Lot Essay
Throughout his career, Arthur Dove sought to convey the inner spirit he saw in the “things” of nature by reducing each component to its most basic form. Nowhere is this simplification more evident and innovative than in the charcoals and pastels of his early career, including Study for ‘Dark Abstraction.’ Sasha Newman writes, “As in many of his most significant works, Dove probes the gap between realism and abstraction. Study for ‘Dark Abstraction’ has elements of landscape – verticals that recall trees and conical masses that evoke mountains – but these are taken to the threshold of abstraction through formal reduction and simplification.” (Arthur Dove and Duncan Phillips: Artist and Patron, Washington, D.C., 1981, p. 147)
Dove is acknowledged as the first artist to exhibit purely abstract art in America in 1912 and continued to create a substantial body of abstract work before 1920. He also experimented with a variety of styles and media throughout his career, including works on paper in pastel, charcoal and watercolor, assemblages made of found objects, and oil painting. Between 1917 and 1920, however, Dove exclusively worked in charcoal, executing an important series of 14 astounding works drawing in large part on his most highly regarded theme: nature. Many of these works are housed in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, Arkansas; and Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa.
He began painting again in 1920 and utilized some of his charcoals as starting points, including the present work that served as his inspiration for Dark Abstraction (Woods) (circa 1920, Private Collection). Indeed, several other works from the series served as the basis for major paintings, such as the Stanley Museum of Art’s charcoal Thunderstorm executed circa 1917-20 that inspired a 1921 oil painting of the same name in the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio. However, Dove’s series of charcoals not only anticipated some of his most major works to come; they also relate back to his earliest and most historically important forays into complete abstraction. With its focus on the underlying patterns of nature and rhythmic repetitions of form, Study for ‘Dark Abstraction’ is a closely related successor of Dove’s seminal Ten Commandments pastels of 1911-12, which are widely recognized as the first works of abstraction to ever be exhibited by an American artist. Barbara Haskell writes, “The black and white charcoal drawings from this period are compositionally and philosophically related to these pastels as well as to certain black and white paintings by the Futurist Giacomo Balla.” (Arthur Dove, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, California, 1974, p. 29)
Dove’s abstractions on paper employ an extraordinary use of line and pattern to convey natural rhythms. Haskell writes, “Dove believed that…each object had a certain configuration that captured its spirit or inner structure but that did not necessarily conform to its objectively perceived shape…Dove came to describe this identifying form through ‘force lines’ or ‘growth lines.’ Force lines did not refer to the physical outlines of an object but to the forces or tensions alive within it…Dove wrote, ‘…When mariners say ‘the wind has weight,’ a line seems to express that better than bulk.’” (Arthur Dove, p. 7)
In the present work, Dove’s “force lines” of overlapping verticals and diagonals communicate splaying tree forms, broken up by passages of negative space conveying their inner light or inherent energy. Within these negative spaces, Dove creates gradients of pigment that exploit the creaminess of his chosen medium and complicate the movement of light within the abstracted view. Profoundly sophisticated and historically important, works such as Study for ‘Dark Abstraction’ represent the pinnacle of Modern artistic expression in early 20th century America.
Dove is acknowledged as the first artist to exhibit purely abstract art in America in 1912 and continued to create a substantial body of abstract work before 1920. He also experimented with a variety of styles and media throughout his career, including works on paper in pastel, charcoal and watercolor, assemblages made of found objects, and oil painting. Between 1917 and 1920, however, Dove exclusively worked in charcoal, executing an important series of 14 astounding works drawing in large part on his most highly regarded theme: nature. Many of these works are housed in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, Arkansas; and Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa.
He began painting again in 1920 and utilized some of his charcoals as starting points, including the present work that served as his inspiration for Dark Abstraction (Woods) (circa 1920, Private Collection). Indeed, several other works from the series served as the basis for major paintings, such as the Stanley Museum of Art’s charcoal Thunderstorm executed circa 1917-20 that inspired a 1921 oil painting of the same name in the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio. However, Dove’s series of charcoals not only anticipated some of his most major works to come; they also relate back to his earliest and most historically important forays into complete abstraction. With its focus on the underlying patterns of nature and rhythmic repetitions of form, Study for ‘Dark Abstraction’ is a closely related successor of Dove’s seminal Ten Commandments pastels of 1911-12, which are widely recognized as the first works of abstraction to ever be exhibited by an American artist. Barbara Haskell writes, “The black and white charcoal drawings from this period are compositionally and philosophically related to these pastels as well as to certain black and white paintings by the Futurist Giacomo Balla.” (Arthur Dove, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, California, 1974, p. 29)
Dove’s abstractions on paper employ an extraordinary use of line and pattern to convey natural rhythms. Haskell writes, “Dove believed that…each object had a certain configuration that captured its spirit or inner structure but that did not necessarily conform to its objectively perceived shape…Dove came to describe this identifying form through ‘force lines’ or ‘growth lines.’ Force lines did not refer to the physical outlines of an object but to the forces or tensions alive within it…Dove wrote, ‘…When mariners say ‘the wind has weight,’ a line seems to express that better than bulk.’” (Arthur Dove, p. 7)
In the present work, Dove’s “force lines” of overlapping verticals and diagonals communicate splaying tree forms, broken up by passages of negative space conveying their inner light or inherent energy. Within these negative spaces, Dove creates gradients of pigment that exploit the creaminess of his chosen medium and complicate the movement of light within the abstracted view. Profoundly sophisticated and historically important, works such as Study for ‘Dark Abstraction’ represent the pinnacle of Modern artistic expression in early 20th century America.