Florine Stettheimer ~ Contemporary of Duchamp, O'Keeffe and Stein

Those brown eyes of Marcel Duchamp will pierce right through you and find your true identity, resistance is futile. Florine Stettheimer may not have met with financial rewards from her artistic work during her lifetime but artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Demuth all thought highly of her work. And Gertrude Stein benefitted from the success of Virgil Thomson's production of Four Saints and Three Acts based on Stein's libretto. Key to that success was Stettheimer unique set design.

Duchamp

Duchamp spent considerable time with Florine and her two sisters attending their Salon and giving them French lessons when he first arrived in America during World War I. The sharing of ideas during those years of friendship makes it easy to understand his affinity for Florine's symbol filled paintings such as the Cathedral series and her many portraits. Duchamp organized the 1946 retrospective of Stettheimer's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

O'Keeffe

Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe also gathered at the Stettheimer apartment. “She put into visible form in her own way, something that they all were, a way of life that is going and cannot happen again, something that has been alive in our city.” In 1938, Stettheimer and O'Keefe were the only women artists whose work was included in the exhibition of American art organized by the Museum of Modern Art to travel to the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. Stettheimer portrayal of Stieglitz has O'Keeffe appearing out of the background. It hangs in Nashville so if you're ever there you'll be able to see it in all of the glory of Stettheimer's color palette.

Stein
Stettheimer received much critical acclaim in 1934 for her work as set designer on Virgil Thomson's opera of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. Stettheimer utilized cellophane extensively in the scenery and costume design. Unlike most designers, Stettheimer created little figures to show how the costumes should be designed. This little maquette reflects the all black cast Thomson used to portray the European saints. It was after the success of Four Saints that Gertrude Stein returned to America for her lecture tour. Thomson's opera with Stettheimer's sets played a major role in Stein's level of celebrity.

At The Met with Eve and Florine

Last week I went to the Met with my Aunt Eve. Eve lives in New York, I grew up in a tiny Oregon town. I thought of her often and how someday I would visit her in the Big Apple- imagining a city as ripe and sweet as something that grew on the trees outside our house. I thought I would go the day I graduated from high school, but until last week I had never visited Eve. She's painted all the walls in her house, and her fireplace and shutters. She says this is the fourth time she has re-primed and painted the hearth:

We went to the Met, she wore at least a dozen colors and I was head to toe in black, she threw a crazy scark of me, so we would match. We wandered for hours, until we came to the Stettheimer wall:

I read the wall panel for my favorite of Florine's paintings, The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue:

Wall Panel: In each of her Cathedrals, Stettheimer uses architecture to organize her composition. In this case it resembles a real Cathedral, perhaps Saint Patrick's Church on Fifth Avenue, although the newlyweds emerge from underneath a bright red canopy and matching carpet that seem to belong more to the Plaza Hotel than to a church. All around this central scene, activities depicting other aspects of conspicuous consumption abound, seemingly unaware of the wedding taking place. This wild activity energizes the canvas just as it energizes Fifth Avenue on a Saturday afternoon in December.
I didn't say anything, and neither did Eve. We just looked. For a long time.
Later I was thinking about the painting, we were sitting on the couch together.

I said, remember that big painting with all the colors, on the wall- there were four of them- they were street scenes of New York. She nodded. I said, I think I would like to write about those for my blog this week. She frowned, I didn't like those paintings she said. Why? I asked. There was nothing I could find to like about those, but I loved the frames.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of Myself

Florine Stettheimer really didn't like to have photos taken of her. So unlike her sisters Ettie (writer) and Carrie (crafter of dollhouses), there are not many photographic images of her available. To make up for that though, Florine did include herself in many of her paintings and did at least one self-portrait – Portrait of Myself, today's lead image. Florine lived a life of privilege. She and her sisters spent much of their lives in Manhattan and frequently visited Europe where Florine studied with various artists and schools. Her only solo exhibition in 1916 was somewhat of a disappointment to her so she chose to exhibit only occasionally in group shows after that. As a result not many were aware of her work while she was alive and after her death it has only been recently that she is being recognized at major museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art usually has an entire gallery wall devoted to her work. And of course, the Portland Art Museum has her Portrait of My Teacher. Below are photos of Florine (one of the very few in existence) and one of each of her two sisters.

Florine Stettheimer, ~ 1920

Ettie Stettheimer, 1932

Carrie Stettheimer, 1932

The three sisters entertained on a grand scale having parties and afternoon salons in their Manhattan apartment. Some of their well known friends were Carl Van Vechten, Francis Picabia, Leo Stein, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth, and Marsden Hartley. Stettheimer painted a number of their portraits including these two of Marcel Duchamp and Carl Van Vechten.
Marcel Duchamp, 1923

Carl Van Vechten, 1922
Most of us are more familiar with Duchamp than we are with Van Vechten. Picking out the symbols she used in Duchamp's portrait, I found reference to his cultural allegiances to both the United States and France and his love of chess. The woman in that painting it turns out isn't Stettheimer but his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. And of course the clock most probably is symbolizing his fascination with time and space.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Cathedrals of Broadway

Florine Stettheimer painted her Cathedrals series over the course of fifteen years. All four of the paintings are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection although they may not all be hanging on the gallery walls at any one time. Cathedrals of Broadway is a perennial favorite and shows Stettheimer's distinct style. Once you've seen a Stettheimer how could you not recognize the bright colors and figure filled images as being hers. She paints a New York that is much like it is today, a city that never sleeps. In Cathedrals of Broadway painted in 1929, about the same time as the Portland Art Museum's Portrait of My Teacher this week's piece, you can take in a time of change. Silent movies are on the way out and are shown with the word Silence roped off. The talkies have arrived and are symbolized by the newsreel clip in the top center showing the beginning of baseball season. As she did in many of her paintings, Stettheimer included herself. In Cathedrals of Broadway, she is entering on the painting's left with her older sister Stella and her cousin Walter Wagner.

