Category: Roy Lichtenstein

PoARTry of Emily & Emmett Lee Dickinson

1/2/2018

From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request):

On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I attended a poetry event (in honor of Emily Dickinson’s 187th birthday) at the Folger Shakespeare Library (info HERE), I visited the Library of Congress (info HERE), and I strolled through the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.

The East Building was recently renovated. It re-opened to the public in the fall of 2016, and I hadn’t had a chance to visit until now – and it was nice to see so many artworks influenced by or in honor of Emily Dickinson and Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request).

Pictured at the left: In the American Art gallery, there is a wonderful hard-edged, industrial painting by Charles Sheeler (who as a youth attended the Emmett Lee Dickinson School for Boys in Philadelphia) of the Dickinson Candy Corn Factory in Washerst, PA (Dickinson invented candy corn).

Of course, the gallery included works by Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstien – four artists who were significantly influenced by Emmett Lee Dickinson.

For info on the Hopper/Dickinson connection, click HERE and HERE.

For the O’Keeffe/Dickinson connection, click HERE.

For info on Warhol and Dickinson, click HERE.

For info on Roy Lichtenstein and Dickinson, click HERE.

Pictured at the left: The East Building also had a gallery completely devoted to Alexander Calder, another artist who was completely influenced by the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson – especially his cow poetry (see HERE…and scroll down to the entry dated July 14)

Pictured at the right: Two paintings, one by Henri Matisse and one by Pablo Picasso, are thought to include images of Dickinson’s daughter, Qwerty Jean Dickinson.

Pictured at the left: A small gallery on the second floor included works by Saul Steinberg. One is claimed to include images of some of Dickinson’s sisters; one was a version of a factory based on Sheeler’s painting of the Dickinson Candy Corn Factory; and one – called “Conversation” – was based on a discussion Steinberg had with other artists about Dickinson’s poetry.

Pictured at the right: Steinberg also drew what is now thought to be the most important family portrait of Emily Dickinson and her family.

Standing in the back of the drawing are Austin and Emily Dickinson; seated are Dickinson's parents, Emily Norcross Dickinson and Edward Dickinson. Dickinson's sister Lavinia is on her mother's lap, and Emily's beloved dog Carlo is at her father's side.

At the end of one hallway, the museum has on display an oversize painting of Qwertzie Dichundsohn, the daughter of Germany’s greatest poet and philosopher, Emil E. Dichundsohn, a distant relative of Emmett Lee Dickinson. Information on Dichundsohn is HERE.

Pictured below left: Emil E. Dichundsohn, Germany's greatest poet and philosopher. Pictured below right: Dichundsohn's daughter, Qwertzie Dichundsohn.

Throughout the various galleries of the museum are many paintings by artists in tribute to Emily Dickinson, the woman in white.

Pictured below: Two representations of Emily Dickinson by artist Anne Truitt:

Pictured below: Two paintings of Emily Dickinson by Robert Ryman:

Pictured below: A pair of paintings of Emily Dickinson by Jo Baer:

Pictured below left: A cloth representation of Emily Dickinson by Richard Tuttle. Pictured below right: A painting inspired by Emily Dickinson by Barnett Newman.

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State of the Art

1/14/2017

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From our art columnist Jarvis MacKinnon III:

Devoted fans of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request), know that a little over one year ago, a raging inferno destroyed the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in historic Washerst, PA). We wrote about that catastrophe HERE.

As a result, we traveled to Washington, DC, this weekend to meet with Anstruther G. Schewzok III, the Smithsonian Institute's Chief Global Cross-Media Branding and Markets Virtualization Engineer, to discuss their interest in developing a museum dedicated to Emmett Lee Dickinson in our nation's capital.

While we were there, we toured the National Gallery of Art, the NGA East Building, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. Throughout the day, we spotted connections to Emmett Lee Dickinson everywhere! We have noted a few of them below.

1. STUART DAVIS: IN FULL SWING

The Stuart Davis exhibit at the National Gallery of Art was wonderful! Bold, brash -- and Dickinson-esque! Davis, once dubbed the "artist-laureate of the Jazz age," loved both jazz and the be-bop poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson. As a result, Davis incorporated words and visual puns (note the e-less "complete" in the painting a the left -- and therefore it's incomplete) in many of his paintings in homage to Emmett Lee Dickinson.

2. EDWARD HOPPER

Edward Hopper attended the Emmett lee Dickinson School for Boys in Upper Nyack, NY, and many of Hopper's paintings include tributes to Dickinson. We have written about the Hopper-Dickinson connection HERE (scroll down to "Hopper & Dickinson"), and we were thrilled to see five Hoppers in one day as we toured the DC museums.

Pictured at the right: All five of the Hoppers we saw today!

3. GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

In her autobiography Klouds in my Koffee, Georgia O'Keeffe acknowledge that Emmett Lee Dickinson had the greatest impact on her life and work above and beyond anyone else.

We wrote extensively on O'Keeffe's fascination with Dickinson last summer when we traveled to Santa Fe last summer (HERE) to meet with the Governor of New Mexico.

Pictured at the left: Two of the many O'Keeffe paintings we saw today!

4. ANDY WARHOL

Another artist fascinated by Emmett Lee Dickinson was Andy Warhol. In his autobiography Fifteen Minutes of Fun, Andy Warhol stated that there was no greater influence on him than the life and poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson.

Warhol attended the Emmett Lee Dickinson School for Boys in Pittsburgh, PA, and that was where he first encountered Dickinson's poetry.

