In the catalogue essay for Hans Hofmann’s first solo exhibi- bewildering characteristics—random, subject-less marks; tion in the US at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, in disordered compositions; and a pronounced rejection of the summer of 1931, his former student Worth Ryder wrote: naturalism. Perhaps, then, Hofmann’s mastery of certain “This exhibition of Ho!man’s work, the first to be held in Modernist tropes—the Romantic artists’ embrace of their America, unfortunately contains none of his paintings. But in own subjectivity; the Cubist geometricizing and flattening these drawings, so small in size yet so vast in scope, the great- of three-dimensional objects; the Impressionist reliance on est achievements of modern art are in solution.”1 natural observation; and the Post-Impressionists’ incredulous On one hand, this statement serves to justify the exhi- attitude towards their own observations—all present and bition itself and its lack of paintings, the medium for which intermingling, led Ryder to conclude that the greatest Modernism in Solution Hofmann would be remembered. But Ryder’s assessment that achievements of Modern art were not merely present, but in these drawings “the greatest achievements of modern art are completely dissolved in the works shown at Haviland Hall. ANNA TOME in solution” uses the drawings to place Hofmann securely in a However, closer examination demonstrates how Hofmann Modernist lineage, an argument that is easily supported—but subverts these approaches, not just by integrating them, but o"en challenged—by the drawings themselves. by incorporating his own mysterious and seemingly mean- In the field of chemistry, the term “solution” refers to ingless marks—lines, dots, and squiggles that fill many of two or more substances uniformly mixed. To be in solution the landscapes and portraits but have no discernable symbol- indicates a discrete substance, or solute, (in this case the ism or pictorial significance. This essay posits that Hofmann greatest achievements of Modernism) completely dissolved made these marks by channeling his physical experience of into a solvent (Hofmann’s drawings). When completely in nature, subverting the Modernist devices of his day, and al- solution a solute becomes invisible and, in theory, irreversibly lowing Ryder’s suggestion of Modern art in solution to also mixed. While certain achievements of Modernism are indeed hint at new approaches to the artistic process. uniformly dispersed throughout the drawings, the brevity of While he may have been the first, Ryder was not the last Ryder’s statement and the drawings themselves allow room to cast Hofmann as a consummate Modernist. In a 1967 obit- to infer that these achievements are dissolved into a new solu- uary in the New York Times, Hilton Kramer wrote: “Hofmann tion, or mode of image-making. The same drawings include was, above all, a codifier of the modernist tradition—while 69 Modernism in Solution ANNA TOME remaining an exponent of romantic expressionism. Con- before World War I—a crucial chronological detail when con- many of the developments he heralded were not new.4 twentieth-century Modernism, and it informed both the ceptually, he availed himself of all the modern conventions, sidering whether Modernism is “in solution” in Hofmann’s Hofmann himself was aware of this. In an unpublished subject and the execution of the drawings Hofmann’s exhib- and indeed though of the same generation as Matisse and works circa 1931. Kramer rightly asserts that at this stage of and undated note, Hofmann wrote to himself, “Motto: An ited at the Legion of Honor and Haviland Hall. The land- Picasso—could only realize his ambitions late in life, when his career, Hofmann’s practice is less resolved than that of his Artist is never the product of a teacher but the product of a scapes made in Europe were likely created en plein air when these conventions proved to be susceptible to his own vigor- peers. Indeed, it would not be until the interwar and postwar cultural atmosphere to which he creatively contributes.” Key Ho!man took his students to locations outside Munich each ous programs of pedagogic distillation.”2 decades, really, that his concentrated approach—what Irving to the thinking from which both modern art and Hofmann summer from 1916 to 1930. Similarly, the landscapes made on It is interesting that Kramer too used a term from chemis- Sandler called a “synthesis of dualities,”3 referring to the rec- emerged in Germany at the turn of the century was the con- his arrival in California may have been made by the roadside, try—“distillation”—perhaps a nod to Hofmann’s background onciliation of three-dimensional forms in nature with the cept of Gestaltung. The artist uses the term in the prospectus or from the passenger seat of a car. working as a scientist and engineer for the German Ministry two-dimensionality of painting in Hofmann’s