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62. Self Portrait (dessiné par lui-même), 1927 Reproduced in Petit Journal, Paris, December 1927 Clipping, The Stillman-Lack Foundation

ike many of the foreign painters and sculptors flocking eventually nurture his breakthrough to abstraction. Lto Paris after the First World War, Ary Stillman (fig. Having spent nearly half of his life in the , in 62) gravitated to the heart of the Parisian art scene in 1920 Stillman arrived in Europe as an American, albeit search of another world. For him it was the distant yet one with Russian and Jewish roots. Once in Paris, he familiar setting of his youthful dreams in Russia, dreams of unpacked his suitcases in a modest studio at 233, rue becoming an artist. With its reputation as the world- d’Alésia, strategically located between the bustling renowned capital of the arts and its cultivated allure, center of and the buzzing studio complex Paris had long been attracting an international artistic La Ruche (The Beehive). In the 1920s, Montparnasse crowd. This initiatory rite of passage was considered de was indeed a hive of artistic activity, with its teeming Left rigueur for any serious-minded artist—especially Bank cafés—Le Dôme, La Rotonde, and Le Select—the Americans, who had yet to cut the cultural umbilical cord terraces of which doubled as informal meeting places for with Europe. Cosmopolitan Paris beckoned to those the vibrant and diverse cultural community. seeking a cultural haven, one that offered artistic Ary Stillman’s twelve-year stint in Europe was freedom as well as a dynamic and affordable setting, characterized by wanderlust and restlessness, a where the adventurous and ambitious could navigate the penchant for movement that would become a constant well-established networks of academies, salons, theme throughout his life. His early years in Paris were galleries, and museums packed with masterpieces. punctuated with forays elsewhere, both in France and While for Stillman the transatlantic voyage was abroad. Following in the footsteps of admired French undoubtedly one of discovery, it was also a return to an painters, and particularly the Fauves such as Henri interrupted period of his youth, a formative time when his Matisse, , and , Stillman natural inclination and ability gained him entrance to the gained inspiration from the peoples and landscapes of Academy of Fine Arts in Vilna and set him on a course southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. that would have naturally led him to enroll in the Imperial The rapid, lively ink drawings from Stillman’s Moroccan Academy of Art (now the Russian Academy of Arts) in St. sketchbook (fig. 63) render the flavor of his exotic Petersburg. Leaving his adopted home in Sioux City, surroundings with the flowing rhythms that were later to , Ary Stillman embarked on a solitary journey, one emerge in his unusual Pueblo dance series as well as that proved to be a fruitful quest to consolidate the his later abstract work. Early figure drawings from live foundations of his representational style, but one that models at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (fig. would also provide the basis for later developments and 64) exhibit a fluidity and economy of line that underlie

previous spread Notre Dame de Paris (detail), 1928 Oil on canvas 1 1 19 2 × 24 2 in. (49.5 × 62.2 cm) Private collection

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63. Morocco No. 19, c. 1926–27 64. Early Figure Study No. 3, Pen and ink c. 1921–28 1 1 5 2 × 4 4 in. (14 × 10.8 cm) Sanguine conte´ crayon on paper 1 The Stillman-Lack Foundation (727a) 11 × 17 2 in. (27.9 × 44.5 cm) The Stillman-Lack Foundation (726) 3STILL 72-95 SPv5.qxd 1/2/08 18:55 Page 78

