© COPYRIGHT 2010 Massillon Museum 121 Lincoln Way East Massillon, Ohio 44646 Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. Executive Director COVER IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NUMBER: William Sommer (Cleveland/Akron) 2010905889 Blue Dairy Cart Oil on board | 16.5" x 23.5" | 1917–18 ISBN NUMBER: COLLECTION OF JOHN AND SUSAN HORSEMAN 978-0-97555-559-0 COURTESY OF KENY GALLERIES, COLUMBUS, OHIO 2010 Massillon Museum Board of Directors Jeff McMahan, Chairman Judy Paquelet, Vice Chairman Kristin Hackenbracht, Treasurer Maude Slagle, Secretary EXHIBITION CURATED BY: Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. Kathy Centrone Mel Herncane CATALOG EDITED BY: Rick Kettler Hugh J. Brown Carey McDougall Ann Caywood Brown Douglas Palmer Elizabeth Pruitt CATALOG DESIGNED BY: David W. Schultz Margy Vogt Keith Warstler PRINTED BY: Bates Printing, Inc. STAFF SUPPORT: Jill Malusky Alexandra Nicholis Scot Phillips Emily Vigil Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. Executive Director, Massillon Museum William H. Robinson, Ph.D. Curator of Modern European Art Cleveland Museum of Art Massillon Museum Massillon, Ohio May 15, 2010—September 12, 2010 Riffe Gallery Columbus, Ohio November 3, 2010—January 9, 2011 Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center Portsmouth, Ohio March 5, 2011—May 29, 2011 Museum of Wisconsin Art West Bend, Wisconsin July 20, 2011—October 2, 2011 Lenders to the Exhibition Akron Art Museum Frederick Biehle and Erika Hinrichs Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University Daniel Bush Cleveland Artists Foundation Cleveland Museum of Art Clifford Law Offices, Chicago Columbus Museum of Art Michael and Elisabeth Travis Dreyfuss WITH THE SUPPORT OF: Lisa Biehle Files and Bruce Edward Files Susan and Gary Garrabrant Charles S. Hayes Family John and Susan Horseman Illinois State Museum Keny Galleries, Columbus, Ohio Michael Lawlor Massillon Museum Milwaukee Art Museum DC Moore Gallery, New York Museum of Wisconsin Art National Gallery of Art, Washington Richard Norton Gallery, Chicago Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York Tregoning & Company, Cleveland Frederick R.Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota Western Illinois University Art Gallery Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Artists in the Exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie Carl Hoeckner Ivan Albright Carl Holty Emil Armin Joe Jones Thomas Hart Benton Henry Keller Charles Biederman Albert H. Krehbiel August F. Biehle Dulah Evans Krehbiel Albert Bloch Lucius Kutchin Raymond Breinin Harold Noecker Shearer’s Food, Inc. Charles Burchfield Gregory Orloff Bonnie’s Engravers Gallery and Signs Arthur Osver Connect USA, Inc. Francis Chapin Aqua Ohio Alexander Corazzo Romolo Roberti Manierre Dawson Alice Schille Clara Dieke Willam S. Schwartz Rowena Fry William Sommer Leon Garland Lucia Stern Karl Gasslander Julia Thecla Todros Geller Howard Thomas Raphael Gleitsmann Paul B. Travis William Grauer Santos Zingale 4 Contents Massillon Museum Board of Directors ....................2 Exhibition Sponsors .................................4 Lenders to the Exhibition ..............................4 Foreword ........................................7 Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. ModernismandAmerica.............................9 William H. Robinson, Ph.D. and Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. Illustrations of Works in the Exhibition The Ideal Form: Abstraction . ....................31 The Human Condition: Portraits ..................42 Urban and Industrial Life . ....................52 The Social Order . ..........................68 BeyondtheCity..............................78 Spirit and Imagination . .......................93 Biographical Sketches of Artists .......................103 Works in the Exhibition.............................112 Bibliography ....................................117 Acknowledgments ................................119 Foreword Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. The Massillon Museum is in a unique position. As the cultural center of Massillon, both figuratively and literally, the Museum has a responsibility to the community to provide quality exhibitions and programs. As a mid-sized regional museum, it has the opportunity to organize exhibitions that larger museums would not consider. Its geographic location places it in an area rich in cultural achievements. Why is all of this important? Because the Massillon Museum often takes the risk to tackle subjects, uncover artists, and provide new insights into topics that are often overlooked. The Museum organizes and travels the exhibitions to venues in Ohio and beyond, bringing these works to a wider audience. Beginning in 2005, with its exhibition Breaking With Tradition: Ohio Women Painters, 1870–1950, the Massillon Museum has looked