Addictive grasp of Impressionism proves enduring

Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 11:12 am

some things just take us, body and soul, and we have little control over it.

We once toured a small estate in England said to be that of an ancestor of George Washington. When we got to the sitting room, there was a large silver service on a table by the window. I admired it, and pointing to the huge silver bowl that went with it, asked if that was the waste bowl for the used tea leaves.

No, I was told by our guide in an indulgent tone of voice that told me I had handed her a ''teachable moment.''

''That,'' she said sadly, ''is the sugar bowl. When sugar began to be imported from the West Indies to England in such quantities that it became affordable, it seized us, as a nation, and we've never really recovered. the size of that bowl is a testament to how addicted we English quickly became to sugar and how it has ravaged us.''

In some ways Impressionism is the sugar of art, at least in America. the style continues to delight us, no matter how often we're reminded that it's at least 136 years old and long passe.

An Impressionism exhibit is the one surefire attendance-getter at art

museums. There's even a saying that reveals the underlying strategies of Impressionist shows: ''How do you spell money? Monet.''

''When you think about a [painting] style that was long-lasting in America, it was Impressionism,'' Massillon Museum Director Christine Shearer said recently, recalling her research for Midwestern Visions of Impressionism: 1890-1930, which she curated for the museum in 2007. ''That was a style that lasted forever here, whereas in Europe, it was brief by comparison.''

One of the reasons it remained popular here for so long is on view through June 27 at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown.

The show, Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933): American Impressionist, is for the Butler a chance to showcase its immensely popular Vonnoh, In Flanders Field ''Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow'' (1890).

The exhibit of 23 paintings, one bronze medallion and an early photograph is indeed built around this work, with three of the finished works referred to as ''studies'' for In Flanders Field, even though they are clearly meant to be seen as complete works of art in and of themselves.

This painting can be regarded as not only emblematic of an age, but symbolic of America's love affair with Impressionism.

We see in the foreground a fashionably dressed woman picking poppies while in the middle ground one of the two children waves at a passing wagon in the distance.

Originally titled Coquelicots, the painting's title was changed by Vonnoh to In Flanders Field ''Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow'' on the suggestion of J. Massey Rhind, a consultant to Joseph G. Butler Jr., in memory of soldiers who lost their lives in Word War I.

It appears, according to a photo of a letter from Rhind to Butler dated Jan. 29, 1919, that the idea to change the painting's title came from Butler, the industrialist and philanthropist who established the museum that carries his name.

The title was taken from ''In Flanders Fields,'' a poem by Lt. Col. John McRae, a Canadian surgeon who died in active service. the poem first appeared in London Punch magazine Dec. 8, 1915.

That poem is the inspiration for the practice of wearing red poppies on Memorial Day.

Like other American artists of his generation who experimented with Impressionism, Vonnoh displays a reluctance to abandon pictorial convention to the surface effects of light and color and the flatness of the picture plane adhered to by the movement's European practitioners.

The woman in the foreground is carefully articulated, and the child waving to the distant driver signals an emphasis on deep space. in the meantime, the riotous brushwork of the poppy field emphasizes the flatness of the canvas.

It's a painting that has it both ways in a manner that would not have been tolerated by the European proponents of the movement. Impressionism is about the effect of light, about broken color and assertive brushstrokes, not about pictorial space and the careful, academic articulation of the figure.

But this combination of approaches was typical of academically trained American Impressionists and one of the reasons it lasted in this country for as long as it did.

Another reason was that Vonnoh and other American Impressionists came back to this country and taught the style at the academies.

As the exhibit's catalog essayist, Wendy Greenhouse, points out, Vonnoh taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where his students included Robert Henri, John Sloan and William Glackens, who became urban realists in the circle known as the Ashcan school.

Vonnoh's long-lasting impact on these artists was in the development of a modified Impressionist aesthetic among landscape painters working in Pennsylvania's Bucks County after the turn of the century, Greenhouse writes.

So this hybrid form of Impressionism, brought back from Europe by American artists in general and Vonnoh in particular, is likely one of the reasons the movement gained such strong traction here.

It was, moreover, not seen as an intellectual discipline here, but an indulgence of the senses, underpinned by the strong bones of careful composition and the masterful handling of the figure.

At the same time American audiences were embracing this form, they were largely baffled by French Impressionism's disregard for finish, draftsmanship, tonal relationships and other academic conventions.

American audiences tended to see advanced Impressionism as superficial and materialistic. Vonnoh's compositions, on the other hand, seemed to delve under the surface of things and to stand for ideas beyond their outward impression.

Vonnoh's career was essentially split into two tracks: academic portrait painting and the Impressionist style, which he usually reserved for his landscape paintings.

While such a division of labors gives current theoreticians unease, it wasn't frowned upon in Vonnoh's time. Rather, his work was seen as wonderfully wide-ranging and versatile.

For Vonnoh, it was a matter of survival, especially after his move to Chicago in the early 1890s. by 1896 Vonnoh ''was said to have painted more portraits of Chicagoans than any other living artist,'' Greenhouse writes.

The portraits were incredibly lucrative and a source of steady income, which could then enable him to indulge in his more radical pursuits, the landscapes.

If you travel to Youngstown to view this show, which is on the main level, be sure to look around upstairs while you're there.

The Butler has organized several paintings from the Tonalist period in the Davis Gallery, just to the left of the elevator on the second floor.

Then go into the next gallery to view Andy Warhol: Wild Raspberries, a tongue-in-cheek look at cookbooks and the then-beginning mania for fine cooking.

The exhibit features pages from Warhol's 1959 handmade, limited edition cookbook called Wild Raspberries, a takeoff on the title of the Ingmar Bergman film Wild Strawberries, and a poke at America's postwar efforts to emulate a more sophisticated European lifestyle.

Mmmmm. tasty.

Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.

Addictive grasp of Impressionism proves enduring

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