Vedder\'s \"Memory\" -- Remembering the Last Gasps

Vedder's "Memory" -- Remembering the last gasps of surrealistic romanticism in painting, before Hogue and Steichen's intrusions of surrealist realism

The painting entitled "Memory" by the American artist Elihu Vedder exhibits a dreamlike horizon and vista of an unidentifiable, yet distinctly foreign land in sunbathed romantic colors. Over Vedder's illustrated ocean the viewer can see face hanging, as if the individual's image were suspended in the overhanging clouds. It is a Romantic vision of the presence of the individual in nature. The memory of the artist or the gazer is present eternally in the natural world, so long as the artist is in the act of remembering an individual. In contrast, Alexander Hogue's "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare" (1938) is also another medium-sized oil on canvas (40 x 56) but reflects the Great Depression when this work was created, long after the Romantic surrealism of "Memory." "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare" shows the pillow-like fields of a farm that look like the nude flesh of a female. Hogue's painting is also surrealist, and suggests the presence of the human form in nature, a presence that is intensified by the sharp, phallic cutting scythe lying beside the female figure. But the surrealism present in the Hogue strives to create a social message of humanity's rapacious attitude towards agriculture, rather than a personal response to nature.

Thus although Hogue's work, and "Rodin with his Sculptures 'Victor Hugo' and 'The Thinker'" by the photographer Edward Steichen (1902) both act as reflections upon the human relationship with nature and the natural human body, they lack the pure Romanticism of Vedder's dreamlike work in their blending of surrealism with realistic social commentary upon nature and their ambiguous reflections upon humanity's relationship to art. The later works suggest a darker and more socially astute commentary on the often-fraught relationship between nature, art, and humanity -- and the human face and form in particular.

The qualities of "Memory" by Elihu Vedder (a 16"X23" print on canvas) instead harkens back to an earlier era of decadent and symbolist illusions, and show a more a playful spirit of humanity's relationship to art, rather than the greater seriousness of intent in Hogue and Steichen. Vedder's work was first executed in 1860 when the Italian artist, Nino Costa introduced Vedder to the seascape of the Tyrrenian coast. These studies would eventually culminate in the work known as "Memory." "Memory" was formerly completed in 1870, although the artist also foreshadowed it in a number of earlier studies. "Memory" strikes the viewer of today as a kind of artist's Romantic fantasy of Italy's coastline, rather than a realistic reproduction of either a face or a place. ("Elihu Vedder," The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2005)

Vedder today is best known for his fantastical illustrations of the "Rubiayat" of Omar Khan, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, and other exotic renditions of the fantastic, Romantic far off places with no real existence. He was obsessed the suggestion of the persistence of personal memory, in this case of a person from the past in nature, and of nature's ability to suggest something to humanity. Rather than 'real' nature, however, the human imagination was of primary interest to Vedder as an artist -- nature was interesting because it 'spoke' to humanity; nature was not interesting in and of itself. ("Elihu Vedder," The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2005)

In contrast, Hogue's "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare" comes from the hand of a Western, American artist who was quite familiar with his world from a realistic as well as a tourist's perspective. Vedder died in Italy, but the Italian landscape he brought to life, and created via his artistic fantasy world seems more of an outsider's than an insider's eye, unlike Hogue, who was attempting to express something about the way the lands were being treated by the people around him through his use of surrealism. One can see a woman in the Hogue work, but it is a woman prostate and unkindly treated by the farmers upon the land. The woman's body is soft and comforting in its hills and valleys that look like mounds of bread. 'She' looks soft as flour. This makes the scythe beside her seem even crueler.

Thus the American-born Romantic painter and illustrator Vedder's reputation is based primarily on paintings derived from personal dreams and fantasies, not such historical realities as Hogue's. And although the American Vedder, after studying in Paris from 1856 -- 61, returned to the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War, he mainly supported himself by illustrating comic valentines and calisthenics books and drawing for popular magazines such as Vanity. He isolated himself from any sociological or political context as an artist, or even from any new artistic influences. Vedder often used romantic landscape as a setting for traditionally symbolic or allegorical images, even when the America around him was gripped by tumultuous historical events. There is a sense that Vedder's work could occur 'anytime' -- which is not to isolate the artist from the Romantic spirit and period that produced his ethos, but a sense that he actively avoided social commentary, rather than sought it. Even the title "Memory" is vague, unlike the title "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare," referring to the contemporary erosions and the rapacious nature of man upon Mother Earth and the American environment. ("Elihu Vedder," The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2005)

Ironically, Hogue's painting strikes the viewer as 'more' realistic in its meaning, in some fashion than Edward Steichen's photography. Steichen used photography as commentary beyond the purely personal -- thus he pushed notions of surrealism farther than did Vedder. But Steichen's photography is more dreamlike, and the photograph's meanings are less certain than Hogue's painting. Steichen's photographs of "Rodin with his Sculptures 'Victor Hugo' and 'The Thinker'" are photographs of works of art by a great artist, and their works in the soft-focus pictorialist scrim of Steichen take on a level of artistic relevance in and of themselves, that add to the sculptured work's original meaning, by using photography to force the gazer to see the human forms present in great art anew. This meaning, unlike the laying bare of mother earth in Hogue is less clear.

But there is still greater cultural relevance to the forms of Steichen's photography than the image of Vedder, for Steichen chooses not to depict vague and dreamlike faces of purely individualistic relevance along the lines of Vedder, but instead chooses the form and faces of works of great art, as seen through the vision of another artist, in another medium, and thus forces his viewers to see their own artistic culture anew. The realistic medium of photography shows the viewer that, under proper lighting, even reality can become distorted.