‘Familiar Surroundings’ Brings American Scene Prints to Kalamazoo
Rejecting the abstract trends of the 1920s, artists of what came to be known as the American School instead experimented with existential treatments of place.
You can see works by Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, John Marin, Martin Lewis, Reginald Marsh and others in Familiar Surroundings at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, an exhibition, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. It runs through April 10, 2011.
For example, in John Marin’s 1932 etching Night in New York, a young woman pauses on her way to an evening out on a fine New York City night as she hears the melody emerging from a radio store. In the shadows, a young man flirts with a another woman in a night full of possibilities. The Australian-born Marin emigrated to New York in 1900 and created his best work there.
However, Familiar Surroundings’ jewel is Edward Hopper’s 1922 etching, East Side Interior. A young girl in New York City’s grimy East Side becomes absorbed in the life outside her tenement window, neglecting her sewing machine. Is someone about to mount the stoop? Is her interest simple curiosity, a diversion from piecework, or family responsibility? Or is a beau about to come calling? How delightful to wonder!
Also included is Grant Wood’s 1937 lithograph, Seedtime and Harvest, a cheery work that seems light years away from the artist's iconic American Gothic. Like the other works in the Familiar Surroundings, the lithograph comes from the museum’s own collection: The work was given by Mr. and Mrs. Larry B. Stainton in 1974 in memory of Alice L. Stainton and Leslie D. Harrop.
Familiar Surroundings should also prove familiar in more ways than one: It contains a work by Philip Evergood, once artistic director at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
Posted by Ivonne Rovira
