Modern Art and Modern Movement: Images of Dance in American Art, C
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Modern Art and Modern Movement: Images of Dance in American Art, c. 1900-1950 By © 2011 JoLee Gillespie Stephens Submitted to the Kress Foundation Department of the History of Art and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________ Dr. Charles Eldredge, Chair ______________________________ Dr. David Cateforis ______________________________ Dr. Michelle Heffner-Hayes ______________________________ Dr. John Pultz ______________________________ Dr. Linda Stone-Ferrier ______________________________ Date Submitted This Dissertation Committee for JoLee Gillespie Stephens certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Modern Art and Modern Movement: Images of Dance in American Art, c. 1900-1950 Chairperson: ____________________________ Date Approved: __________________________ ii For Nathan and his seven years of tireless support and steadfast love. And for Beckett. Thank you for sleeping. iii Acknowledgments The beginnings of this project can be traced back to the fall of 2005 when I was a student in Dr. David Cateforis’s Cubism Seminar. I was searching for an American cubist painting to research and Dr. Cateforis suggested H. Lyman Saÿen’s The Thundershower. I was immediately drawn to the two dancing figures and by the end of the semester I knew that this was a topic I wanted to continue exploring. I am grateful for the support, advice, and enthusiasm of my dissertation adviser, Dr. Charles Eldredge, who encouraged me to fling my net wide as I considered my topic. Thank you for your careful reading, your insightful questions, and your dedication to scholarly excellence. I wish to thank Dr. Cateforis for not only starting me off down this road but also for his invaluable help in the editing process. He and Dr. Eldredge have molded me into the scholar I am today. Dr. Michelle Heffner-Hayes served as a guiding support throughout this process. The directed reading course she developed with me in the spring of 2007 served as a foundation for the dance research I undertook during the course of this project. Her support during my oral defense was much needed and her understanding of dance scholarship strengthened this dissertation. For serving on my defense committee, I wish to thank Dr. John Pultz, who imparted some of his vast knowledge of photography to me during my time at KU, and Dr. Linda Stone-Ferrier, who once called me a “model of dissertation writing” because she knew that my absence around campus meant I was buried in my books. I am grateful to Dr. David Lubin and the students of the Murphy Seminar for their contributions to chapter five. I also want to thank Maud Humphrey for her help in navigating the ins and outs of KU’s requirements. iv I will always be grateful to the Humanities Department at Brigham Young University that gave me the background in interdisciplinary studies needed to tackle this project. I am also appreciative of my time at Johnson County Community College. Teaching a unit on dance every semester for the past five years has helped keep this project fresh. I need to thank the library staff at the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, the Inter- Library Loan department, and the Edwards Campus, whose librarians found me another microfilm reader in Johnson County when theirs broke. I also wish to thank the librarians at the Archives of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library, and the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives. Finally, I must acknowledge the support of my family. My parents, Scott and Donna Gillespie, and in-laws, Val and Dorothy Stephens, have been nothing less than enthusiastic supporters through all my academic endeavors. Mom and Dorothy, thank you for keeping my home running while I completed my research. My sister Paige, who loves learning as much as I do, and brother Taggart have been faithful cheerleaders as have my sisters and brothers-in law, Aaron, Brooke, Jen, Rod, Peter, and Danielle. My boy Beckett made certain that writing my dissertation was never boring. Most especially, I need to thank my husband Nathan, who has been by my side from my first days at the University of Kansas, has seen the highs and lows of the life of a graduate student, and has never wavered. