LUME TWELVE NUMBER ONE FALL 1998

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Reading the Pain

V. ' '.. mH .71 . wuJj: >.^.. features

10 Professional Women go WILD at MBC

by Jenny Howard

"The Chief," by Judith Godwin, 1953, oil on :anvas, 38" x 30." See the article Reading the

" ludith Gndwin nn i 12 Reading the Paintings of Judith Godwin

by Paul Ryan, THE MARY BALDWIN Assistant Professor of Art COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Vol. 12, No. 1 Fall 1998

Editor; Sarah H. O'Connor Art Director: Gretchen L. Shiiman Assistant Editor and Campus News Writer: Michelle Hite departments

Publications Advisory Board: Sarah H. O'Connor, Gretchen L. Shuman, 2 Campus News Judy Lipes Garst '63, Dr. Brenda Bryant, John W. Cummings, Shea Shannon, Jann Malone Steele '72, 8 News Bytes

Dr. James D. Lott, Lydia J. Petersson, Dr. Robert Reich, Dr. Celeste Rhodes, 16 From the Bottom 28 Class Notes Dr. Kathleen Stinehart, Dr. Heather Wilson, Up: History Through Dr. Elizabeth Roberts Everyday Objects 35 Chapters in Action by Katharine L. Brown, Annual Report designer: Alexandra Davis Adjunct Professor Annual Report cover painting: Laura Loe of History

The Mary Baldmn Magazine is ptiblished twice a year by Mary Baldwin College, Office of College Relations, Staunton, VA 24401. www.mbc.edu (p) 540-887-7009 (f) 540-887-7360 [email protected] ~ --^^^ Nptsrapp:MarvBali1winrnllpqi http://www.mhc.edu The campus virtual tour featured on Mary Copyright by Mary Baldwin College Baldwin College's All rights reserved. new and improved World Wide Web Mary Baldwin College does not site won the discriminate on the basis of sex (except CampusTours.com that men are admitted only as and ADP 4-Star Virtual College (iraduate students), race, national origin, Tour Award for color, age or disability in Its educational September 1998. programs, admissions, co-curricular or other activities, and employment practices. Inquiries may be directed to Dean of Students, Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA 24401; 540-887-7028,

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[* 4 Reading the Paintings of Judith Godwin

BY Paul Ryan, Assistant Professor of Art

The creative artist must work and always work — on himself and on his craft — that he may develop to the point where he can say what he has to say, and that he says this in his own language. This language is of course not always at once understood. It makes people furious when you speak your own language.

Hans Hofmann (from his lecture of February 16, 1941 at the Riverside Museum, New York)

activity characteristic of a circus —

although, this is not to say that the painting exists as a mere signifier for a

particular event. Its pictorial identity is

too complex to function at this level: it

contains a space that is expEuisive yet enclosed, and a sense of form that simultaneously suggests restriction by and freedom from the influence of

gravity — all operating within a field of lyrical, Matisse-like playfulness. Like

much abstract painting which is based on direct and specific experience,

Godwin's "Oriental Circus" is a synthesis of personal impressions given left: "Yellow Figure," 1953, Installed prominently in the entrance permanent form through the raw oil on canvas, 40" x 28." hall of the Deming Fine Arts materials of paint and canvas, and the

Building at Mary Baldwin is a large- creative processes of formal analysis and above: "Oriental Circus," scale, abstract painting by New York intuition. As such, it conjoins common oil on canvas, 50" x 126." artist and MBC alumna Judith Godwin perceptions of the viewer and artist, yet

'52. Titled "Oriental Circus," it was it exists simultaneously as an object of given as a gift by the artist to the mystery evading any absolute or college's art department in 1992, definitive translation.

following its exhibition in Hunt Gallery As all serious abstraction in the as part of a group show of work by modernist tradition has emerged out of alumnae that same year. Measuring 50 particular movements and ideas in art

inches in height and 126 inches wide, history and/or the culture of the artist's

the oil painting is a triptych consisting own time, Godwin's work and style as a

of three equal-sized panels of stretched painter is grounded in Abstract

canvas. Its overall composition is a Expressionism — an epoch in the visual structured flurry of shapes, textures, and arts which many critics and artists

lines which are organized in such a way regard as the last great movement in

that the viewer's eye is pulled from the Western painting. Embodying both the left side of the painting to the right. serious desire for stylistic advancement Articulated by certain forms that in the context of modernism's linear suggest the paraphernalia of jugglers and progression, and a heroic approach to acrobats, this sense of energy and painting that embraced the directed movement evokes the pleasure, philosophical notion of the "inward anticipation, and constant flow of turn," the originators of Abstract

