Application for Faculty Research Leave:

PICASSO AND AMERICAN ART

Michael FitzGerald

Department of Fine Arts

ABSTRACT

American artists’ involvement with Picasso’s work was at the center of a fundamental transformation of American art during the twentieth century. By imitating, contesting and rejecting Picasso’s art, American artists moved from the periphery of modern art to being acclaimed as among its foremost leaders. This book and exhibition will examine in detail the careers of eight American artists whose work was both fundamental to the course of art across the century and crucially based on Picasso’s precedent. This analysis will both reveal how American art rose to prominence and present one of the most important chapters of Picasso’s influence on twentieth century art.

PICASSO AND AMERICAN ART

TOPIC

Although Pablo Picasso is widely believed to have been one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, there has never been a comprehensive attempt to assess his precise impact on other artists’ work. This question is of particular importance regarding American art, because American art underwent a fundamental transformation during the last century, moving from being perceive as provincial at the beginning of the century to becoming among the most respected in the second half. The relationship of American artists with Picasso’s art was at the center of this change.

By World War I, Picasso (born in 1881) was known internationally as the foremost artist of what was called The School of Paris (the leading “avant-garde” artists of the time, including Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, among others) and remained in that position until his death in 1973. In the early century, as American artists began to reject the practices of conservative academics and emulate the controversial styles and subject matter of modern European art, Picasso C more than any other artist C became the chief figure against whom Americans measured originality. This belief in Picasso as a benchmark for the modern continued through the end of the century among Americans who wished to join the ranks of innovative artists. Even Norman Rockwell, a devoted traditionalist, included a copy of one of Picasso’s paintings in a 1960 self-portrait.

The goal of this project is to analyze fully the complex and shifting relationship of American artists with the work and reputation of Picasso. By showing how they mimicked, contested, and rejected Picasso’s precedent, I expect to expand significantly our understanding of how American artists rose to prominence and what was their distinct contribution to art history during the last century.

In order to fulfill this dual goal, I have selected a group of eight American artists for in-depth analysis. In chronological order, they are: Max Weber (1881-1961), Stuart Davis (1894-1964), Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), David Smith (1906-1965), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), and Jasper Johns (1930- ). These artists were chosen both for their fundamental contributions to American art of the twentieth century and the central role Picasso’s work played in their artistic developments.

NARRATIVE

American artists’ involvement with Picasso’s work followed a distinct pattern. In the first half of the century, they primarily sought to “get up to speed,” that is to assimilate his latest styles in an effort to be fully versed in the newest trends in contemporary art. Having done so, they developed their own distinctive versions. This process began with Weber, who lived in Paris from 1906-08 and had the opportunity to study Picasso’s art first hand. Weber brought this knowledge back to New York City, where he helped organize the first exhibition of Picasso’s art in this country (in 1911 at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery in NYC). In his art, Weber used Picasso’s Cubist style to create paintings about life in New York—Grand Central Terminal and Chinese Restaurant (both 1915). Following Weber, Davis spent 1928-29 in Paris and then became the foremost promoter of Cubism in America during the period between the two World Wars. Even though Gorky never went to Europe, he studied reproductions and the works available in New York so intensively that he absorbed the full variety of Picasso’s art and said that “I feel Picasso running in my finger tips.” Gorky’s paintings educated the generation of Depression-era artists about Picasso’s art and built a base of understanding among them that enabled the Abstract Expressionists—particularly de Kooning, Smith, and Pollock—to believe that they had surpassed Picasso’s achievements. Pollock felt so competitive with Picasso that he is recorded as having said that he “wanted to kill him,” at least aesthetically. His art did pass from paintings such as Male and Female (c. 1942), which are deeply indebted to Picasso, to his signature poured images, which largely mask a continuing relationship with Picasso’s art.