Cathedrals of Broadway inspired poet Naomi Shihab Nye to writed "The World, Starring You" that was included in Heart to Heart a book of poems inspired by Twentieth Century American Art. Nye is quoted in the introduction of Heart to Heart as she talks about Stettheimer's work ... "her scenes woke me up with their beautifully luscious shapes and colors of flowers and figures, and gave me a deep feeling of closeness with the times in which she lived." Here is Nye's poem that accompanied Stettheimer's Cathedrals of Broadway.

The World, Starring You
Naomi Shihab Nye

Florine, we would live inside your colors! Red joy,
golden rushes of hope, the 1929 we will never see.
Names of radiant theaters flame your sky – RIALTO – ROXY –
citizens mingling in pearls, top hats, inside a glittering flare.
Where have they gone? a ticket booth waits like a small domed mosque.
An usher – or is he a policeman ? – wearing white gloves and yellow cape
pivots between welcome and EXIT. Even the mayor looks smart.
Frills and flgs, banners, tiny dancing sprites . . .
You painted the flurry and flux,
abundant addresses of Broadway welcoming crowds.
I like the fanfare, the dreamy dazzle, canopies of light!

Florine, the early 20th century chimed like a chord,
but we are hobblers at the millennium, cleaning out our drawers,
nothing looks enough like you.
The age of gracious penmanship was yours.
Balance your globe on tipsy clock,
lift the darkness with arches and stars.
And ever, ever, a roped-off fluted SILENCE at the center.
Take us where you were and where you are.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of My Teacher

Yesterday's post was to honor Jeanne-Claude, wife and partner to Christo and all of their mutual works. Those works are not housed in museums but in the collective memory of us all and to some extent so is the work of Florine Stettheimer. Unlike Jeanne-Claude whose work will always remain in the memories of those who saw it on site or are looking at in print or more probably on-line, some of Stettheimer's works are hung in museums. This was not always the case. Born into a family of money and privilege, Stettheimher pursued art, studied art in Europe and upon her return to the United States at the outbreak of World War I, mounted a solo exhibition that did not meet with financial or critical favor. Stung by rejection, you might imagine that she would have put away her brushes and gone to her room, but no she continued to paint, changed her style – painting in a unique modern and some would say feminine motif and only showing in select small group exhibitions. Her instructions upon her death were for her heirs and assigns to destroy her ouevre. Fortunately for all of us they ignored that instruction. As a result the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as countless other museums have any number of Stettheimers on exhibit.

Stettheimer paints with bright full colors as you can see in Portrait of My Teacher, Fraulein Sophie von Prieser. She has a calligraphic use of line that shows itself in this painting with the inclusion of Fraulein Preiser's name in the fence. Looking closer at the painting and you'll see a portrait of Stettheimer as a young girl above the mantel, sitting next to a Hellenic bust. That bust comes down through the ages looks timeless compared to the aged look of Fraulein Prieser. And on the small table is a framed portrait that some say is Stettheimer herself. The colors in the painting range from deep blues and greens to bright reds oranges and yellows. Stettheimer paints an optimistic view in 1929 that continued through the Great Depression and on into WW II. She died in 1944 before the end of the great conflict. Her paintings live on though and are the favorites of many including Matthew Stadler who wrote about her in the online zine Doppelganger back in 2006.

Not Stettheimer But an Homage to Jeanne-Claude

Jeanne-Claude ... 13 June 1935 - 19 November 2009

Thank you DK Row for your article about Jeanne-Claude and her visit to Portland on Oregonlive linked here. More here. And here. And here.

"In their beckoning but impenetrable Other-ness, their aloofness from whatever meanings we would try to attach to them, The Gates always reminded me of that jar in the Wallace Stevens poem, the one that "did not give of bird or bush/like nothing else in Tennessee." .. Richard Lacayo

Florine Stettheimer ~ Portrait of My Teacher

This week's selection at Fifty Two Pieces carries a rather long title. Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) painted this image of her teacher and entitled it – Portrait of My Teacher, Fraulein Sophie von Prieser. It's a long title and the image is a beautiful homage to a woman who instructed another woman when she was growing up. Stettheimer painted this in 1929 when she was fifty eight, about the same age I was when I first saw this work of art. Portrait of My Teacher is one of a number of portraits of people from Stettheimer's childhood who she painted during the years of 1928 and 1929. There's a great deal going on in this painting. Even without being in the gallery with it, you'll be able to scan, quantify and qualify a great deal of what Stettheimer produced in this portrait. Start with the thought that there is not just one portrait. How many portraits are there represented?

Amy went through the Metropolitan in New York today. One of their galleries is filled with Stettheimers. Amy is scheduled to be weighing in later in the week on this woman painter from the beginning of the 20th century.