The Mafy Balov/ih College Magazine • Fall 1998 13 Expressionism constituted the avant- attended Mary Baldwin College for two garde of the 1940s and 50s. Most of the years. She studied art with Elizabeth significant work of this period reflected Nottingham Day and Horace Day, two points of view. The first was whose interest in contemporary art and formalist theory which emphasized the developments in New York was shared

importance of the physical materials with their students. Godwin left the and elements of art - the use of shape, college in 1950, and in 1951 enrolled scale, space, color, value, texture, etc. at Richmond Professional Institute of The leading critic of this approach was the College of William and Mary (now the formalist theorist Clement Virginia Commonwealth University)

Greenberg who promoted the idea of a where she was influenced by artists progressive historical narrative in Theresa PoUak and Jewett Campbell culture which would culminate in works PoUak, who founded the School of th

of art that were complete in their formal Arts at VCU, practiced and taught ail purity. The second important influence aesthetic that was anchored in 20th was a more emotionally charged artistic century European modernism and the response to the dilemmas of the nuclear formalist theory and sense of pictorial era immediately following World War integrity that guided American

II. This also had its roots in painting during the 1940s and '50s. existentialism and what another Campbell had studied with the

prominent critic, Harold Rosenberg, Abstract Expressionist painter and referred to as "crisis content." The result influential teacher Hans Hofmann was a surge of new painting and (PoUak, too, would eventually do so) sculpture in America that was staggering and he encouraged serious students to Godwin's work and style in its originality and sense of urgency. do the same - hence, Godwin's A noteworthy aspect of Godwin's transition to New York. as a painter are connection to Abstract Expressionism, After a brief period of study at the or the New York School (a more Art Students' League in New York in generalized despcription that some 1953, Godwin enrolled in Hofmann's grounded in Abstract prefer to use because of the actual school in Provincetown, Massachusetts aesthetic diversity within this group of that summer. She continued to study Expressionism — an artists), is the personal association she with him at his New York school in the

had with several of its prominent fall, and did so again in 1954. The practitioners, particularly Hans impact of Hofmann on Godwin's epoch in the visual arts Hofmann and Franz Kline (whose development as a painter perhaps Greenwich Village townhouse she cannot be emphasized enough. As a

which many critics and acquired in 1963 and continues to teacher, Hofmann was legendary for hii reside in today). Having moved from ability to drive students to stretch theii Virginia to New York City in 1953 to potential, but also for remaining as an artists regard as the last study painting, Godwin was able to authoritative influence in their work. experience first-hand the excitement For example, in discussing Hofmann's great movement in ushered in by the work and presence of teaching with me several years ago,

the first generation of Abstract Theresa PoUak, who studied with him i Expressionists, a wave aesthetic in 1958 (the year he closed his school Western painting. of innovation that helped to establish after 43 consecutive years of teaching),

New York as the international art mentioned that it took her several center, thereby shifting the creative years to emerge from his strong and intellectual focus from Paris to presence and opinionated voice. Yet, Manhattan. Simultaneously, as a she, like Judith Godwin, adhered to student and young artist she some of his tenets throughout her participated in the second generation's painting career. task of building on and sometimes Strong-minded and vigorous in transforming the aesthetic practices of spirit, Hofmann believed in the

the New York School that had profundity of the creative life. Indeed, f relatively quickly become canonized by he regarded painting as a metaphor for the art world. the forces at work in the universe and Prior to her move to New York, the existential struggles that spring Godwin, a native of Suffolk, Virginia, from the human experience. Born in

14 The Mary Baldwin College Magazine Germany in 1880 and later emigrating Godwin marked by the dialectical artist. And at mid-century in New to the United States in 1931, elements of openness/spontaneity and York City the notion of originality Hofmann's early years in Europe structure/definition — a language was an ideal - an integral afforded a clear understanding of the which also demonstrates the component of the avant-garde in its important issues generated in the early dependence of genuine innovation self-established mission to keep

20th century by Fauvism (with its upon tradition. Finally, several culture moving forward. The first innovations in color) and Cubism paintings from the mid-seventies generation of Abstract

