- Arthur Dove: A RetrospectiveOur PickBy Debra Bricker Balken, William C. Agee, Elizabeth Hutton Turner
- Arthur Dove: Watercolors and PastelsOur PickBy Melanie Kirschner
- Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of InfluenceBy Debra Bricker Balken
- In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz: The Stieglitz Circle at the Phillips CollectionBy Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Arthur Dove
- Arthur DoveBy Arthur Dove and Barbara Haskell
Important Art by Arthur Dove
Lobster (1908)
Painted while in Paris, Lobster shows the influence of the French modern masters upon Dove, in particular Paul Cézanne's spatial arrangements, and Henri Matisse's bold, signature color. Here, Dove reinterprets the traditional artistic subject of a still life in a modern style. Dove represents a splendid repast of ripe fruit and a lobster arranged on a cloth-covered table, against a vividly patterned wallpaper suggestive of a middle-class home. When he left Europe to return home to America the following year, Dove left the painting behind to be exhibited at the 1909 Salon d'Automne, the Parisian showcase for progressive, modern art. In 1910, Dove was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz and was included in his influential exhibition of the same year Younger American Painters. American critics, rather conventional in their tastes and unaccustomed to modernist works, denounced Lobster's "radical" French traits such as its high key colors, thickly applied paint (impasto), and the tilt of the table, which flattens the picture plane. Lobster was the last representational image Dove painted.
Nature Symbolized No, 2 (1911)
Rather than try faithfully reproducing elements of nature, Dove stove as a painter to capture its spiritual aspects, bringing attention to those movements and lifecycles beyond the human eye. The heart of Dove's artistic philosophy was the articulation of "essences" that would transmit this sense of the spiritual in nature. These "essences" were biomorphic shapes that represented different kinds of energy or organic evolution, suggesting an inner principle of inherent reality. In this work, curvilinear forms and shades of green relate a sense of growth and also, movements in nature, evoking the sensation of greenery being rustled by the wind. His early abstractions, especially the large pastel paintings on linen such as this work, are part of his effort to capture these transitory effects.
The Critic (1925)
For this whimsical piece, Dove pasted together art auction advertisements, art reviews, and exhibition announcements. Few American artists prior to World War II made collages, and Dove was the most proficient artist to do so. In Europe, Braque and Picasso had explored the compositional interplay between painted and glued-on elements, while Dada artists introduced the political, the irrational, and the satirical in their collages. In addition to these European precedents, Dove could have also been inspired by 19th-century American folk art such as work by Victorian amateurs and the Shakers; folk art was then in vogue in America. Here, Dove has created a pointed commentary on the critic Forbes Watson of whom the artist was himself highly critical. Watson's empty head and idle monocle hanging from his neck provides telling clues about the uselessness of the critic's word and judgment. The vacuum cleaner that the critic holds and the roller skates that he wears, both cut from newspaper, diminish any sense of the man's authority. Dove's The Critic, through its light humor, reveals tensions between the old guard and modern artists in America.
Influences and Connections
