Lot Essay
Arthur Dove, after spending nearly a decade in Geneva, New York, chose to leave this town for another location that was much more stimulating. In 1939, he and his wife Helen 'Reds' Torr settled in Centerport, a small town on Long Island, where they would remain for the rest of Dove's life. Around this time, Dove's health began to deteriorate rapidly. After battling pneumonia in 1938, he suffered a severe heart attack followed by a kidney ailment in 1939. During his convalescence, Dove retreated to his secluded studio on Long Island Sound where his isolation and immobility contributed to great artistic productivity. With this renewed creative vigor came an evolution in style evidenced by bolder investigations into abstraction. Barbara Haskell observed: "The new work was tranquil and detached...His tendency toward extracting essences increased to the exclusion of all that was momentary or partially transitory. It was as if his primary objective was the attainment of an undistrupted timelessness." (Arthur Dove, Los Angeles, California, 1974, p. 110) Long Island from 1940, while maintaining a stylistic continuity with his work produced earlier in Geneva, illustrates this new and fascinating direction Dove was taking with his art.
Similar to his works from his Geneva period, Long Island draws direct inspiration from Dove's new surroundings on Long Island. As Frederick S. Wight writes on the occasion of Dove's 1958 retrospective, Long Island is a "painting of the natural history of an area. If it is geology, two glacier-deposited rocks sit in the brittle chop. If these objects are living things, they are blind creatures aware of each other, male and female, whalelike forms of whale size under a small distant cool sun." (Arthur G. Dove, Los Angeles, California, 1958, p. 75)
The naturally spawned forms in Long Island are carefully situated as separate entities, but through Dove's ingenious handling of color, and space, he unifies the composition to create a work that challenges his early artistic accomplishments. Ann Lee Morgan in her monograph of the artist poignantly defines the characteristics of Dove's art during this important period: "Dove retained from his earlier work a preference for distinctly defined, although sometimes overlapping, shapes clearly separated from each other and individually colored with a single hue. Compositions are varied and free, although Dove tended to retain certain characteristics of his earlier practice. The most notable are a preference for compositions with a dominant central focus... and for the repetition of similar shapes and colors for the sake of compositional unity... In this last period, Dove's palette became perhaps a bit richer and more complex, but it did not substantially change from the ealier preference for a limited number of hues in predominantly warm colors. Although Dove abandoned the layering of colors in radiating concentric bands in favor for a flatter application of paint within a given shape, his paint surfaces are never hard or mechanical; the paint itself always has a visible substance. While Dove characteristically uses flattened forms on or parallel to the picture plane in these works, sometimes striking spatial effects occur." (Arthur Dove, Newark, Delaware, 1984, p. 75)
With Long Island, Dove crystallized and transformed the natural environment into his unique vision. Abstracting the land, water, sun and sky, Dove created a compositon whose central focus is two imposing forms seemingly nestled between jagged, geometric shapes in the foreground and fluid bands of color beyond. The composition is anchored and completed with a circular form that punctuates an area of nothingness above. Utilizing an earthy palette of greens and browns, Dove only subtly modulates the forms to create an environment that has little or no depth. Long Island emotes an organic sense that is consistent with his early works, but this overall sensation does not evolve, it remains stationary and timeless.
After Dove's recouperation, an exhibition of his new oils was organized at Steiglitz's American Place in the spring of 1940. Long Island was among the works chosen to particpate in this important event. In the accompanying pamphlet for the exhibition, Dove included a piognant statement about his works: "As I see from one point in space to another, from the top of the tree to the top of the sun, from right or left, or up, or down, these are drawn as any line around a thing to give the colored stuff of it, to weave the whole into a sequence of formations rather than to form an arrangement of facts." These sentiments which boldy reverberate thoughout ong Island, are the quintessential elements that made him renowned as one of the most important American modernist painters.
This painting has been requested for inclusion in the upcoming major retrospective of the work of the artist from January 15, 1998 to April 19, 1998 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Similar to his works from his Geneva period, Long Island draws direct inspiration from Dove's new surroundings on Long Island. As Frederick S. Wight writes on the occasion of Dove's 1958 retrospective, Long Island is a "painting of the natural history of an area. If it is geology, two glacier-deposited rocks sit in the brittle chop. If these objects are living things, they are blind creatures aware of each other, male and female, whalelike forms of whale size under a small distant cool sun." (Arthur G. Dove, Los Angeles, California, 1958, p. 75)
The naturally spawned forms in Long Island are carefully situated as separate entities, but through Dove's ingenious handling of color, and space, he unifies the composition to create a work that challenges his early artistic accomplishments. Ann Lee Morgan in her monograph of the artist poignantly defines the characteristics of Dove's art during this important period: "Dove retained from his earlier work a preference for distinctly defined, although sometimes overlapping, shapes clearly separated from each other and individually colored with a single hue. Compositions are varied and free, although Dove tended to retain certain characteristics of his earlier practice. The most notable are a preference for compositions with a dominant central focus... and for the repetition of similar shapes and colors for the sake of compositional unity... In this last period, Dove's palette became perhaps a bit richer and more complex, but it did not substantially change from the ealier preference for a limited number of hues in predominantly warm colors. Although Dove abandoned the layering of colors in radiating concentric bands in favor for a flatter application of paint within a given shape, his paint surfaces are never hard or mechanical; the paint itself always has a visible substance. While Dove characteristically uses flattened forms on or parallel to the picture plane in these works, sometimes striking spatial effects occur." (Arthur Dove, Newark, Delaware, 1984, p. 75)
With Long Island, Dove crystallized and transformed the natural environment into his unique vision. Abstracting the land, water, sun and sky, Dove created a compositon whose central focus is two imposing forms seemingly nestled between jagged, geometric shapes in the foreground and fluid bands of color beyond. The composition is anchored and completed with a circular form that punctuates an area of nothingness above. Utilizing an earthy palette of greens and browns, Dove only subtly modulates the forms to create an environment that has little or no depth. Long Island emotes an organic sense that is consistent with his early works, but this overall sensation does not evolve, it remains stationary and timeless.
After Dove's recouperation, an exhibition of his new oils was organized at Steiglitz's American Place in the spring of 1940. Long Island was among the works chosen to particpate in this important event. In the accompanying pamphlet for the exhibition, Dove included a piognant statement about his works: "As I see from one point in space to another, from the top of the tree to the top of the sun, from right or left, or up, or down, these are drawn as any line around a thing to give the colored stuff of it, to weave the whole into a sequence of formations rather than to form an arrangement of facts." These sentiments which boldy reverberate thoughout ong Island, are the quintessential elements that made him renowned as one of the most important American modernist painters.
This painting has been requested for inclusion in the upcoming major retrospective of the work of the artist from January 15, 1998 to April 19, 1998 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.