Sunday Matinée

If you want to see Prussian glory, you really have to visit Potsdam. What with Sanssouci, Belvedere, Babelsberg castle and so on, it is packed with palaces, parks, villas and the like. Glued to Berlin’s south-west, it turns more and more into a rich people’s dwelling.

prussia

However, yesterday sweetheart and I went there, to have a look at American Modernism in painting. As there is such an exhibition on until October this year at Barberini Museum bang in the center of Potsdam.

hopper bis rothko

It was an overview of modern painting in the US and albeit it was just a small exhibition, one got a good glimpse into the developement of modern painting in the United States.

I have to say – develompement was a tad slower and may I call it softer? less radical? than over here in Europe. With quite a time lag. Everything pre WWII sweetheart even called hillbilly, compared to European branches of modern painting at the same time. However, I still liked the way, the exhibition showed how, from simplifying nature came abstraction, later also new structures and traces of industrialistation, later even other media, plain form and colour.

I did include one Jackson Pollock painting, although I can’t stand his pictures. But there seems now review of American modern art without one of his pictures. Why, is beyond me…

 

to the rescue
Winslow Homer, To the Rescue, 1886
eilshemius Adirondacks
Louis Michel Eilshemius, Adirondacks: Bridge for Fishing, 1897
rockwell kent straßenwalze
Rockwell Kent, The Road Roller, 1909
sloan six o clock
John Sloan, Six O’Clock, Winter, 1912
o keefe my shanty
Georgia O’Keeffe, My Shanty, Lake GEorge, 1922
sheeler skyscrapers
Charles Sheeler, Skyscrapers, 1922
tack canyon
Augustus Vincent Tack, Canyon, 1923/24

Arthur G. Dove, Sand Barge, 1930

hopper sunday
Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926
sand barge dove
Arthur G. Dove, Sand Barge, 1930
tack aspiration
Augustus Vincent Tack, Aspiration, 1931
dove red sun
Arthur G. Dove, Red Sun, 1935
pollock
Jackson Pollock, Composition, ca. 1938-1941
ship and silos
Ralston Crawford, Boat and Grain Elevators, No.2, 1942
hopper entrance
Edward Hopper, Approaching a City, 1946
knaths deer in sunset
Karl Knaths, Deer in Sunset, 1946
stamos world tablet
Theodoros Stamos, World Tablet, 1948
1950 b
Clyfford Still, 1950 B, 1950
tomlin Nr. 8
Bradley Walker Tomlin, Nr. 8, 1952
interieur with seaview
Richard Diebenkorn, Interior with View of the Ocean, 1957
black lake
Milton Avery, Black Sea, 1959
chi ama motherwell
Robert Motherwell, Chi Ama, Crede, 1962
equinox
Adolph Gottlieb, Equinox, 1963
rothko
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968
ocean park 38
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park Nr. 38, 1971
warhol 4x mona lisa
Andy Warhol, Mona Lisa Four Times, 1978
my shell angel
Sam Francis, My Shell-Angel, 1986

 

 

4 thoughts on “Sunday Matinée”

  1. I am with you when it comes to Pollack, though I did see a fascinating video of him once in the process of painting – it seemed he was trying to climb (or escape) into his work as he created it.

    A lot of American painting was hampered because it was trying so hard to be something new, something not-European . . . that could explain a lot.

    By the way – didn’t you have a Hopper (“Nighthawks”) hanging in your living room for years? He really does have a certain genius – as does O’Keefe.

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    1. No, I never had the night hawk, but sweetheart did have it – and still has, just now it hangs in the bedroom.
      I like lot of the American stuff, I love Warhol and Lichtenstein to just mention two. Hopper and O’Keeffe, too.

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  2. What a varied collection of work, realistic to simple to completely abstract. Georgia O’Keefe is a favorite of mine, very simple and homespun, they could be patterns for a quilt. Six o’clock winter looks the same now as it did in 1912, dark sky, people rushing to get home. Some things never change. 🙂

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