work—begins for his first Schule für Bildende Kunst (1916), calling for an In his text “Nature and Art: Controversy and Misconcep- of the Interior until the age of nineteen. To consider the artist fully to cohere and flourish. “expressive Gestaltung.”5 Gestaltung, weakly translated as tion,” Hofmann wrote: “Nature’s purpose in relation to the as a scientist, deploying restless experimentation, modeling Returning to the sixty-six works on paper—mainly por- “composition” or “design,” referred to a work whose overall visual arts is to provide stimulus—not imitation. Nature hypotheses to be tested, taught, and reshaped over time, is traits and landscapes—from the Legion of Honor and a similar idea transcended the combined sum of its parts. Predicated on provides this stimulus through its creative behavior. From its an analogy well suited to Hofmann. But Kramer takes a po- show of works on paper, staged concurrently at the Haviland the distinction between the inner, formative world of the art- ceaseless urge to create springs all life—all movement and sition slightly di!erent from Ryder’s. To “distill” is to extract Hall at University of California Berkeley, where Hofmann ist and the observable world outside, the concept allowed the rhythm—time and light, color and mood.”7 This declaration a pure essence, and Kramer proposes that Hofmann’s puri- had been invited to teach that year, it is helpful to consid- artist freedom to experiment with representational e!ects and shows how deeply the Romantic artists’ belief in nature as fied version of Modernism, achieved through his secondary er them first in the context of the 1920s and early 1930s. By composition. As Hofmann explained in the 1916 prospectus, primary inspiration informed Hofmann’s art. He believed but focused career as an educator, was ahead of its time, and 1931, nearly two decades a"er the first Armory Show in New “a perfect a"erimage of reality” would eliminate the possibili- nature’s brilliant, self-sustaining creativity to be both stimulus only reached its full potential later in life. Perhaps Kramer was York, Modernism broadly defined a range of artistic move- ty for Gestaltung, for if artists are too focused on imitating the and model for the artist’s project, and saw its irreducible com- picking up where Ryder le" o!—while the greatest achieve- ments that explored the artist’s subjectivity as it related to outside world, they cannot find their own unique inspiration. plexity as something to emulate. ments of Modernism were in solution in Hofmann’s work of the medium of painting—especially Analytic and Synthetic True art is the result of a highly considered, designed, system of Hofmann’s emphasis on nature comes directly from Paul the early 1930s (and further advanced by his concurrent ped- Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism—and was already wide- pictorial meaning, whose driving force is not purely intellec- Cézanne. View of St. Tropez (1929) seems to evoke the Post- agogical activity), they had become distilled and codified by ly exposed to the public and by now characterized as the tual, but inflected also with emotion.6 Impressionist’s acute, even uncanny, attunement to his the artist at the time of his death in 1966. zeitgeist. In terms of the Haviland Hall and Legion of Honor Art should not represent reality, but fuse individual ex- landscape subject, as well as his doubts about his ability to Kramer is more specific than Ryder, noting Hofmann’s works on paper, other Modernist developments such as the pression with an overall compositional coherence. The role of render it. The mountains are pulled apart and flattened, and indebtedness to the Romantic tradition, an a#nity duly cor- role of nature as both inspiration and instigation for art-mak- Gestaltung in Hofmann’s practice is tied to his commitment the negative space is filled with random dots, nullifying any roborated by the artist’s essays, lectures, and theories on the ing, the concept of artistic subjectivity, and the exploration of to nature in art-making. The primacy of the inner world of illusion of depth. In his 1945 essay “Cézanne’s Doubt,” profound importance of nature and the expression of the gestalt, all prevalent themes in Hofmann’s pedagogical mate- the artist in no way meant that Hofmann and his modern- Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that Cézanne intensely self. Kramer also places Hofmann in the same generation rials from the time, had solidified into convention. While the ist predecessors discounted the observable world. Indeed, doubted his ability to accurately perceive (and therefore as Matisse and Picasso—all three of whom were in Paris Bay Area exhibitions introduced Hofmann’s work to the US, nature played a paramount role in late nineteenth- and early represent) what he saw—his discrete mental, physical, and 70 71 Modernism in Solution ANNA TOME emotional experiences of Mont St.