl, the boots

and hooded coats, are just as simply depicted. The por­

traits Hartley painted at this time are the only ones he

ever did. All have the same harsh, hewn-from-wood look,

due to the primitive technique that Hartley felt reached, d ire ctly and without sentimentality or embellishment of any kind, to the depths of these tru e , honest, rugged and earthy people.

It is indicative of Hartley's taste for heroes

that he painted Abraham Lincoln in the same manner during

these same years. The prim itivism of these paintings and

Hartley's admiration for people who were simple, self-

reliant and without subterfuge is a continuation of the

kind of respect he had for the Indian culture that had

stirred his emotions in New Mexico. In fact, the crude

roughness of the icon-1 ike paintings he did at this time

seems directly related to the santos he depicted in folk

art style while he was in New Mexico. CHAPTER 9

RETURN TO MAINE

The art gallery opened by Alfred Stieglitz in De­ cember 1929 in New York was called An American Place, an appropriate name reflecting the ideas of Stieglitz and the kind of a rtis ts he encouraged. S tie g litz fe lt very strongly that an American a r tis t should gain his inspira­ tion from a close personal relationship with the place that was his own. Thinking along the same lines, D.H.

Lawrence wrote that, "D ifferent places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great re a lity " (Eldredge 1986, p. 15). This proved to be especially true for Marsden Hartley. Until he returned to Maine late in his lif e , he had not found his own spiritual place. Endowed with great sensitivity and a keen in te lle c t, but alienated from society by homo­ sexuality and his own rootlessness, he was not a man to make compromises in order to be accepted.

His return was not without its negative aspects; his health had begun to deteriorate and lack of funds and fa ilu re to gain recognition as an a r tis t continued to

87 plague him. But i t was to be the subject matter of Maine that brought out the best in Hartley. His final realiza­ tion that this was his place led him to write in 1937:

And so I say to my native continent of Maine, be patient and forgiving and I w ill soon put my cheek to your cheek, expecting the welcome of the prodigal , and be glad of it, listening all the while to the slow, rich, solemn music of the Androscoggin, as i t flows along (Hartley 1937 , - p. 115).

Hartley has been compared by Gerald Needham with other a rtists who "monumentalized" the North American landscape

(Needham 1984 , p. 186), a rtists such as Georgia O'Keeffe,

Arthur Dove, and the B ritish Columbian Emily Carr. Common to all these was a mystic attunement to the sp iritu a l value in the land. It was Hartley's vocation to bring out the rugged harshness of the lonely north country through his unique personal vision.

' Beginning in 1937, Hartley spent increasingly longer periods in Maine and his landscapes were now de­ voted to scenes from his home state. In his 1938 Camden

Hills from Baker's Island, Penobscot Bay (Fig. 25), there is a sense of tra n q u illity and peaceful order that shows that Hartley had reached a state of mutual acceptance with the landscape of Maine that appeared as a triumphant breakthrough. The vista in the distance has a dreamlike quality, as though one were contemplating i t from a com­ fortable outdoor terrace on a quiet afternoon. But mystic 89

Figure 25. Marsden Hartley, Camden H ills from Baker's Island, Penobscot Bay, 1938. Oil on academy board, 28 x 22". Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. dreaminess is not allowed to dominate the picture, for ju ttin g out in the foreground, anchoring the scene to the earth and to reality, is a large, solid, rugged boulder, a real contrast to the gentle vision of trees, water and mountains. While the open space between the trees pulls the viewer into the distance, the rock, brightly painted with large, clashing brushstrokes, calls him back and sets his feet on the ground. This is Hartley's way of saying that religion, mysticism, vision, all must be grounded in and inseparable from basic, objective reality.

Hurricane Island, Vinalhaven, Maine (Fig. 26), painted in 1942, shows how Hartley incorporated the large, rounded, thrusting forms from his Dogtown series into his view of Maine. The island's c lif f s loom from the picture in a multitude of colors which enliven and vitalize their surface so that, in spite of their great bulk, they seem to dance o ff the canvas. They are played upon below by the waves of the sea and softened above by the orderly row of placid evergreens that crowns them. Off in the d is­ tance, smaller islands with tiny rows of trees and a huge, diaphanous bubble of a cloud counteract the monumentality of the foreground cliffs. As in the Dogtown pictures, these boulders seem to throb with meaning and are like ancient altars of a vanished race. In this way, Hartley was endowing his paintings of Maine with the sense of 91

Figure 26. Marsden Hartley, Hurricane Island, Vinalhaven, Maine, 1942. Oil on masonite, 30 x 4 0 V . Philadelphia Museum of Art. 92

mysterious presence that he had begun to see in landscapes

of other places as he moved through his development as a

painter.

