Mark Tobey Paintings, Bio, Ideas

"Art comes from art as men come from men and flowers from flowers. You just don't go to the country and paint - you learn from art and take that to the country with you. As Cézanne said, you have to bring much to nature."

1 of 11

Mark Tobey

"Any painter who doesn't go through realism won't make it. My own so-called abstract paintings are the end result of a very long process that began in realism."

2 of 11

Mark Tobey

"On pavements and the bark of trees I have found whole worlds."

3 of 11

Mark Tobey

"To rediscover the past is to move forward...The future is carved with the implements we created before it was upon us."

4 of 11

Mark Tobey

"When an artist starts to repeat himself and ceases to be engaged in the problem of equilibrium, of balance, then he is a career painter. When his problem is always vital and present, then he is an artist."

5 of 11

Mark Tobey

"It is one thing to paint a picture and another to experience it; in attempting to find on what level one accepts this experience, one discovers what one sees and on what level the discovery takes place. Christopher Columbus left in search of one world and discovered another."

6 of 11

Mark Tobey

"I felt keenly that space should be freer. As I remember, I really wanted to smash form, to melt it in a more moving and dynamic way."

7 of 11

Mark Tobey

"'White writing' appeared in my art the way flowers explode over the earth at a given time."

8 of 11

Mark Tobey

"I know very little about what generally is termed abstract. Pure abstraction would mean a type of painting completely unrelated to life, which is unacceptable to me."

9 of 11

Mark Tobey

"I am accused often of too much experimentation but what else should I do when all other factors of man are in the same condition? I thrust forward into space as science and the rest do."

10 of 11

Mark Tobey

"One must be in nature, awake and attentive. When we can find the abstract in nature we find the deepest art."

11 of 11

Mark Tobey

Summary of Mark Tobey

One of the most highly respected American artists of the 1950s and 1960s, Tobey's name is associated first and foremost with his so-called "white writing" paintings; a calligraphic style characterized by a field of intricate and delicate overlapping pale lines. It was a form of gestural abstraction designed to inspire a "higher state of consciousness" in the spectator and it would bring the artist numerous international plaudits and awards. Although in the US Tobey's mindfulness was somewhat "outmuscled" by the action paintings of Jackson Pollock, his push for an "all-over abstraction" gave rise to a spiritual style that amounted to a wholly unique visual language; quite independent of any one international school or location. Indeed, Tobey was a legendary wanderer who travelled through the Americas, Europe and the Far East in search of the influences that would help him refine his highly personalized conception of abstract painting.

Accomplishments

In 1918 Tobey was introduced to the non-sectarian Baha'i Faith and its idea of universal consciousness. Through its teachings, he developed a way to use meditation as a means of generating abstract shapes and gestures. The result was a distinctive visual language that could articulate a unified conception of life by combining Western art practices with the energy and wisdom of Eastern mysticism.
Tobey worked largely in water-based media, such as tempera and gouache, and on small-scaled canvases and paper. His all-over abstractions, permeated with a multitude of lines and fragmented forms, captured calligraphic rhythms and gestures that broadened the definition of mid-century American modernism.
From the very beginnings of his career, Tobey showed a passion for experimentation. Pushing the fixed rules of Cubism, he drew on more animate subject-matter using rich rounded shapes and a wider range of colour. The result was a form of "vitalism" that would push the great modernist experiment to look outside the realms of the physical world or any one of its great religions.
In later years, Tobey devoted himself to the study of Zen Sumi techniques. By "emptying his mind" of all extraneous thoughts, he found the ideal mental state in which to paint and became positively liberated. By letting "nature take control" over his work, he produced a series of splashed black ink abstractions that demonstrated how art might exist independently of any pre-given aesthetic preferences or ideological influences.

Biography of Mark Tobey

Marking his opposition to Jackson Pollock, Tobey stated "I believe that painting should come through the avenues of meditation rather than the canals of action", and it was only through the meditative act that he felt able to truly "have a conversation with a painting".

