An art exhibition can be seen simply as a collection of paintings and sculptures. Or in the case of American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection, now on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art, an exhibition can be a profound statement about what defines a nation and its people.
SAMA Director Emily Bellew Neff introduced American Made during a Thursday preview for members of the media, saying that while the more than 100 works of art on view can be enjoyed as a “visual feast,” rich layers of meaning await.
“If you want to dig a little deeper, you can also … ask questions like what kind of America is pictured? Or what does it mean to be American-made?” The exhibition, Neff said, “can tell — as is appropriate about American art — a million stories.”
Lesser-known names
American Made draws from the collection of Diane DeMell Jacobsen, who for decades has studiously researched examples of American art made over a 250-year period. Though famous names such as Mary Cassatt, Robert Henri and John Singer Sargent are represented in the collection, DeMell Jacobsen saw an opportunity to deepen understanding of what constitutes American art by recognizing the rich ethnic panoply of the U.S.
One painting by Allan Rohan Crite essentializes DeMell Jacobsen’s effort to look beyond the aristocratic portraiture and grand landscapes typical of American art displayed in most museums.
Crite’s 1935 oil painting Play at Dark captures a scene typical of his Boston neighborhood, described on an informational placard as “a space where men and women, Black and white, young and old, intersected in parks and on sidewalks and stoops.”
As the traveling exhibition’s local curator Regina Palm explained, Crite was vocal about stereotypical depictions of Black Americans. “He wanted people to be painted as everyday Americans,” she said. “That’s why we have this lively, beautiful bustling scene of the Roxbury neighborhood.”
The inclusion of Crite’s work along with other lesser-known artists of color and women artists in her collection was not her initial purpose, DeMell Jacobsen said.
“When I started to acquire [artworks by] a very broad, diverse group of artists, it wasn’t a goal to have diverse representation. I was buying things that I thought were wonderful pieces of art,” she said.
However, as her collecting eye developed, “I recognized that there are many overlooked wonderful artists, and I would like to include them in the collection.”
She said her status as a businesswoman sparked interest in the careers of women artists such as San Francisco portrait painter Elizabeth Williams, represented in the show by an 1870 self-portrait and an intricately detailed still life, and Boston painter Elizabeth Okie Paxton, represented by the still life The Kitchen Table of 1925.
Paxton sacrificed her painting career in support of her spouse, William McGregor Paxton, also a painter, who went on to receive wider recognition and who is included in the show with an 1899 wedding portrait of Elizabeth.
Familiar subjects
One feat of the DeMell Jacobsen collection is to echo the subject matter of revered European artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Edgar Degas in masterful works by artists mostly unknown to a wider American public.
Sunflowers, a favorite subject of Van Gogh’s, greet museum visitors on the show’s opening wall. However, the 1880s painting Sunflowers by Charles Ethan Porter is rendered in finer brushstrokes and a more somber palette than the Dutch master’s famously thick, many-hued impasto — and contains a different meaning.
Palm explained that sunflowers held special significance for African Americans of the era. The abundant, hardy flower represented tenacity, resourcefulness and grit amid struggles “because sunflowers could really thrive with very minimal resources, and they always strove to reach the sun, to turn toward the sun.”
A 1930 bronze sculpture of three dancing figures by Bessie Potter Vonnoh titled Allégresse recalls the ballet dancer sculptures of Degas but was inspired by ancient Greek art. The inclusion of a standing central figure uplifting the hands of two dancers suggests a supportive role of women inspiring the expression of other women.
A stunningly vivid painting of Parisian nightlife by Loïs Mailou Jones, Paris le Soir of 1950, is a reminder that Black American and Afro-Caribbean artists and intellectuals found a welcoming milieu in the European cultural capital even as they confronted racism and hostility in their home countries.
All Americans
DeMell Jacobsen’s unorthodox approach to art collecting has included allowing young family members and friends to help determine what examples of art to purchase.
She told the story of bringing a precocious 5-year-old grandson of a friend along to a Sotheby’s auction. The youngster took a liking to an unusual painting by Mary Cassatt, among the better-known 19th-century American impressionists, and even recognized what made the painting unusual.
Baby Charles Looking Over His Mother’s Shoulder depicts a mother in a bright orange satin dress holding an infant, her back turned to the viewer. The mother’s face and baby’s backside are just visible in a mirror painted in the far upper right corner.
DeMell Jacobsen explained that the 5-year-old told her why he liked the painting: “He said, ‘Well, I like the orange dress. I like the fact her back is turned to us. I like to be able to see the baby. But what I really like is … that you can see the baby’s butt.’” She bought the painting.
Chow Choy of 1914, a portrait of a young Asian American girl by Robert Henri, is positioned prominently in the exhibition and represents DeMell Jacobsen’s intentionality in selecting art that depicts subjects of color.
DeMell Jacobsen recalled a museum visit with a niece adopted from Korea and how, after looking at all the portraits, her niece asked, “How come nobody here looks like me?” DeMell Jacobsen said it opened her eyes to the “need to represent all Americans. … That’s why many of the paintings that you see [in the exhibition] represent the full depth and breadth of American people. And that’s what makes our country great.”
American Made is on view through Jan. 7, accessible with regular museum admission. The schedule of events related to the exhibition include Envisioning Blackness with Lisa Farrington, a talk on Dec. 5 featuring the American art historian and scholar of the Harlem Renaissance, and a Jan. 5 talk with Neff, Palm, and former SAMA Chief Curator William Keyes Rudolph, who contributed to curation of the exhibition.
