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Hans Hofmann

    RETROSPECTIVE

    A Forgotten Artist Comes to Life

    Hans Hofmann deemed Mary Rogers’s work ‘outstanding’

    By

    Provincetown, the 1950s: Billie Holiday and Barbra Streisand are booked at the Atlantic House. Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut are meeting for cocktails. And Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann, considered one of the most influential art educators of the 20th century, is teaching summer school at 76 Commercial St. in the West End.

    Artist Mary Rogers. (Photo courtesy Julie Heller Gallery)

    Among his students are several who will become some of the very few women artists of their generation to secure public recognition and critical acclaim. Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Mercedes Matter, and Lee Krasner are his standout students, learning Hofmann’s “push-pull” theory of color emerging and receding from the canvas to create pictorial space. (Krasner, also known as Mrs. Jackson Pollock, is reportedly told by Hofmann that her work is good enough to pass for a man’s.)

    Regrettably absent from this short list of luminaries is Mary Rogers, an artist Hofmann called “one of the very outstanding students.” He described her painting as having “a vital sense of space in a formal compositional sense as well as in realization through color.” Rogers studied with Hofmann for eight years.

    A Rogers pastel shows Hans Hofmann’s influence. (Photo by Katy Abel)

    Now, 50 years after her death, Rogers’s work is receiving overdue recognition at an exhibition at the Julie Heller East Gallery. “Mary Rogers (1911-1974): Pure Color and Joy,” continuing through Oct. 3, features a substantial collection of the artist’s oil paintings, watercolors, and charcoal drawings, works held in storage for many years. The show is believed to be the first retrospective since the artist’s passing.

    Heller sees Hofmann’s influence across Rogers’s work, particularly in the oils and charcoal drawings and sketches done in his studio.

    “That’s Hofmann all over, with the blocks of color, playing one color and one shape against another and with the figures that are semi-abstracted,” Heller says. “You see her playing with the shape, the elongation of the body. It’s not about realism at all. It’s about experimentation, discovery.”

    An untitled watercolor by Mary Rogers. (Photo by Katy Abel)

    “I do like the work,” says Christine McCarthy, CEO of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, noting that she had no prior knowledge of the artist. “We learn about Hofmann’s students all the time as there were many.”

    Unlike Frankenthaler, Krasner, and other women artists who had proximity to the art world through husbands or fathers, Rogers was the daughter of working-class Irish immigrants who had no specific interest or background in art. Growing up in South Boston, Rogers began drawing and painting at an early age but, like many women of her time, married young and put personal aspirations on hold to raise children. Eventually, she separated from her husband and sent her daughters to boarding school, only then turning her full attention to art.

    Rogers studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in the 1940s, and while studying with Hofmann in the 1950s, she began exhibiting her work. Her paintings were shown at festivals and galleries in Boston and elsewhere on the East Coast and were generally well reviewed.

    Rogers’s work features a range of styles. (Photo by Katy Abel)

    “Her canvases are alive with color and a lyrical, often rapturous response to nature,” a Boston Globe reviewer wrote in 1962 of her work at a gallery on Newbury Street. Today, Rogers’s paintings are included in collections at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. and at Gracie Mansion in New York City.

    The artist makes colors dance, her brushwork fluid and deeply textured. Watercolors, mostly representational landscapes, feature deep shades of blue, green, and ochre. The charcoal sketches have Cubist influences.

    In a 1960 interview, Rogers said she was “terribly absorbed” in the task of “bringing form into an absolutely pure essence by means of color, so the form almost seems to vanish, so I have almost pure color.” She believed color to be the “most fleeting” element in nature: “I want to seize it.”

    Rogers’s charcoal sketches reflect Cubist influence. (Photo MaryRogersArt.com)

    For gallerist Heller, it’s Rogers’s willingness to experiment that is the most enduring and appealing aspect of her work.

    “I like that she’s not a Xerox machine, that the pieces don’t all look the same,” Heller says. “In this day and age, artists often need to make money, and they become formulaic. They just repeat variations on the theme. Mary Rogers didn’t. Each painting has its own identity.”

    Late Recognition

    The Event: “Mary Rogers (1911-1974): Pure Color and Joy”
    The time: Through Oct. 3, Friday-Sunday, 2-8 p.m.
    The place: Julie Heller East Gallery, 465 Commercial St., Provincetown
    The cost: Free

    MUSEUMS

    A Walk Through ‘Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper’

    Canonical works from PAAM’s permanent collection

    By

    It’s convenient that three of the most influential artists in Provincetown history share the same initial. It makes for a catchy exhibition name. It’s also convenient that the Provincetown Art Association and Museum owns extraordinary works by all three.

    “Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper: Preserving a Legacy” is on view through August 29. Works by Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, and Edward Hopper are interspersed with others by their students (though Hopper is described as “more of an influence” than a teacher).

    Landscape is a 25-by-30-inch oil on panel by Hans Hofmann. (Photo courtesy PAAM)

    In the exhibit notes, curator Christine McCarthy writes, “If we were to imagine the trajectory of art movements in Provincetown as a tree, there will be at least three distinct branches on view.” First, she writes, is Hawthorne’s plein-air painting; second is Hofmann’s abstract expressionism; and third is Hopper’s realism.

