Sneak Peek at Famous Peak

HOORAY! The manuscript for the Vanishing Ice catalogue was emailed to the editor thirty minutes ago. Here is a sneak peek at one of my favorite artworks in the exhibition:

Thomas Hart Benton, Trail Riders, 1964-1965, oil on canvas, 67 ½ x 85 3/8 in(171.5 x 217 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Gift of the artist, 1975.42.1

Thomas Hart Benton, Trail Riders, 1964-1965, oil on canvas, 67 ½ x 85 3/8 in(171.5 x 217 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Gift of the artist, 1975.42.1

Thomas Hart Benton’s (American, 1889-1975) journey to the Canadian Rockies inspired Trail Riders, a sweeping, cinematic view of Mount Assiniboine. The artist faithfully documents the landscape setting and the mountain’s conical shape resembling the famous Matterhorn in the Alps. (According to the U.S. Geological Survey, glaciers on Mount Assiniboine have decreased 820 feet in twenty-three years, an average of more than 35 feet per year.)

Casting a nostalgic look at American history, Benton presents an unusual mid-twentieth century interpretation of Manifest Destiny. The artist, a grandnephew of a prominent, populist Missouri senator who helped shape the policies of American expansionism, harks back to a time when trailblazers settled the American West. Throughout his life, he mythologized this theme, beginning with early paintings like The Pathfinder (1926) and culminating in the grand-scaled mural, Independence and the Opening of the American West (1959-62), commissioned for the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. In the 1930s, such themes earned Benton recognition as a “regionalist” artist who celebrated Middle American values by depicting rural culture.

Trail Riders also draws upon classic Hollywood Westerns that celebrated the loners and nomads along pioneer trails. The artist’s gigs in Hollywood for Life magazine and Walt Disney enabled him to see first-hand the creation of these idealized heroes.

In this painting, Benton mediates on his personal relationship to the land: The protagonists riding along the trail represent the artist and his friend, who explored the Banff region on horseback in 1963. Benton turned to the mountains for solace after his regionalist aesthetic was scorned by an art world enamored with another movement, Abstract Expressionism, in the 1950s. The landscape assuaged the artist’s loneliness and distaste for America’s increasing urban culture.

—Barbara Matilsky, Curator of Art

Art Meets Science Meets Hollywood Meets…Bellingham!

Alexis Rockman Adelies, 2008 Oil on wood 68 x 80 inches

Alexis Rockman
Adelies, 2008
Oil on wood
68 x 80 inches

What better way to launch the Whatcom Museum’s blog than to feature a fabulous artwork featured in our upcoming exhibition, Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, by an artist currently in the national limelight?

Alexis Rockman, who painted Adelies, was commissioned by film director Ang Lee to contribute imagery for Life of Pi. The artist’s sketches for the newly-released movie inspired a dream sequence experienced by the hero and his tiger companion during a spiritual voyage of discovery. See the New York Times Magazine article here.

Rockman’s fantasy-like paintings are based on actual expeditions. His portrait of Adelies penguins emerged from a 12-day trip Antarctic adventure on board a Lindblad Expedition Cruise ship. The artist explored the landscape and got up close and personal with wildlife in kayaks and zodiacs. Enchanted by the ice that glowed “luminous like jewelry,” Rockman creates a towering blue ice cube, the feeding platform for the penguins featured in Adelies. They appear to drift in isolation without sight of the mainland.

The idea for the painting was based, in the artist’s words, on ideas of “fragmentation and scarcity.” * Although not intentionally referenced, the painting calls to mind the massive ice shelves that have dramatically broken off from the continent due to warming oceans. Recognizing that these unique creatures are threatened by climate change, the artist devises an unusual composition to suggest their precarious status.* (The Adelies population surrounding nearby Anvers Island has declined by 85% in the last 35 years and could face regional extinction within the next decade. Warming oceans have shrunk the population of krill upon which the penguins and other life depend. ”

Born and raised in New York City, Rockman frequented the American Museum of Natural History where he studied the renowned painted diorama displays. He was also attracted to the Hudson River School landscape painters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which nurtured his sense of the sublime. Although engaged in field observations and drawings, he does not consider his work “scientific.” Instead, he aims to make “art about the history of science.”

— Barbara Matilsky, Curator of Art

* (All quotes from an interview with the artist in September 2012.)