Cultural Event the Dallas Museum of Art

Cultural Event

The Dallas Museum of Art has several temporary exhibitions on display now. One is called "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties." Another related but separate exhibition is called "Texas in the Twenties: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs from Lone Star Collections." Because both special exhibitions focus on a specific point in time in American and Texan history, it was helpful to view both together on the same day. I went on opening day of both exhibitions, which was on Sunday March 4, 2012. There was a small line to get in, but the space inside the museum was arranged so that it did not feel crowded. The museum published a brochure that explained each exhibition, why it was on display at that time at the museum, and what the exhibition meant in the context of modern American art.

The "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" and the "Texas in the Twenties: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs from Lone Star Collections" exhibitions will be at the Dallas Museum of Art until the end of March. The "Youth and Beauty" exhibition is in the Barrel Vault and Hanley, Lamont, Rachofsky, and Stoffel Galleries. The "Texas in the Twenties" exhibition is in the Focus II Gallery. I started with the "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" section to provide myself with an overview of what art in the 1920s was like. I was immediately struck by the diversity of paintings, photographs and sculptures on display. The entire exhibition was curated by the Brooklyn Museum. I was also struck by the fact that many of the pieces in the collection had an industrial feel to them.

One of the showpieces was Gerald Murphy's1924 painting "Razor." "Razor" is a masterpiece of graphic art design, composition, and subject matter. The painting, done in oil on canvas, is about 32 by 36 inches. It is symmetrically composed, rendered in a tight color palette using red, black, gray, white, and a touch of yellow-gold. The titular razor is in the foreground, but it is not necessarily the centerpiece. In fact, the box of "Three Stars" matches catches the eye just as much as the razor, which is balanced with the fountain pen. Together, the razor and the fountain pen form a cross shape and denote the diagonal axes of the canvas. Although Murphy's "Razor" seems cold, and lacking emotion, the composition is somehow compelling.

"Lighthouse Hill" by Edward Hopper is another outstanding painting that is a part of the "Youth and Beauty" collection. The viewer can practically feel the cool Atlantic breeze in the air when gazing at the painting, which is oil on a 28 by 29-inch canvas. In the foreground, taking up the entire lower portion of the composition, are windswept rolling hills, covered in stark gray and brown grass. The vertical motion of the grass draws the eye upwards to the centerpiece: a lighthouse and its accompanying cottage. Hopper offers his source of light as either a sunset or a sunrise to the viewer's left, because the left sides of the lighthouse and cottage are illuminated. The eye is continually drawn upward, as the lighthouse extends into the sky like a church steeple. The sky is a dusty, periwinkle blue denoting dawn or dusk. Using browns, greys, and steely blues enhances the sense of cool temperatures. The artist captures what it feels like to be gazing up at a lighthouse on a hill on a cool Atlantic morning.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi's 1924 "Bather with Cigarette" is totally different from either Hopper's "Lighthouse Hill" or Murphy's "Razor" because it depicts a human form. In Kuniyoshi's case, the form is that of a woman in a bathing suit. As the title suggests, she holds a cigarette. The image is unique because it captures the artist's image of what life was like in the 1920s. There is a contradictory feeling about the painting. The woman seems like she should be relaxed because she is in her bathing suit, at the beach, enjoying her smoke. However, there is a sense of tension in the air. The woman holds down her hair as if the wind is blowing hard. Her body seems tight and stiff; she stands instead of laying down and her body is twisted into an awkward stance. She looks at her cigarette with a worried look. The colors that Kuniyoshi uses are dark and saturated: a deep forest green and a red the color of dried blood.

The "Youth and Beauty" exhibition pairs well with the Texas-centric counterpart "Texas in the Twenties." In this section, I appreciated especially the photographs and sketches that depicted what the Lone Star state looked like a hundred years ago. There is a photograph of swimmers by Eugene Omar Goldbeck entitled "Third Annual Bathing Girl Review: that reminded me of the Kuniyoshi painting in the other exhibition because of the style of bathing suit the women wore. Also, I appreciated the urban landscapes of Mary Anita Bonner. Her sketches seem bleak, because they are rendered without any color. This captures what it might have felt like for a person moving from the countryside or a farm to the big city. The change must have been shocking, and the charcoal colors parallel the polluted air.