拍品专文
Throughout his career, Arthur Dove's chief inspiration was nature, not only in its outward forms, but also in its more elusive aspects. Painted in 1937, while Dove was managing his family's farm in Geneva, New York, Freight Car is characteristic of the artist's tendency to observe his immediate surroundings and integrate their abstracted forms into his art. This triumphant painting evokes the senses, rather than the particulars of the scene through the layering of undulating forms, a reduced palette and sensuous, brushy surface.
Freight Car is characteristic of Dove's best work and a superb example of early modernism that presages the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s. The painting depicts a view that Dove most likely witnessed close to his home due to the continual presence of trains in the Finger Lakes region. Stylistically, the present work is typical of Dove's Geneva period as the composition is reduced to several simplified, dominant shapes set in a shallow landscape. Rather than capturing the expanse of the rail yard and surrounding landscape, Dove chose to compress the space of Freight Car through the layering of the organic forms. He juxtaposes the modulated tones of nature's lush greens with man's enamel red, setting both against neutral, earthy tones. The brushwork is characteristically expressive and the line fluid, instilling the work with a unity that is evocative of intimacy between painter and subject.
As early as 1916 Dove sought to underscore the primary role of the sensory in his art. "Theories have been outgrown," he wrote, "the means is disappearing, the reality of the sensation alone remains. It is that in its essence which I wish to set down. It should be a delightful adventure not to revolutionize nor to reform, but to enjoy life out loud." (as quoted in D.B. Balken, et al., Arthur Dove: A Retrospective, Andover, Massachusetts, 1998, p. 24) The repetition of undulating forms in the present work alludes to the movement of both the train and the wind.
In 1958 Duncan Phillips wrote of the artist's career, "Arthur G. Dove deserves to be ranked with the dissimilar Kandinsky among the earliest abstract expressionists. Certainly in the realm of uncompromising and impetuous exploration Dove was the boldest American pioneer. He was and is unique...Profound was his conversion in his years of decision to the concept of the intimately symbolical image, to be abstracted from nature and from the most familiar objects, as a new language for painting." (as quoted in F.S. Wright, Arthur G. Dove, Berkeley, California, 1958, p. 13) Freight Car is a seminal and visionary work that is representative of Dove's greatest achievements and presages the development of art in America.
Freight Car is characteristic of Dove's best work and a superb example of early modernism that presages the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s. The painting depicts a view that Dove most likely witnessed close to his home due to the continual presence of trains in the Finger Lakes region. Stylistically, the present work is typical of Dove's Geneva period as the composition is reduced to several simplified, dominant shapes set in a shallow landscape. Rather than capturing the expanse of the rail yard and surrounding landscape, Dove chose to compress the space of Freight Car through the layering of the organic forms. He juxtaposes the modulated tones of nature's lush greens with man's enamel red, setting both against neutral, earthy tones. The brushwork is characteristically expressive and the line fluid, instilling the work with a unity that is evocative of intimacy between painter and subject.
As early as 1916 Dove sought to underscore the primary role of the sensory in his art. "Theories have been outgrown," he wrote, "the means is disappearing, the reality of the sensation alone remains. It is that in its essence which I wish to set down. It should be a delightful adventure not to revolutionize nor to reform, but to enjoy life out loud." (as quoted in D.B. Balken, et al., Arthur Dove: A Retrospective, Andover, Massachusetts, 1998, p. 24) The repetition of undulating forms in the present work alludes to the movement of both the train and the wind.
In 1958 Duncan Phillips wrote of the artist's career, "Arthur G. Dove deserves to be ranked with the dissimilar Kandinsky among the earliest abstract expressionists. Certainly in the realm of uncompromising and impetuous exploration Dove was the boldest American pioneer. He was and is unique...Profound was his conversion in his years of decision to the concept of the intimately symbolical image, to be abstracted from nature and from the most familiar objects, as a new language for painting." (as quoted in F.S. Wright, Arthur G. Dove, Berkeley, California, 1958, p. 13) Freight Car is a seminal and visionary work that is representative of Dove's greatest achievements and presages the development of art in America.