The mountain was "one of the great natural symbols

of Hartley's existence," as Burlingame observes (1954,

p.. 66). When he painted Mount Katahdin (Fig. 27) in

1942, i t was part of a series he had begun three years

before. This mountain in particular, the highest in

Maine, became an icon for him as he painted i t over and

over at diffe ren t times of year and in d iffe re n t lights.

So important was i t to him that he made an arduous trip

to the mountain in 1939 , although he was 62 years old

and in poor health, and he came back exhilarated. He wrote, "I have achieved the 1 sacred' pilgrimage to

Ktaadn (sic). I feel as i f I had seen God for the f ir s t

time--! find him so nonchalantly solemn" (Haskell 1980,

p. 117). Mount Katahdin came to symbolize for Hartley

all that he revered the most, the sp iritu a l grandeur of

nature, the part of lif e from which modern man was far

removed because of centuries of concentration on techno­

logical development alone.

In this painting, one can see the influence of

Cezanne. The solid underlying geometric structure, the

horizontal tty of the middle ground, the blue of the dis- .

tance, the apotheosis of the mountain, all speak of the 93

Figure 27. Marsden Hartley, Mount Katahdin, 1942. Oil on masonite, 30 x 40 1/8" . National Gallery of A r t, Washington, D.C. 94

time that Hartley spent in Provence, working out his ver­

sion of Cezanne's mountain. The fact that he painted

Mount Katahdin over and over shows that, like Cezanne,

he was striving to come ever closer to an understanding of the mountain and to ide ntify with i t completely. Mount

Katahdin became Hartley's Mont S ainte-V ictoire.

The colors in this picture are warm and glowing.

The blue of the mountain is activated with traces of red and white that make i t seem alive and vibrant. The clouds, too, are made up of many colors and, rounded, solid shapes that they are, nevertheless they seem soft and in motion across the sky. Except for the few ever­ greens, whose shape echoes that of the mountain, the autumn trees shine forth in a blaze of red. But even the ir b r illia n t color cannot make them more than sub­

servient to the grandeur of the mountain.

The triangular shape, as has been mentioned before, was one that appealed to Hartley from his ea rliest days and his love of mountains was related to this. Like

Kandinsky, he saw the triangle as a symbol of sp iritu a l

attainment, with all man's highest thoughts and dreams converging on the pinnacle. It was this same t r i­ angle that figured so prominently in the American In­

dian paintings of Hartley's Amerika series. With paint­

ings such as this one, Hartley comes very close to abstraction. All the forms are sim plified and monumental, strongly outlined, and given surface variation only by color. He has known, as Cezanne did, what to leave out, but he has also, partly because of this extreme sim plicity and concentration, imbued the painting with the divine mysticism aroused by nature and incapable of being put into words. He had found in the Maine landscape, as he wrote after his re tu rn , "the kind of in te g rity I believe in and from which source I draw my private strength both s p iritu a lly and e s th e tic a lly " (1982a, p. 199). CHAPTER 10

SYNTHESIS OF OPPOSING FORCES

Hartley's accomplishment in achieving the status of one of America's most important artists was largely due to his ability to create a synthesis of the many strongly opposed elements that made up his character and his life and created conflicts in him as an artist.

Two of these opposing forces were modernism, a

European innovation, and a sense of ide ntity as an Ameri­ can. Hartley's devotion to European modernism surfaced early in his career, leading him to spend much time in the capitals of Europe absorbing all.he could of the newer theories and techniques. Modernism was the foundation of his artistic philosophy. The problem that confronted him was to reconcile this European!'sm with his intense desire to create a tru ly American expression. While in Europe, he studied the innovations of Cezanne's landscapes and

Picasso's Cubism and worked them out in his own painting, digesting them as part of his own development. It was in

Europe that primitivism firs t became important to Hartley's art (Levin 1976, p. iii). But it was the primitivism of the American Indian culture that attracted him, spurred 96 97

by the example of Der Blaue Reiter and in deference to his

feeling for basic Americanism. His paintings of European

subjects are milestones in the course of his development,

but i t was only in his true homeland, the state of Maine,

that his sense of identification with his own place, his

own personal reaction to the land, successfully combined with the modernist theories that came from Europe to en­

able him to create his most integrated and satisfying work.

