Marsden Hartley painting on loan encourages inspection of WWI art.
It is always a pleasure to run into an old friend when one is out of town. Such was the case at the Los Angeles County Art Museum where I recognized Himmel, a work loaned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for the exhibition, Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings, 1913-1915. This exhibit commemorates the 100th anniversary of World War I, as well re-examines a group of paintings often considered to be Hartley’s best works.
Hartley studied art in Ohio and New York but was unable to make his way to Europe until the age of 35. In Paris, he met avant-garde artists and writers; the German artist Arnold Ronnebeck and his cousin Carl Von Freyburg, a Prussian soldier, also befriended him. His subsequent infatuation with Von Freyburg and love for Germany inspired him to visit Berlin twice in 1913 and again in 1914 and 1915. Only a few months after war was declared in 1914, Von Freyburg was killed in battle.
The artist began to paint a series of works as a memorial to Von Freyburg, utilizing symbols and objects as a means of representing an individual rather than painting a conventional portrait. A kaleidoscope-like arrangement of images borrowed from military insignia, Native American design, and an officer on horseback together with the carefully inscribed words himmel (heaven) and holle (hell) practically vibrate off the canvas of Himmel. Hartley first saw Native American art while in Germany and greatly admired it; his brightly colored palette is likely borrowed from American Indian design. The artist successfully synthesized the influence of European modernists and other sources, making work uniquely his own.
Georgia O’Keeffe once compared Marsden Hartley’s work to a “brass band in a closet.” Certainly the power and impact of his German paintings have not dimmed in the hundred years since their creation.
