Charles Burchfield gets a late debut in Los Angeles

Here's a pop quiz: Which 20th century artist had the first solo exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art?

If you guessed any big-name artist from Europe, you'd be wrong. But you certainly could be forgiven. MOMA's long-established (and much-maligned) time line for significant Modern art can be overly simplified like this: Europe before World War II, the United States after.

Yet in 1930, MOMA director Alfred Barr chose a Buffalo, N.Y.-based painter as the subject of the then-new museum's first one-man show. Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) isn't as well-known today as he was then, but expect a new exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum, organized by artist Robert Gober, to bring his work back into sharp focus. I'll have a review of the eagerly anticipated show in Sunday's paper.

Oh, and did I mention surprise factoid #2? According to the museum, this is the first major survey of Burchfield's art ever in Los Angeles.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Charles Burchfield, "Glory of Spring (Radiant Spring)," 1950. Credit: UCLA Hammer Museum

Comments

[Pat Klinck]

Great news! Burchfield is still well-loved in his old stomping grounds in western New York. Visit the new Burchfield Penney Art Center (http://www.yournewburchfieldpenney.com/) on the campus of Buffalo State College next time you're in town. It's a fabulous showcase for regional artists.

[Cate]

At first glance, the trees look like they’re on fire. The forest as a whole appears burnt-out and blackened, devastated by more than a winter’s season. Burchfield painted “Forest Fire in Moonlight” in 1920, so it’s possible that he revisited the same forest 30 years later and was inspired to paint “Glory of Spring (Radiant Spring)”. This later painting might be the artist’s memory of the past fullness and radiance of trees before they caught fire and were burned to a barren landscape. In a sense, he’s painting a link between past, present, and future.

With a vision of what nature has and will restore in its own time, Burchfield speeds up the process through his own creation ADDing little patches of color here and there, with no apparent rhyme or reason. The water and the patch of blue sky are the most colorful parts of the painting; the arch of blue in the sky suggests hopeful spring weather, and the water or spring in the foreground radiates light and reflection, feeding the tips of new, green growth.

Although Burchfield may well have been looking at a fully restored forest at the time of this work (30 years is plenty of time for a forest to have restore itself after fire), he paints only the suggestion of transformation. He allows us to become presently involved in the re-creation process, imagining the forest after its complete metamorphosis, in our own mind’s eye. We become interactive artists, like photographer Jona Frank, who visited her subject “Simon” one year later, providing a study of the boy’s continual transformation.

In Burchfield’s “Glory of Spring (Radiant Spring)” I see a field of birches and dancing daffodils along the River Wye. Those are my words—for what it’s worth. As Burchfield said, "The real artist is never at rest--he is always painting, if not actually, with his eye, or in his mind."

[Pat Klinck]

Try this link:

http://www.yournewburchfieldpenney.com/

The one above doesn't seem to be working.

[William Wray]

Looking forward to this show. I've never seen enough CB work to form an opinion. His work reminds me of a hallucinogen drug trip with all it's glowing vibrating imagery.

[glennis]

simply one of the best exhibits i've seen in a while. well curated with access to the artist's voice. i felt as if i was really able to access what the artist was going through.