Vacation to the High Museum in Atlanta

For a few hours, I commuted to Atlanta with my friend Susan, stopped worrying about Mom and politics, and learned once again at the High Museum's exhibitions "Outliers" and "Winnie the Pooh," that the pleasures of art begin with the question, "Oh!  What's this?" and deepen with more questions, "Why did the artist do it that way?  How did the artist do that?"

First, we examined three "waves" of artists the High calls "outliers," or self-taught, paired with trained "vanguard" artists who admired their work.  The "second wave" featured works from the late-1960s and the 1970s that were a vexation to my spirit; likewise the "third wave" from the past couple of decades, though Kara Walker's series of superimposed silhouettes of African American figures on 1880s etchings of the Civil War was fascinating in conception and execution.

But the first "wave" of so-called "primitive" artists made us laugh and marvel.  The earliest works in the exhibit were by Edward Hicks, including his biggest hit, "The Peaceable Kingdom."  Besides appreciating the vision from Isaiah of lions, wolves, lambs, and cattle making nice, we enjoyed how the painted shoreline shows through the image of William Penn making peace with Native Americans, evidence that Hicks added this latter-day Lion and Lamb image as an afterthought.  Other works of his were new to us, slices of life as he saw it in the early 1800s.  In one, we see in the foreground a herd of cattle, each one solid and differentiated with personality, looking placidly at the viewer; against a background of rolling hills and barn, we might miss the men, barely sketched in, who gesture in regard to the herd.  On another large canvas, Hicks preserved images of home, a textile mill, barns, river, animals, and one guy watching it all with a telescope from a clearing on the hill above the manor house.

We enjoyed wood sculptures by Jose Delores Lopez on the theme of Adam and Eve. One has them in carnal embrace, but she's looking over her shoulder.  In another, the tree's twisting branches camouflage the twisted serpent; while Eve reaches up to the forbidden fruit, Adam hangs his head as he reaches out for what Eve has -- "submissive," Susan said. Or maybe mournful?

Self-taught artist Horace Pippin (1888-1946) produced a couple images we loved of African Americans' homes in Pennsylvania.  One shows the boy on the left, kneeling in prayer at his bed; snow gathering in dark panes in the center; a woman sewing in her rocking chair at the right.  Another picture made us laugh out loud: no people in sight, but around sixteen ceramic dogs are collected on the mantel, arranged by height to mount towards an elaborate clock.  Details of the rug, chairs, even the grain of the wood paneling, are all lovingly preserved.



Pippin was an influence on "vanguard" artist Jacob Lawrence, whose wonderful picture "Sidewalk Drawings" didn't attract my attention.  Susan called me back to appreciate the perspective: We're looking down on kids making chalk drawings on black top.  Suddenly, I was enjoying layer on layer of fun images and incongruous juxtapositions.  [See photo]


                                                         We also loved "American Interior" by Charles Sheeler, 1934.  There's no story here, no person to identify with, not even a single perspective.  But, once more, we get the loving details of rug patterns and textures.  There's the artist's exuberance, where sunlight causes a corner of the whicker chair to jump off the canvas at us.  In the vase, we see reflections of the room, and, through those, we see the picture on the plate!  The more we look, the more we see to enjoy.  [See photo]

After that exhibit, we moved on to see first drafts of E. H. Shepard's drawings for A. A. Milne's classic children's books.  I admit that I've barely given Pooh a thought since I leafed through the books during "nap time" before age six. I couldn't read, but actor Maurice Evans read several stories aloud on a pair of LPs, and those I played over and over.  The exhibit's commentary helped me to appreciate some elements in the collaboration between writer and artist, how body language expresses each character, how sequences of drawings could prolong the comic effect in Milne's narrative, how the drawings sometimes helped young minds to appreciate irony in the words.





I noticed a preponderance of drawings from behind characters, a choice that makes sense: they're moving forward in their story, not at us.  Facing away, their postures tell the story.  Besides, the rumps are funny.  Again, we saw where Shepard erased, enlarged, and wrote notes to himself. [See two photos, by Susan]

After the High, Susan and I continued our self-education in the ways of MARTA, taking the train to Decatur.  It's like a college campus for grown-ups!  At Leon's, we enjoyed tasty vegetarian sandwiches, hummus, and midday cocktails.  [See photo]