at specific artists from the Midwestern region in new ways. This was followed by Midwestern Visions of Impressionism, which looked at artists who used Impressionistic styles in their work. Our current exhibition, Against the Grain: Modernism in the Midwest, is a natural extension of the first two traveling shows. As research was done for those, many of the artists in this current exhibition were discovered. Impressionism may have had a long life in America and the Midwest, but modernism was also developed and practiced alongside the later years of Impressionism. While many artists found their way with Impressionism, others experimented with new styles and techniques, new subject matter, and new points of view. It is these artists that are highlighted in this exhibition. Determining who to include is always a daunting task, and this exhibition was no different. The initial list of potential artists numbered more than 70 and was eventually narrowed down to 38. This means, of course, that there were many artists who could have been included and were not. The goal was to provide a substantial overview of the Midwest as it related to modernism up until 1950. With this in mind, the artists selected represent such well-known Midwesterners as Charles Burchfield, William Sommer, Manierre Dawson, Ivan Albright, Carl Holty and Charles Biederman. It also represents many artists who were well-known during their lifetime and are now largely forgotten in the greater American art world. Another difficult decision was determining which areas to include in our discussion of Midwest modernism. As the research for the exhibition progressed, it was decided to focus on the artistic centers of Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis. As with the two former exhibitions, there were many discoveries and surprises. While Indiana was an extremely important center of Impressionism, it was not a factor in the development of modernism in the Midwest. Chicago and Cleveland, often known for their progressive society and culture, provided the largest groupings of artists. And while Impressionist artists focused on the landscape and the idyll of rural life, modernist painters were not afraid to tackle difficult styles and subject matter. There have been a number of studies recently on many of the artists included in this exhibition, especially on groups of artists from Chicago and Cleveland, as well as individual exhibitions on some of the better-known artists. The goal here was to provide a broader context for modernism in all of the Midwest. It is our hope that those viewing this exhibition and catalog will see the breadth and depth of the artistic achievements of these modernists and will discover some new insights in the process. 7 Against the Grain: Modernism in the Midwest William H. Robinson, Ph.D., and Christine Fowler Shearer, M.A. Modernism emerged in multiple places around the Westernized world during the second half of the nineteenth century, and it continued to evolve through most if not all of the following century. The term “modernism” refers to a series of progressive, even radical cultural movements that promote new, revolutionary forms of art. At its core, modernism entails a rejection of exhausted traditions, a passion for experimentation, an unrelenting questioning of accepted knowledge, and the feverish pursuit of the new. The movement’s most extreme form, avant-garde art, literally the “advanced guard,” derives its name from the French military term for a first-strike unit, or scouts penetrating behind enemy lines to gather intelligence in preparation for an offensive. Art critics used the term as a metaphor for revolutionary, forward-looking art that is far ahead of the mainstream. Cubism, abstraction, Surrealism, and other forms of extremely radical art are associated with the avant-garde. Modernism, by contrast, is broader in nature and can even include some forms of realism that interpret everyday life through the lens of a personal, contemporary sensibility. The driving force behind the rise of modernism was not a few individuals living in Paris and New York, but rather, a broad array of ideas and forces that might be ascribed to the spirit of the age. The rapid industrialization and political revolutions that dominated life in nineteenth-century Europe were accompanied by immense upheavals in all realms of culture. Medieval and Renaissance societies, by contrast, were bound by rigid religious and class structures imposed by the church and state. As Galileo discovered, anyone who defied accepted wisdom risked condemnation as a dangerous heretic. The political revolutions that swept across America and Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries destroyed the old social structures and ushered in a new age in which even members of the lower classes could challenge authority and envision shaping a new future by redefining themselves and their