Another of the dichotomies that prevailed during

Hartley's a r tis tic growth was the opposing pull exercised

by romanticism and classicism. In his early years, he

sided with romanticism and painted dark, moody landscapes

in the manner of Ryder that expressed the melancholy of

his own lonely soul. It was the influence of Ryder that

best exemplified his romantic leanings. Romanticism also

had much to do with Hartley's attraction to the native

American culture. In the 1920s he began to reject the

intensely personal aspect in art and in an essay of 1928,

"Art--and the Personal Life,"extol led the virtue of a

purely intellectual and objective approach. Leaving be­

hind what he said he had learned from William Blake, to

elevate imagination over in te lle c t, he professed that he

no longer believed in "imaginative wisdom or emotional

richness" because "intellectual clarity is better" (Hartley 1928a,p. 71). This rash statement proved to be only a temporary swing of the pendulum that would later ad just itself to a more central position.

At this time, however. Hartley had been livin g in

Provence and working in the style of Cezanne and was com­ pletely engrossed in the logic and rationalism of the

French master's work. Cezanne represented for Hartley the classical, restrained side of his nature. While Hart­ ley's romantic side was evident in the spontaneous, ex­ pressionist tendencies in his a rt, the classical, inte lle ctua l aspect manifested its e lf in controlled, carefully planned composition. Robert Burlingame points out that when Hartley fe lt he was being led, through

Ryder's influence, toward too much imagination and other- worldli ness, he counteracted this by concentrating on

Cezanne (Burlingame 1954, p. 135). His truer understand­

ing of Cezanne, however, came to lig h t in the 1928 poem,

"The Mountain and the Reconstruction," in which Cezanne speaks of his purpose, "TO ANNIHILATE MYSELF IN THE SUB-

JECT--to become ONE with it" (Hartley 1928b, p. 76). In

this poem. Hartley affirms that painting was not only a

logical process but also a mystical one for Cezanne, in ­

volving his "supra-rational being," as Burlingame ob­

serves (1954, p. 247). By the time Hartley had reached

the challenge of his later paintings in Maine, he had 99 managed to reconcile Ryder and Cezanne within himself, to

create a harmonious union of his romantic and classical

tendencies. A denial of the power of the imagination was

never completely possible for Hartley but, by being able

to temper his romantic tendencies by calling on logic and

reason, he was able to take advantage of the dia le ctic and achieve the balance that is so apparent in his art of later years.

There are both masculine and feminine aspects in

Hartley's creative work, in his w riting as well as in his painting. His a b ility to balance the masculine with the feminine is a tribute to the complex nature of his skill and an important factor in his a r tis tic success. The feminine side leans toward imagination, in tu itio n , sensi­ tivity, and spontaneity and is associated with romanticism, while the masculine tendencies are toward control , logic, reason, the more classical characteristics. As Henry W.

Wells sees i t . Hartley's paintings and his poems combine

"force with refinement" and have both "feminine delicacy" and "masculine energy" which gives them an essentially androgynous character (Wells 1945, p. 27). This combina­ tion, as stated above in relation to romanticism and classicism, was an especially fortuitous one, since it resulted in a balance that tempered all excesses.

Burlingame calls Hartley's early dark landscapes and 100 revealing s t i l l life s the expression of his unconscious or feminine side and the Provence landscapes, more cool, de­ tached , and bright with color, the masculine or conscious part. When Hartley was able to bring masculine and femi­ nine together, as he created his last Maine landscapes, he fin a lly became most completely himself. He achieved the integration of what Burlingame, in a reference to the the­ ories of Carl Jung, calls the "conscious outward with the equally sign ifica nt unconscious inward" (Burlingame 1954, pp. 251 , 246).