(with its fracturing and distortion of through 1995 sometimes reflect slight Expressionists had succeeded in space and form). His articulation of stylistic shifts (especially regarding her moving beyond European these matters provided a strong palette), but never succumb to modernism; Godwin's teacher, Hans theoretical and practical foundation for fashionableness and always assert the Hofmann, in an original language of the artistic development of his relevance of sincerity and meaning in expressionistic urgency and American students. an era of increasing cynicism and jubilance had combined the color In an essay that accompanied a doubt. theories of Cezanne and the Fauves major retrospective exhibition of In his article "Talking at Pomona," with Cubist drawing (eventually Hofmann's work in 1990, organized by the poet and critic David Antin escaping the grips of Cubist space); the Whitney Museum of American Art, discusses how the importance of a work and Godwin, as represented by her the prominent art historian and critic of art is determined. He asserts that, paintings from 1955-1960, began to

Irving Sandler states that Hofmann assuming aesthetic integrity is a given, speak relatively early in her own

"was the greatest art teacher of the importance is mostly a matter of the voice. A synthesis of multiple twentieth century, that is, if a teacher's quality of ideas, or of an idea, that the aesthetic and personal influences, stature is measured by the number of work embraces. That is to say, that the her paintings stylistically embrace a students who achieve national and critical value of a work of art is in sense of pictorial structure achieved international renown in their own proportion to "...the degree that it is a by Franz Kline, Hofmann's theories right." Sandler goes on to say that modification [or advance] of the regarding pictorial depth and the Hofmann "had the strongest influence preceding [important] work..." For inherent flatness of the medium, and on two generations of advanced example, briefly put, one of the reasons the Zen-like approach to space and

American artists, the geometric Jackson Pollock is considered an form of the painter Kenzo Okada. abstractionists of the 1930s and the important painter resides in the fact Following the dictum of Hofmann younger painters of the New York that his all-over poured paintings of the that the artist say what she has to School who matured in the 1950s." 1940s and '50s played a major role in say in her own language, Judith Recognizing Godwin's significant, removing Modernist painting from the Godwin has distinguished herself though quiet, role in American art constraints of Cubist space. Pollock's within the tradition of the New since 1950, in the fall of 1997 the Art work is considered an "advance" in the York School. Museum of Western Virginia (located lineage of Modernist painting, and has in Roanoke) mounted a retrospective become an icon for American-type Paut Ryan is a painter and an assistant art Mary Baldwin exhibition that spanned Godwin's life painting of the 20th century. In the professor of at College. as a painter. Co-curated by Mark context of this type of art historical and He is also an art critic and contributing Scala, chief curator at the Museum, critical criteria for determining editor for Art Papers magazine. and Ann Gibson, associate professor importance as it relates to the work of WORKS CITED: of art at Stony Brook University in Judith Godwin, it can be said that her David Antin, "Talking at Pomona," Art Forum New York, the retrospective not only significance largely, though not (9/73). reflected a renewed interest by art completely, lies in her success in Ann Gibson, "Judith Godwin: Style and Grace," historians in the artists of Godwin's moving beyond what had become Judith Godwin: Style and Grace (catalog for the generation working in New York conventions of Abstract Expressionist exhibition; The Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, Virginia, 1997). during the 1950s, but, it is also an painting. In the catalog essay, "Judith acknowledgment of the depth of Godwin: Style and Grace," Ann Irving Sandler, "Hans Hofmann: The Dialectical Master," Hans Hofmann (catalog for the intellect and feeling contained in her Gibson outlines Godwin's path in this exhibition, Hans Hofmann; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, work. Consisting of 24 paintings, the achievement, describing how the artist 1990). show included representative work from "mined [Abstract Expressionism] as a Mark Scala, "Judith Godwin and the New York different phases of her career. The early language whose rich potential had only School," Judith Godwin: Style and Grace. paintings from the years she studied begun to be tapped — if only one could with Hofmann display an intense avoid its cliches and renovate the physicality that shortly would dissolve presuppositions entwined with its into forms and spaces of a more conventions." ephemeral nature. Work from 1955 To build on what has come before, through the mid-sixties reveals the yet to avoid the cliches, has always achievement of a distinct language by been a major task and goal for the

The Mary Balij7/in CoLLEfjF, Magazine • Faij. 1998 15