65. Still Life with Birds, 1928 Oil on canvas 1 33 4 × 41 in. (84.5 × 104.1 cm) Art Center Association of Sioux City

and buttress the sensuous painterly treatment of his press, which applauded Stillman’s poetic sensibility and nudes and portraits on canvas.1 This combination of lyrical expression. studio sketches and plein air studies provided him One French critic, picking up on the range of ample opportunity to develop his hand and sharpen his Stillman’s pictorial concerns, described him as “a eye, to capture the essence and inner poetry of his painter who is constantly experimenting in many subjects, whether in the natural landscape, the human directions and who has a splendid feeling for color form, or the arrangements of objects in his still lifes. harmonies.” 5 In Still Life with Birds (fig. 65), Man with Once Stillman had assimilated these lessons with a Red Beret (Portrait of C.G. Nelson) (fig. 67), Nude keen sense of observation of the world around him, he (fig. 20), and Self-Portrait (fig. 66), the subdued set about creating works that would gain visibility in the palette—combining predominantly earth tones with annual salons—initially at the Société Nationale des shades of gray and added contrasts of red accents or Beaux-Arts in 1926 and 1927, followed by the Société luminous whites—coupled with the enclosed spatial des Artistes Indépendants and Salon d’Automne in arrangement of these compositions, conveys a sense 1928.2 Receiving instant recognition, Stillman’s artistic of meditative, perhaps melancholy, introspection.6 output of these years culminated in a one-man show at In the Ile-de-France landscapes, Bridge at Moret the prestigious Bernheim-Jeune gallery on the Right (French Bridge) (fig. 68) and Notre Dame de Paris Bank.3 The accompanying catalogue, prefaced by Louis (fig. 69), the greenery of vegetation introduces Vauxcelles, eloquently described the “delicate chromatic variation, whereas the warm ocher tones gentleness” of the paintings, which exhibited “a of the southern architecture and cool azure of the discretion both reserved and melodious . . . nuanced Mediterranean sky in Post Office, Cassis (fig. 70) and harmonies, a charming, contemplative intimacy.”4 Landscape, Cassis (fig. 71) enliven the starkness of the Stillman’s impressionistic handling of pigment creates the town square in winter, with its empty benches and the muted atmospheric qualities that harmonize with the leafless nudity of the silhouetted tree. The somber graceful line and compositional cadence of the interiority of Stillman’s portraits and still lifes is echoed in paintings. This representative display of thirty works— the stillness and quiet of his landscapes, which evoke including portraiture, nudes, provincial French the poetic sensibility and artistic temperament noted landscapes executed in Moret and Cassis, still lifes, repeatedly by critics in his work of this period. Writing several Palestine watercolors, and an enigmatic self- of Stillman’s Bernheim-Jeune show, Maximilien portrait—was extensively reviewed in the international Gauthier extolled the concealed mastery of structure

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66. Self-Portrait, c. 1925 67. Man with Red Beret (Portrait of Oil on canvas C.G. Nelson), 1925 1 1 35 2 × 28 4 in. (90.2 × 71.8 cm) Oil on canvas 3 1 Art Center Association of Sioux City 36 4 × 30 4 in. (93.3 × 76.8 cm) Art Center Association of Sioux City 3STILL 72-95 SPv5.qxd 1/2/08 18:55 Page 82

68. Bridge at Moret (French 69. Notre Dame de Paris, 1928 Bridge), 1928 Oil on canvas 1 1 Oil on canvas 19 2 × 24 2 in. (49.5 × 62.2 cm) 1 1 19 2 × 24 2 in. (49.5 × 62.2 cm) Private collection Private collection 3STILL 72-95 SPv5.qxd 1/2/08 18:55 Page 84

70. Post Office, Cassis, 1928 Oil on canvas 21 × 25 in. (53.3 × 63.5 cm) Collection of the University of , gift of the Stillman-Lack Foundation (location: Moores School of Music, Ary Stillman Green Room)

underlying the canvases, which he hailed as “poems nationality merits commentary in view of the prevalent simple and direct, which come from the heart and attitudes of the time. The complexity of the inter-war move the heart.”7 Another critic referred to the “peculiar period inevitably invites art historians to reflect upon the spiritual approach . . . that imbues his work with a political and social issues embedded in questions of strange mystic quality,” and pondered whether the national identity and cultural production.10 The “School of effect was “the reflection of his Russian heritage.”8 Paris” label itself—which the French critic André Warnod The recurring motifs of introspection and lyricism in defined in 1925 to distinguish the diversity of foreign paintings from Stillman’s period of self-imposed artists working in Paris from the academic French European exile seem to reflect significantly his physical School—arose out of the artistic debates fueled by French situation and his resulting state of mind, both factors that nationalism in the 1920s.11 Further complicating matters were to have a lasting impact on his art. Cultivating his was the way in which the often radically opposed in-between status, which spanned two continents and aesthetic concerns of avant-garde Modernist groups and cultures—the Old World experience of his Russian– the official artists aligned with more traditional academic Jewish heritage and the New World promise of another practice frequently crossed over national boundaries, life in America—Stillman approached his art similarly, particularly in the 1920s with the prevalent return to interweaving subjectivity and acute observation, layering figuration and classicism. his canvases with the rich variety of experience The nationalism of the 1920s was not exclusive to encountered during his travels. The tentative, uncertain, European countries, as questions of identity played searching qualities exhibited in his art of this period are themselves out on a large scale in the major artistic clearly emblematic of the early formative period of an centers on both sides of the Atlantic. This period artist’s career. They also seem to manifest, both witnessed an increasingly ambiguous American attitude stylistically and thematically, an underlying current of to Europe as a cultural model that wavered between nostalgia and melancholy linked perhaps to exile and fascination and rejection. In the case of Stillman, the the loss of a fixed national identity. American–European discourse was further complicated The Chicago Tribune’s Paris correspondent and art by his Russian–Jewish origins. In fact, one American critic critic, B.J. Kospoth, singled Stillman out as a rare even suggested that Stillman made strategic use of his American, whose temperament set him apart from the immigrant status.12 Still grappling with issues of identity mere copyists of the French tradition.9 Kospoth’s during a return trip to Paris in 1952, Stillman declared in insistence on both Stillman’s originality and his American a casual café conversation:

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71. Landscape, Cassis, 1927 Oil on canvas 17 × 21 in. (43.2 × 53.3 cm) Jewish Community of Sioux City, IA

It is true that we have no tradition in America: the America, better known as américanisme or only thing that remains for us is the Indian art, and américomania.14 This reciprocal fascination could have even that Americans know very little of. But we direct ramifications for an artist’s career, as it may well have something else. We have a conglomeration have had for Stillman. Transatlantic artist John Storrs’s of individuals who come from all parts of the claim that Paris was a springboard for American artists world, and if these descendants of those seeking validation seems to have proven true in immigrants who came from France, from Hungary, Stillman’s case. Banking on the publicity he received from Italy, from the Orient, have a nostalgic from the Bernheim-Jeune show in 1928, he exhibited feeling for those things which made art in their many of the same works in a series of American country—even if we don’t have one tradition we exhibitions the following year.15 While touring a number have an accumulation of dozens.13 of Midwest and eastern US cities, Stillman made a detour to the Southwest, where he spent six weeks in the In this statement, the search for origins within the heat of the Santa Fe summer, drawing inspiration from American condition of uprootedness resonates with the indigenous Pueblo culture and desert landscapes for Stillman’s earlier experience of Paris. In proposing a a series of paintings to be exhibited in a forthcoming potential model for an authentic American art that could Paris show.16 Unknowingly, Stillman was taking the first rival Native American artistic traditions, Stillman seemed step in the direction his art was to follow after the to conflate the melting pot of immigrants in the United Second World War. States with the cosmopolitan make-up of the 1920s When, upon his return to Paris in 1930, Stillman Montparnasse art scene or “.” By 1952, exhibited this unusual series of paintings created in Santa it had been seven years since Stillman had shifted from Fe, New Mexico, at the Galerie Zak (figs. 72–74),17 representational painting to the gestural, abstract mode critics noted the formal innovations. One recurring associated with Abstract . Before jumping remark underscored the originality of the Native ahead to this moment, however, a leap back to 1920s American subjects and the novelty of Stillman’s Paris sheds further light on issues of identity in the context technique, inspired by his deep appreciation of old of Stillman’s career. tapestries, which gave “his canvases the texture of By the inter-war period in Paris, there had appeared a woven color,” and produced “wonderfully harmonious phenomenon that paralleled America’s bittersweet love and rhythmical compositions.”18 Similarly observing these affair with Europe—French enthrallment with modern novel developments, Gauthier reiterated his enthusiasm

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72. Announcement for Exposition 73. Ary Stillman at Galerie Zak, d’Ary Stillman, Paysages & Paris, November 1930 (The Stillman- Compositions de Santa Fe, Paris, Lack Foundation). Galerie Zak, November 7–21, 1930 (The Stillman-Lack Foundation). 3STILL 72-95 SPv5.qxd 1/2/08 18:55 Page 90