Paul Valery said that the classical a r tis t, in masculine fashion, "seeks to master his art, to set things in order," while the romantic artist desires to be recep­ tive, as a woman, and to le t in tu itio n guide his art

(Burlingame 1954, p. 319). By combining womanly warmth and delicacy with masculine forceful ness, Hartley's art p a rtic­ ipates in the androgynous beauty of all great a r t , Burling­ ame observes(1954, p. v ii) .

Jung writes that each individual contains a male

"animus" and a female "anima," a fact recognized by trib al shamans and medicine men (Jung 1964, p. 177).In connection with this, Burlingame notes that "the Taos Deer Dance... is now known to symbolize the unbreakable link between female anima and male animus" (1954, p. 127). This ex­ plains another connection between Hartley and the 101

American Indian culture. The Indian dances he saw in the

Southwest may well have been a factor in his understanding of the necessary recognition of both masculine, and femi­ nine aspects in one person and therefore in his a r tis tic expression.

The combination of the literal with the transcen­ dental was another reconciliation that Hartley was even­ tua lly able to bring to success in his painting. Hearne

Pardee sees in Hartley's work “a continuing dialectic" between "the literal image and coloriStic effect," lead­ ing to a synthesis of "impersonal technique and expres­ sion i s t i c abandon" (Pardee 1983, p. 106). Hart!ey" s achievement of this harmonious union can be seen in the later Maine paintings, such as Camden H ills from Baker's

Island, Penobscot Bay (Fig. 25). His insistence on the literal, physical object kept his paintings firmly grounded in everyday re a lity . But the presence of what is ' beyond' is just as important and he manages to bal­ ance the two. Hartley's feeling about painting recalls the words of Ryder, "What avails a storm cloud accurate in form and color i f the storm is not therein?" (Good­ rich 1959, p. 20).Pardee says that in poetry ana in painting "the tension between the literal and the trans­ cendental accounts for the symbolic, prim itive character of Hartley's work" (Pardee 1983, p. 106). 102

One of the characteristics that attracted Hartley to the Indian dances in New Mexico was the symbolic use of physical objects, of the human body as well as items such as eagle feathers, corn, rabbits' fur, shells--each with its specific meaning and all part of the overall spirit­ ual expression of the dance. This combination of physical and s p iritu a l, of lite ra l and transcendental, weighted with symbolism, became an underlying force in Hartley's creative expression. It was an artistic theory made concrete when he saw i t acted out in Indian ceremonials. CHAPTER 11

CONCLUSION

Marsden Hartley lived in the midst of the many art currents of the first half of the twentieth century. He was an associate of numerous artists and writers of his day, wrote c ritic a l essays on many of them, and 1 earned a lo t from some of them. In each case, he accepted what was appropriate for him, always building his own personal style and body of achievement. The same conditions pre­ vailed when he came under the influence of the American

Indian culture in New Mexico. He found a livin g example that helped him to c la rify and formulate, in his essays and in his paintings, the artistic philosophy that was true for him. Hartley's interpretation of primitivism as a theory and not just a style was in line with his modern­ ist beliefs. His recognition of an illuminating pattern in Indian lif e and beliefs was a vita l link in the progress of his work.

His great achievement was that he was able to take from each of his influences ju s t the essence that would further his development along its own natural lines and to use these forces to create his own synthesis that leaned not too much to one side or the other but was a harmonious

103 104

combination of a ll. Continually gaining a better knowl­

edge of himself from his experiences, he was always true

to his own beliefs. He was, as Burlingame says, "one of

America's great natural a ris to c ra ts "(1954, p. 107).

Hartley's art was his life. In art he found his

re lig io n , he lived out his loneliness and sadness., his

sorrow for lost friends and, fin a lly , his recognition and w illin g acceptance of his true place in the world. In

the fugue of his long search, the theme of the American

Indian culture rises in the early stages of his develop­ ment, reaches a crescendo in the years in New Mexico, and

fin a lly takes its place as a factor in the resolution of

all the conflicting motifs, which created the sense of

harmony that would stay with Hartley until the end of his

life.

American Indian artistry and beliefs fit so well

into the pattern of development of Hartley's philosophy

that there seems to be an inevitabilty about his accept­

ance of them as part of his a r tis tic creed. The example

and inspiration of the American Indian culture infused

his incentive to use his cosmopolitan skill to create an

art that would be a true reflection of his American

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