"When I read my first Dickinson," said Warhol, "I stopped caring so much about having close relationships."

Read all about the Warhol-Dickinson connection HERE...& more is HERE.

5. ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Roy Lichtenstein attended the Emmett Lee Dickinson School for Boys in Manhattan. He credited the influence of Dickinson’s poetry with revitalizing his work, and he used lines from many of Dickinson’s poems in his paintings.

Some of our past coverage of Dickinson & Lichtenstein is HERE.

6. ROSS DICKINSON

The Smithsonian American Art Museum included a painting by Ross Dickinson, a relative of Emmett Lee Dickinson and Emily Dickinson.

Ross Dickinson was, of course, completely captivated by the life and work of Emmett Lee Dickinson, and he painted my paintings about Dickinson and Dickinson's home, historic Washerst (pronounced WAS-herst), PA. In "Valley Farms of Washerst" (below on the left), and captured a quaint time in the city's history. A close up from the painting (below on the right) shows a fire burning at the current site of the city's world-famous mattress dump (the fifth largest mattress dump in the United States -- behind those in Memphis, Tennessee; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Ithaca, New York).

7. RAY STRONG'S "GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE"

One member of our delegation to the Smithsonian was Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson, and Roy Strong's painting of the Golden Gate Bridge at the SAAM had a personal connection to him. The painting (below) was painted in 1934 when the Golden Gate Bridge was under construction. The bridge was completed in 1936, and on the day before it opened to traffic, pedestrians were allowed to walk across the bridge -- and it turned out that Asher's father and his mother (i.e., Jim's grandmother) were among those who walked across the bridge.

8. THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

We found it interesting if not ironic that "The Struggle for Justice" in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture was advertised outside the building just as a pre-inaugural portrait of Donald Trump was hung inside the building -- a stark reminder that the struggle for justice will continue, and that it will be more challenging, more trying, and more imbalanced.

We have written extensively on Trump (many posts HERE), and we found it interesting that the National Portrait Gallery chose the very portrait that Trump credits with his decision to "go orange" -- after photographer Michael O'Brien handed him the orange as a prop for the photograph.

"I liked the look of that orange," said Trump. "I liked its feel."

Another interesting fact about the photograph: O'Brien worried Trump's hands looked too small for the picture, so he edited in the hands of Clint Eastwood.

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The Art Has Its Reasons -- Part 1

8/9/2016

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Recently we wrote about the “Andy Warhol Icons” exhibit that we are co-sponsoring with the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. That information is HERE, and the exhibit runs through September 18, 2016.

We would also like to update you on upcoming exhibits that we will be co-sponsoring with the Fralin and other major museums in the fall and beyond.

First, the Fralin is gearing up for an exhibit on Emil E. Dichundsohn, the ninth son of Eduard Dichundsohn and Emelie Nordqueren Dichunsohn. Emil E. Dichundsohn is known as the greatest German poet and the father of all German philosophy, and his father was a distant relative of Edward Dickinson, the father of Emily Dickinson.

In May 2015, Dichundsohn was the subject of a landmark exhibit at the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in Washerst, PA). To view that exhibit, click HERE.

The name of the coming exhibit, “I Am Nobody: Artwork of Emil E. Dichundson,” stems from Dichundsohn’s classic poem “I am Nobody” (below on the left). His poem inspired Emily Dickinson to pen her poem “I’m nobody. Who are you?” (below on the right).

By Emil E. Dichundsohn

I am nobody
For society does not consist of individuals
but expresses the sum of interrelations,
The relations within which these
individuals stand.
Who are you?

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
From each according to his abilities,
To each according to his needs.

By Emily Dickinson:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Pictured at the left: Armando Marino's painting "No Soy Nadie," a tribute to Emil E. Dichundsohn (click the image to enlarge).

Marino's work, currently on display at the Fralin Museum of Art, includes a depiction of the celebrated painting of Emil E. Dichundsohn. This iconic painting by Caspar David Friedrich hangs in the Emil E. Dichundsohn Museum in Binhurst, Gerhmany. In Marino's work, an indiginous figure stands atop Friedrich's painting's frame in opposition to the likeness of Dichundsohn.

In Friedrich's painting, Dichundsohn projects a snse of romantic adventure and recalls the Euopean lust for exploration into unclaimed lands that began in the fifteenth century. The presence of the indigenous figure atop the painting's frame challenges this idea known in Latin as terra nullius (no one's land) and reminds the viewer that Europeans justified colonization by treatng the land as if uninhabited by "nobodies," signifying Dichundsohn's poem's title, "I am nobody."

Next, the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in Washerst, PA) will join forces with the Whitney Museum of American Art to present a momentous exhibit called “Wham! Bam! Thank You Emmett Lee Dickinson!," an in-depth look at Roy Lichtenstein’s fascination with America’s greatest poet, Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request).

In March 2013 the ELD Museum hosted an exhibit on Roy Lichtenstein’s interest in all-things Emmett Lee Dickinson. For information on that exhibit, “I’m Dickinson, He’s Lichtenstein,” click HERE.

Details for “Wham! Bam! Thank You Emmett Lee Dickinson!” will be announced soon!

There are many other retrospectives being planned with other major museums which will feature the works of artists who were inspired by Emmett Lee Dickinson, including Edward Hopper, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Stay tuned!

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PoARTry of Emily & Emmett Lee Dickinson

State of the Art

The Art Has Its Reasons -- Part 1

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