Read full biography

Read artistic legacy

Important Art by Mark Tobey

Artwork Images

Dem Licht Entgegen (Toward the Light) (c.1930)

Dem Licht Entgegen shows Tobey's early interest in the relationship between painting and spirituality. Although not faith-specific, the painting's title and movement of the people towards the light expresses the theme of religious rapture or spiritual awakening. Three vividly coloured figures - as well as a more ghostly procession that is yet to move into the light - are drawn to a rising sun, blazing over hilltops. Rendered through expressionistic brushwork, the sun casts its rays into the sky and across the landscape where a monumental organic form effloresces in response to its radiance. In this painting, Seattle-based art critic Sheila Farr has noted Tobey's "attraction to the expressionistic brushwork of Van Gogh as well as a bent for spiritual symbolism that would become a hallmark of his mature work".

After a long period of working as a fashion illustrator, creating conventional portraits, landscapes and Cubist-style still lifes, Tobey's contact with American modernists, especially Marsden Hartley, inspired a marked change in direction in his painting. Like many of his contemporaries, Hartley was inspired by Kandinsky's proclamation that, "The mood of nature can be imparted ... only by the artistic rendering of its inner spirit". Following this maxim, Tobey, demonstrating a voracious appetite for experimentation, ventured to convey more organic themes with sensuous, swelling, curvaceous shapes, using thick outlines and an almost arbitrary use of colour. He was exploring here a kind of 'vitalism' in that the origins of life are dependent on a life-force that searches beyond the realms of the physical world. Toward the Light amounts to an expression of Tobey's attraction to the Bahá'í notion that all religions manifest the same light from one God. "When we wake up and see the inner horizon light rising", Tobey said, "then we see beyond the horizon [and] break the mould of men's minds with the spirit of truth. Then there will be greater relativity than before. This light will burn away the mist of life and will become very, very great".

Artwork Images

Cirque d'Hiver (Winter Circus) (1933)

This pastel drawing, created shortly before Tobey's "white-writing" breakthrough, consists of an intricate, gauzy web of lines that breaks the surface of the picture up into irregular geometric shapes, reminiscent of a shattered car windscreen. It contains intimations of tall spotlights casting a pale blue glow, and what could be the pitched roof of a big top marquee, arching over an arena of frenetic movement and activity, possibly swinging trapeze artists or figures on bicycles.

Cirque d'Hiver is a precursor to the calligraphic style in Tobey's art with the brown, tan and blue tonal quality of the early Cubism of Braque and Picasso. Tobey said, "like the early Cubists I couldn't use much colour at this point as the problems were difficult enough without this additional one [of color]". But, unlike the Cubists, this is not a picture that attempts to present simultaneous views of one subject, it adopts, rather, a more Futurist sense of dynamism and movement, and takes, one step further, Paul Klee's technique of "taking a line for a walk". There is a suggestion too of Tobey's enthusiasm for performance venues, just as New York City's Cotton Club had captured his imagination a decade earlier, in music, and in the visual representation of rhythm.

Artwork Images

Rising Orb (1935)

In this study for a mural, reminiscent of a Renaissance fresco, Tobey depicts the commotion stirred in both the human and angelic realms of a new revelation from God into the world, symbolised as a rising sun at dawn. The formal arrangement of the stylised figures, rendered in warm, autumnal tones, is offset against a Cubist deconstruction and flattening of planes. The circling figures, whose rotation breaks up the horizontal geometry, forms a visual echo of the small and barely noticeable sun.

Tobey's acceptance of the Bahá'í teachings in 1918 led to the faith's themes frequently appearing in his work, including the "progressive revelation" of God to humanity, the forces of spirituality versus materialism, the quest to create unity between diverse elements, and the dominance of light over darkness. Tobey would later explain (in 1961) that the woman and man in the left of the painting represent "local time", and the orb that has broken its moorings signifies "solar time".

More Important Art

View all Important Art

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced by Artist

Artists

Friends & Personal Connections

Marcel Duchamp
Francis Picabia
Man Ray
Juliet Thompson
Teng Baiye

Movements & Ideas

Artists

Jackson Pollock
Norman Lewis
Naum Gabo
Keith Haring
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham

Friends & Personal Connections

John Cage
Mark Rothko
Takizaki
Jeanne Bucher
Bernard Leach

Movements & Ideas

Open Influences

Close Influences

Useful Resources on Mark Tobey

Books

websites

articles

video clips

Books

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

biography

written by artist

artworks

View more books

websites

articles

video clips

Do more

Content compiled and written by Robert Weinberg

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Tony Todd

"Mark Tobey Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Robert Weinberg
Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Tony Todd
Available from:
First published on 03 Jan 2021. Updated and modified regularly
[Accessed ]

Copy to clipboard