    Though this is not untrue, if anything, the exhibit shows how these branches are intertwined, like vines crawling up an old building. The barn on Miller Hill Road in which Hawthorne established his Cape Cod School of Art was later used by Hofmann. Hawthorne and Hopper both studied with William Merritt Chase. All three focused on light and color.

    Girl Sewing No. 1 is a 29.5-by-24-inch oil on board by Charles Hawthorne. (Photo Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    Having works by Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper all together reveals their synergies. On the first wall is Hawthorne’s Girl Sewing No. 1. The blue of the girl’s ankle and the red of the book on the table charge forward. In the pattern of the rug, Hawthorne has hidden his signature. Compare to Hofmann’s Color Poem No. 2 on the facing wall.

    Color Poem No. 2 is 30-by-24-inch oil on panel by Hans Hofmann. (Photo courtesy PAAM)

    Another highlight of this wall is Hawthorne’s unfinished Portrait of Houghton Cranford Smith. (It is paired with a very ordinary street scene by Smith, who was Hawthorne’s student.) This painting gives an unusual, almost intimate, look at Hawthorne. The dry and loose brushstrokes veer towards abstraction. Squint at Hawthorne’s colorful Figures on a Pier and it could almost be Hofmann.

    There is also a lovely untitled still life by Henry Hensche on this wall. Hensche carried on the legacy of Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art. There are also works by Hawthorne’s students Max Bohm, Richard E. Miller, William H. Johnson, and John Noble.

    A detail from His First Voyage by Charles Hawthorne. (Photo Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    On the far wall is Hawthorne’s His First Voyage, which the Independent analyzed in detail last year. It is placed in conversation with Edwin Dickinson’s Beatrice Zucker (Dickinson was Hawthorne’s student). Comparing the faces — specifically the eyes — is haunting. Also on this wall are Hawthorne’s monumental Still Life with Fish and Dickinson’s understated Grey Jug and Half Lemon, which provide a counterpoint.

    A detail from Beatrice Zucker by Edwin Dickinson. (Photo Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    The Hans Hofmann wall is a little disappointing, as PAAM owns only a few of his small paintings. But there are some beauties: Color Poem No. 2, Landscape, and Spring. There are also two excellent abstract ink drawings on paper. The works by Hofmann’s students — Selina Trieff, Robert Henry, Nieves Billmyer, and Lee Krasner — are superb, but feel a bit arbitrarily chosen. Hofmann had so many students.

    The Hopper wall consists of studies for paintings such as Cape Cod Morning, Sea Watchers, and A Woman in the Sun. One of the drawings for the latter is especially beautiful. A statuesque nude is carefully shaded in graphite. The muscular curvature of the knee and buttocks is accomplished in a minimum of strokes. The studies for Meal Time and The Sacrament of Sex are also haunting. A glass case contains letters to Edward and Josephine Hopper pertaining to the establishment of the National Seashore, though these would benefit from some explanatory exhibit notes.

    A detail from an untitled study for A Woman in the Sun by Edward Hopper. (Photo Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    The strength of “Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper” is that it is made up entirely of works in PAAM’s permanent collection — an amazing feat. But that is also a limitation. It would be spectacular to pair one of Hopper’s drawings with a painting. Or to include a monumental Hofmann painting to rival Hawthorne’s His First Voyage.

    Instead, the exhibit feels a bit like an assortment of appetizers — tasty, well-crafted — but missing a main course. Then again, especially if you feel like grazing, “Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper” is certainly worth seeing.

    Founding Painters 

    The event: “Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper: Preserving a Legacy”

    The time: Thursday through Sunday, hour-long slots between noon and 5 p.m.

    The place: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St.

    The cost: $12.50 at paam.org

    Three Hs at PAAM 

    By

    Drop by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St., for “Hawthorne, Hofmann, and Hopper,” an exhibit of works by the three masters. It opens Friday, June 25th and runs through August 29th.

    Charles Webster Hawthorne and Hans Hofmann were both influential teachers. Though Edward Hopper wasn’t a teacher, his work “will be displayed as more of an influence on other artists,” according to the description. The exhibit also includes works by Edwin Dickinson, Robert Henry, Lillian Orlowsky, Houghton Cranford Smith, and Selina Trieff.

    The museum is open Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $12.50 at paam.org.

    Tales of Hofmann

    By

    Rob DuToit teaches the third in his series of online art history lectures via Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill on Tuesday, May 18th, from 10 a.m. to noon. This one focuses on nature in painting from Hans Hofmann to the present day. Registration is pay-what-you-can at castlehill.org.

    Figure It Out

    By

    Laura Shabott and Alana Barrett are teaching an online class, via the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, on Hans Hofmann’s push-pull theory. It will take place Sunday, February 7th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. “With the figure as our muse and prompt, we will explore how color and shape respond to the figure through the lens of modernist principles,” says the course description. Registration is $150 at paam.org.

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