74. War Dance, 1930 Oil on canvas 15 × 24 in. (38 × 61 cm) Private collection

and admiration for Stillman’s work, commenting on how perspective of the time, are rendered in a unique the new subjects, incorporating figures in movement, had expressionistic manner. Stillman employed this technical engendered successful compositional solutions innovation to capture the ritual movements, the perceived comparable in sophistication to those found in the work genuineness and spirituality of both the Pueblo cultures of Friesz.19 Many of the qualities that had been praised in and their natural environment. Thus the exceptionally large Stillman’s Bernheim-Jeune show were again noticed in his canvases, which at first glance appear uncharacteristic of new Santa Fe series—“gentleness . . . a delicate palette his output during his European period, offer an initial . . . a personal style . . . veritable talent.”20 glimpse of Stillman’s search for an appropriate form to Already present in these large representational express the “inner reality” of his world. canvases, the movement, rhythm, and harmony of the The Santa Fe paintings were also exhibited at the Salon Pueblo ritual dances that Stillman wove through these des Tuileries in 1930,21 and Stillman would continue to works prefigure the motifs and qualities that re-emerged in participate in Parisian salons and other major exhibitions, his later abstract works. The titles of paintings from in particular group shows featuring American artists, in the 1945–50, such as In the Land of Poco Tempo (fig. 75), early 1930s.22 During these final years in Paris, he mainly Tapestry No. 1, Indian Fantasy (fig. 76), and Fire Dance exhibited portraits, along with the more traditional genres (fig. 77), make pointed reference to the Native American of still life and landscape. In 1933 the unstable political subjects of the Santa Fe series. But more significantly, climate compelled Stillman to leave Europe. He packed Stillman’s first abstract works visually “crystallize” the poetic up his belongings and much of his work, although he rhythms and layered harmonies captured in the dance apparently left behind most of the Santa Fe canvases (fig. scenes painted some two decades before. Color and line 74). The images and visual sensations depicted in those are woven into a richly textured canvas in Tapestry No. 1, paintings remained, nonetheless, imprinted on his mind Indian Fantasy, in which vibrant greens and touches of and would resurface years later in his post-war cool blue resonate in complementarity, basking in the experimentation with abstraction. warmer hues of golden yellows and fiery oranges. The slightly earthier and more subdued palette of In the Land of Poco Tempo and Fire Dance permeates the pictorial space, activated by the undulating, gestural arabesques. Stillman’s indigenous subjects, with their inherent mysticism, originality, and authenticity, as viewed from the Western

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75. In the Land of Poco Tempo, 76. Tapestry No. 1, Indian Fantasy, 77. Fire Dance, 1950 1945 1948 Oil on canvas 1 3 Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 28 4 × 24 8 in. (71.8 × 61.9 cm) 3 3 29 4 × 23 4 in. (75.6 × 60.3 cm) 36 × 26 in. (91.4 × 66 cm) Private collection Private collection The Stillman-Lack Foundation 3STILL 72-95 SPv5.qxd 1/2/08 18:55 Page 94