The broad outlines of this development have been accepted by art historians, as has the idea that after Pollock, de Kooning, and their peers “overcame” Picasso, he ceased being significant to American artists. In fact, this was not the case. As one of the founders of Pop Art in the 1960s, a movement that supposedly turned its back on fine art to find inspiration in commercial design, Lichtenstein nonetheless remained fascinated with Picasso’s art throughout his career and painted variations on specific paintings by Picasso during the last years of his life (Reflections on [Picasso’s] Painter and Model, 1990). Jasper Johns, who is widely considered to be the greatest living American artist, has made references to Picasso’s work since the 1970s and continues to do so in his latest series of paintings, completed in 1999.

I have no doubt that an examination of these primary artist’s relationship with Picasso’s work will not only greatly clarify the development of American art during the first half of the century as it rose to international prominence, but also substantially redefine our understanding of recent American artists’ complex relationship to the history of art.

PUBLICATION

This project will be presented in two forms: an exhibition and a book. In the fall of 1999, I signed a contract with the Whitney Museum of American Art under which I will organize an exhibition on this subject and write a book that will be published as a catalogue to accompany the exhibition. As specified in the contract, the exhibition and publication will occur in the summer of 2004. The Whitney Museum of American art was founded in 1931 and is the leading museum devoted to American art. By contract, the book will be co-published by the Whitney and Harry Abrams. Abrams is a highly-respected, international publishers of books on art.

METHODS OF RESEARCH

I will pursue the two interlocking goals of this project through two primary avenues of research. 1) I will document exhaustively the careers of the eight primary American artists I have selected. A considerable number of other artists will be discussed in demonstrating the overwhelming importance of Picasso’s work for American artists (including Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, and Saul Steinberg). Nonetheless, I have chosen to focus on these eight figures because of their importance in the history of American art and the opportunity that detailed study of particular cases provides to understand more profoundly how an individual artist responded to Picasso’s work in making his or her own contribution to art history.

Each career must be studied extensively in order to evaluate precisely when and how an artist responded to Picasso’s work. All of each artist’s work will be examined, and each painting, sculpture, drawing, or print that appears to include a reference to Picasso will be catalogued. These works will then be analyzed in the context of the artist’s larger production to determine the precise relationship, if any. Each artist’s writing and recorded statements will be gathered and studied for any information they may reveal about the artist’s attitude to Picasso. All published material will be culled for references to Picasso.

2) I will assemble the fullest possible record of Picasso’s work in the U.S. The point of this record will be to demonstrate exactly how American artists became aware of Picasso’s work, which works they had access to, and what they learned about the work through published criticism. The record will consist of all exhibitions of Picasso’s work (many of which remain obscure), which works entered public or private collections in this country (and when), and how the works and Picasso’s career where discussed in the media.

These two approaches will then be combined to present a comprehensive account of American artist’s involvement with Picasso’s work during the twentieth century.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The general significance of Picasso’s art for the development of twentieth-century American art is widely noted in monographs on specific artists and surveys of particular movements. These discussions, however, are brief and unsystematic. Scattered across texts devoted to other subjects, they do not offer a sustained analysis of the issue, although they acknowledge its importance. The only publication devoted to the subject is the essay I wrote in 1995 to accompany a small exhibition, “Picassoid,” which I organized at the Whitney Museum (with a staff curator, Adam Weinberg). This exhibition was the germ of the current project.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE

As I hope my list of publications demonstrates, I am an internationally respected scholar of Picasso’s work. In 1997, I edited and partially wrote a book on the Ganz collection, which, as the finest collection devoted to the work of Picasso and American artists who drew on his precedent, is of fundamental importance to the current project. For twenty years, I have had a strong interest in twentieth-century American art. I have published critical essays on Pollock and Johns, among others, and I have just completed a website for the Whitney Museum about the museum’s very substantial involvement in Gorky’s career and his place in art history.

If my application is successful, I plan to join the one-semester Faculty Research Leave with a normal sabbatical to enable me to devote 2001-02 to research and planning of the book. I will write the text during 2002-03. I believe that I am eminently qualified to complete this project successfully.