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii Prologue 1 Chapter 1: Introductions: 4 American Art and the Balletic Tradition in the Early Years of the Twentieth Century Chapter 2: Pioneers of Modernism: 40 American Artists Discover Isadora Duncan Chapter 3: Staging the Exotic: 86 Sculpture, Ruth St. Denis, and Josephine Baker Chapter 4: The Production of a Dance: 130 H. Lyman Saÿen, Franz Kline, and the Ballets Russes Chapter 5: Dance and High Modernism: 170 Martha Graham in Painting, Sculpture, and Photography Chapter 6: Conclusions: 220 Dance and Abstract Art Epilogue 251 Bibliography 254 Table of Figures 272 Illustrations 286 vi Abstract “Modern Art and Modern Movement: Images of Dance in American Art, c. 1900-1950,” examines works from the period that heralded the birth of modern dance. While modern dancers and choreographers experimented with new ways to move the body, American visual artists explored the new formal and stylistic possibilities of the modern movements, many of which originated in Europe. I consider the intersections and interrelations of these two major artistic developments as I discuss paintings, sculptures, photographs, and drawings that engage with the developing art forms of modern art and modern dance. Dance historians have long recognized the influence of the visual arts on the development of dance. However, scholarship that works in reverse, considering the impact of these dancers on the field of the visual arts, especially American art, is much rarer. Rather than view these images of dance solely as records of the dancers’ costumes or dance steps, this dissertation seeks to broaden the lens through which artistic depictions of dance are generally understood by examining and evaluating both the aesthetic qualities and the historical significance of the works. During the first half of the twentieth century, numerous American artists created images of dancers in a wide array of media and styles. Modern dance appealed to them for a variety of reasons. For some the dancer represented modernity, while for others he or she brought the exotic past to life. Some artists associated dance with European tradition, while others saw in modern dance a declaration of the American spirit. All of these artists felt inspired by the way the modern dancers moved. I propose that the new dance forms of the twentieth century contributed to the aesthetic development of many modern American artists by allowing them to envision, and thus portray, the human body in new ways. vii Prologue Art, as expressed on canvas or in bronze or marble, has always been sensitive to the influence of the dance. … Dancing, painting, and sculpture, are in a sense, the sister arts, however far apart they may seem in modes of expression at first glance. But what seems to me the interesting thing about the present condition in the art world is not merely that the dance is seeking to express many of the same emotions or ideas that the painting or the piece of sculpture is intended to portray, but rather that these two mediums of expression are borrowing more and more directly from the dance than they have for a long time.1 - Troy Kinney, New York Times, 1916 By 1916 when artist and dance historian Troy Kinney’s statement was published in the New York Times, America was in the midst of a dance revolution. The seeds of the modern dance movement had been planted a decade earlier with Isadora Duncan’s successful European tours. By 1916 she had returned to the United States several times to perform for captivated audiences. In 1906 Ruth St. Denis premiered her signature piece, Radha, which was influenced by and contributed to the American public’s craze for the exotic Far East. In 1914 Ruth St. Denis and her partner Ted Shawn opened their school of dance, Denishawn. There St. Denis and Shawn trained the next generation of modern dancers, including the incomparable Martha Graham. The Ballets Russes began its second tour of the United States in 1916, performing in cities across the country. And, in that same year, Russian dancer Anna Pavlova, the quintessential classical ballerina, toured the country for the third time. 1 "Allies the Dance to the Fine Arts," New York Times, April 16, 1916. 1 If the first half of the twentieth century saw significant developments in dance, the developments in the visual arts in America were hardly any less dramatic. In 1908, The Eight, led by Robert Henri, organized their own exhibition, breaking away from the jury-controlled exhibitions run by the Society of American Artists and the National Academy of Design. The so- called Armory Show of 1913 exposed the greater public to the avant-garde art of Europe and increased American artists’ experimentations with styles like cubism, futurism, and fauvism. In the 1930s many American artists replaced European styles with homegrown regionalism. And, as a result of the two world wars and the ensuing political unrest abroad, European artists and intellectuals emigrated to America in unseen numbers, which caused the relocation of the center of the art world from Paris to New York City and helped generate America’s first internationally recognized artistic style, abstract expressionism, in the late 1940s. Throughout this period, between 1899 when Isadora Duncan debuted in Paris and 1950 when Vaslav Nijinsky, star of the Ballets Russes died, American artists created scores of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs portraying the luminaries of the dance world.