Notes Paul Ebstein succeeded Félix Fénéon in 1920 to handle 9 B.J. Kospoth, “The Paintings of Ary Stillman,” Chicago Tribune, 1929 to promote her husband’s art and that of many School of Paris 1 The dozens of private academies and ateliers in Paris offered an contemporary artists. European Edition, December 30, 1928, p. 5. artists, including Marc Chagall, Jules Pascin, Modigliani, Goerg, attractive alternative to the academic training at the official École des 4 Exposition Stillman, exhib. cat., foreword by Louis Vauxcelles, Paris, 10 For an overview of these issues in recent scholarship, see Sophie Marcel Gromaire, and . Beaux-Arts, where admission was virtually restricted to young French Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, December 15–28, 1928: Lévy, “Sympathetic Order,” in A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: 18 B.J. Kospoth, “Ary Stillman’s American Indians,” Chicago Daily students. Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Académie de la American Artists in Paris, 1918–1939, ed. Sophie Lévy, Berkeley Tribune, European Edition, November 9, 1930, clipping, Stillman- Grande Chaumière still operates, following in the same open atelier L’atmosphère de ses paysages, de ses nus, de ses natures- and Los Angeles (University of California Press) 2003. Lack Foundation. tradition in which artists such as Antoine Bourdelle, Othon Friesz mortes est d’une douceur délicate, d’une réticente et 11 For a discussion of the French context and the “invention” of the 19 Maximilien Gauthier, “Exposition Ary Stillman, Galerie Zak,” La (who taught there in 1926 when Stillman was in Paris), and Fernand mélodieuse discrétion. Nulle recherché de l’effet, point de School of Paris, see Gladys Fabre, “Qu’est-ce que l’Ecole de Paris?” Renaissance, December 1930, p. 371. Léger proffered advice to students, who were encouraged to freely virulences concertées. Des accords nuancés, un sens in L’Ecole de Paris 1904–1929. 20 “Art Notes,” New York Herald, Paris Edition, November 20, 1930, develop their own personal expression. charmant et recueilli de l’intimisme . . . l’émotion ressentie 12 Ruth Boyd, “Around the Galleries,” St. Louis Times, July 5, 1929, p. 4. 2 Founded in 1890 by Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus-Duran, Jules par l’artiste, il nous l’a communiqué. Il y a là d’indéniables clipping, Stillman-Lack Foundation. 21 In the Salon des Tuileries of 1930, Stillman exhibited four Dalou, and Rodin among others, with Ernest Meissonier as mérites de coloris et de cadence. Stillman plait justement 13 Quoted in Frances Stillman, “Reminiscences: The Personal Life indigenous-themed paintings: two entitled Indian Dance (New president, the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts parce qu’il ne cherche pas à plaire. of Artist Ary Stillman,” The Stillman-Lack Foundation, Music), a landscape (Pastoral), and a portrait (Indian Mother). promoted traditional academic art. In 1926 Stillman exhibited four stillmanlack.org/03reminiscences.html, accessed August 8, 2007. 22 The Salon of American Artists at Jacques Seligmann & Company in drawings at the salon: Jerusalem Jew, Oriental Head, and two Vauxcelles initially gained recognition for his chronicles of the Salon 14 For further discussion of the Parisian fascination with modern 1931 and 1932, as well as Artistes américains de Paris at the others listed as Jerusalem Boy. In the following year he exhibited two d’Automne from its beginnings, especially his colorful description of American culture, see Wanda Corn, The Great American Thing: Galerie de la Renaissance in 1932. portraits and three watercolors executed during his travels in the salon of 1905, “la cage aux fauves,” which, together with his Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–1935, Berkeley and Los Palestine: Jerusalem, Oriental Jew, and Head. The Salon des coining of the name “cubists,” has earned him a mention in most Angeles (University of California Press) 1999, and Jocelyn Rotily, Artistes Indépendants was the most accessible of the salons (roughly histories of twentieth-century art. He contributed to a host of French Artistes américains à Paris, 1914–1939, Paris (L’Harmattan) 1998. 2000 artists exhibited). Here in 1928 Stillman exhibited a still life publications and was editor-in-chief of L’Amour de l’art. In his 15 In 1929, Stillman had one-man shows at the Ainslie Galleries in and a portrait. The Salon d’Automne was eclectic in its openness to foreword to the Exposition Stillman catalogue, Vauxcelles explained ; Court Arcade in Tulsa; the City Art Museum, St. both avant-garde and academic artists. At the Salon d’Automne of how Stillman showed up at his home one Sunday morning to request Louis; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Art Institute of Omaha; and the 1928, Stillman exhibited a landscape. For more on the salons and that he write for the catalogue. Sioux City Society of Fine Arts. The same year he exhibited in the Art the Parisian art market of the 1920s, see Malcolm Gee, “Le Réseau 5 A. Alexandre, Le Figaro Artistique, December 27, 1928, p. 195. Institute of Chicago’s 42nd Annual Exhibition of American Paintings économique,” in L’École de Paris 1904–1929, la part de l’Autre, 6 The subject of Man with Red Beret is Carl Gustaf Nelson, a Swedish- and Sculpture and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ 27th exhib. cat., Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2001. born American painter. Annual Philadelphia Watercolor Exhibition. 3 Specializing in the work of Impressionist, Nabi, Neo-Impressionist, 7 Maximilien Gauthier, Gazette de Paris, December 22, 1928, p. 8. 16 “Stillman Here to Paint Poco Tiempo Land,” Santa Fe New Mexican, and Fauve artists, the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery signed contracts with 8 Vladimir Zeller, Poslednia Novosty, December 24, 1928, clipping, July 13, 1939, clipping, Stillman-Lack Foundation. Bonnard in 1904, then with Matisse and Van Dongen in 1909. Stillman-Lack Foundation. 17 The wife of Polish painter Eugène Zak founded the Galerie Zak in

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