Junius R. Sloan, “Farm of Seymour Sloan,” 1866. From “In Quest of Beauty,” Braeuer Art Museum.
I have a confession to make. I didn’t set out for this newsletter to be a place where I would write about things I like. However, my only two posts have been about what I think are underappreciated things: the movie “Spaceship” (aka “Naked Space” and “The Creature Wasn’t Nice”) and the novels of Travis McGee.
It’s fun to write about what we like, but I originally created this newsletter to examine broader currents at work in the world of film, music, and literature, and how in my view aesthetic worth has been abandoned in favor of two measures: commercial success and adherence to certain kinds of moral and cultural righteousness. It’s my intention to be at times contrarian; for example, I largely dislike “The Bear,” and perhaps at some point will pull that dislike into a coherent post.
But there was something else I didn’t intend to write about, and that was the news. I read newsletters that are almost like media watchdogs, reprinting large sections of news stories and responding to the coverage. I often like these, but it wasn’t a model I was interested in exploring. Until this morning, when I spotted in the Arts section of the slim Saturday edition of The New York Times, there was an article titled “‘Conservative’ art or not?”
It’s about a small Lutheran Indiana university (Valparaiso) trying to sell two paintings to fund the renovation of a freshman dorm. The paintings are by Georgia O’Keeffe and Childe Hassam (one by each; they weren’t joint efforts), so it’s conceivable that the sale would put a good deal of money into the university’s coffers. The problem is that the university can’t sell them because they were bought with money gifted to the university for the purpose of buying art, not dorms for Lutheran teens. Admittedly, if someone gifted me an O’Keeffe I would sell it (I like O’Keeffe and really like the painting in question, “Rust Red Hill,” but the expected sale price is north of $10 million, so...)
The university agrees with me, but the only way it can legally sell the paintings is to argue in court that the paintings were acquired mistakenly and therefore shouldn’t be theirs to begin with. The argument? That the paintings are not “conservative.”
You see, when the money that was used to purchase the paintings was gifted in 1953, the donor, the son of painter Junius R. Sloane, stipulated that the money must be used to purchase art that was “conservative.”
What is conservative art? The stipulation doesn’t say, although it does provide some guidance: “any art acquired with the funds must be ‘exclusively by American artists preferably of American subjects.’” It also says that the “general character” of any art must be conservative but says the art may be from any period.
I am not an expert in painting or any visual art, but I was drawn to the word conservative and the way that a descriptor that we might think has meaning can shift and shift quickly, simply because age gives most art an air of legitimacy. From legitimacy to establishment is not a great leap. Works that were considered revolutionary in their day seem completely within the bounds to us now.
I think we can assume that “conservative” in this context, stipulated in 1953, could be thought to be a stand-in for “representational,” more or less. Abstract art really got going in the early 20th century, only after Junius Sloane died. Sloane himself was a representational artist of the Hudson River School (learn more about him and his work from the Kewanee Historical Society). One perhaps assumes that his son was not a fan of the new abstract painting and wrote the word “conservative” to indicate that he didn’t want his money being used to invest in art he considered out of step with his (and perhaps his father’s) aesthetic.
The problem is that the paintings in question are not in fact particularly “modern” by that measure; they are at core representational landscape works of American scenes, just like Junius Sloan did. They’re not in the style of Sloan or the Hudson River School, but that wasn’t the stricture. See for yourself: “Rust Red Hills” and “The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate.”
The argument seems to be in part that O’Keefe was an abstract artist, which is true, but “Rust Red Hills” isn’t an abstract painting. Again, my lack of real knowledge in visual art prevents me from saying anything all that insightful about the painting itself or its place in O’Keeffe’s oeuvre, but to me it looks like a vividly colored painting of American natural beauty, which was Junius Sloan’s stock in trade. Same with “The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate.” To me, it has an Impressionist influence, and who knows, perhaps Sloan pere or fils hated Impressionism and have turned in their graves at its place of pride at Valparaiso, but it’s hard to argue it’s not firmly in the tradition of American landscape painting.
Arguing that an artist’s association with a particular school means that all of their work should be considered part of that school is ridiculous. To pick an example closer to my expertise, think about David Lynch. Do you have a sense of what a Lynch film is, how you might categorize it, describe it to someone who has never seen one? Okay, does that describe “The Straight Story?” (Link is to the trailer; if you haven’t seen it, it really is just like that trailer.) My guess is any adjective you or most people might come up with to think about a Lynch film no longer fits the context of “The Straight Story.”
If someone left a big chunk of money to preserve “conservative” movies (acknowledging for a moment that the adjective is so colored by politics that it’s currently meaningless applied to aesthetics or any other sphere, so perhaps use “traditional” or “mainstream”), you could easily put “The Straight Story” in there, but not “Lost Highway.” If you said “classic” or “influential” movies, you might reverse that decision. (For the record, I love both movies.)
I had never heard of Valparaiso University before, so I don’t know if it needs refurbished dorms more than it needs these paintings, but I believe an artist has the ability and should have the right to work in as many styles as they wish. Those individual works should then be assessed on their own merits. Many musicians have a song or album completely out of step with their typical output, and you may love it or hate it, but you can’t argue it’s not their work because it’s atypical.
Of course, the real lesson here is that if you’re making a gift to a university, think about the language you use. And be careful making aesthetic stipulations; those have shifted, are shifting, and aren’t going to stop anytime soon.