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Edwin Dickinson: Dreams
and Realities
The Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts announces a groundbreaking exhibition of 94 paintings
and works on paper by Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978). Considered a "painter's
painter" due to his ambitious, multifigured compositions of ambiguous
and fanciful content, Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities is the
first retrospective of this largely unknown, but acclaimed, American artist
in more than 20 years. The exhibit will run from September 21, 2002 through
January 12, 2003.
The 67 paintings and 27 works on
paper include landscapes, self-portraits, still lifes and nudes giving us
insight into an artist of immense talent, whose skill as a draftsman and
mastery of color is causing critics to reevaluate Dickinson as one of the
finest painters of his time. Organized by the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo,
New York and curated by Dr. Douglas Dreishspoon, the exhibition invites
audiences on a biographical journey spanning 50 years of artistic discovery.
What emerges is Dickinson's amazing draftsmanship and poetic handling of
pictorial space that blends traditional figuration with surrealistic imagery
at a time when abstract painting was at the forefront of American art. (left:
Self-Portrait, 1949, 23 x 20 1/8 inches, oil on canvas, Collection
of the National Academy of Design, NY)
The exhibition addresses four very distinct subjects and
styles, revealing Dickinson's broad range of expression. The first section
of the exhibition devotes itself to his brooding self-portraits, beautifully
rendered and conveying the intense nature of the artist who had led an unhappy
childhood, losing his mother to tuberculosis as a young boy, his brother
to suicide and his closest friend who died in World War I.
The largest gallery contains perhaps his best-known works,
his "symbolical" paintings, usually of monumental scale. Even
after undergoing multiple transformations, often over a period of years,
some never achieved completion before they were sold or exhibited in venues
like the Pennsylvania Academy. These works were executed without preliminary
studies and were often a source of agony for the painter. Ruin at Daphne
(1943-53) is one of the primary examples of his ambitious "symbolical"
paintings, representing the imaginative dream-like quality seen in so many
of his works. Many of these works are remarkably modern and display an impressive
knowledge of burgeoning movements outside of the United States, considering
his relative geographic isolation in Western New York, where he spent so
much of his time.
Dickinson's bipolar personality
evidences itself in his "premier coups;" a term well known
in Europe to describe spontaneously executed paintings. Painted in a matter
of hours, these rapid-fire executions were usually painted en plein air,
allowing Dickinson an escape to the outdoors, freeing him of the constraints
and the stresses associated with his studio work. These studies, which were
intended to represent a direct connection with nature, symbolize reality
in stark contrast to his earlier symbolical works. The fourth dimension
of the show includes the artist's very powerful graphite drawings beautifully
rendered with tremendous care and skill. Dickinson was never without his
drawing supplies and took this aspect of his work very seriously.
(left: An Anniversary, 1921, 72 x 60 inches, oil on canvas, Collection
of the Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY)
Edwin Dickinson's life and his art are inextricably joined.
As one of his students later commented, "Dickinson didn't think independently
of his life and what happened on the canvas or the drawing paper -- they
were exactly, identically the same thing." At important junctures during
his life, Dickinson confronted himself in the mirror as a subject, constantly
evaluating both his surroundings and himself. Dickinson painted about 28
self-portraits, destroying those he felt to be unsuccessful. The culmination
of the exhibition will end dramatically with 11 of these self-examinations
-- the earliest a premier coup -- Self-Portrait of 1914 and the latest,
a haunting ghost-like Self-Portrait completed in 1954. And in this
sense the exhibition, Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities, stands
as a remarkable reflection of one man's inner world of observed realities
melded with his personal struggles and imaginings. It was precisely these
characteristics that attracted the attention of a new generation of artists,
known today as the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and
Willem de Kooning in the 1940's and 1950's to eventually eliminate subject
matter entirely and find new relationships between forms.
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional
source by visiting the sub-index page for the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in Resource
Library Magazine.
Search for more
articles and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists for biographical information on historic artists.
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