Vedder's "Memory" -- Remembering the last gasps of surrealistic romanticism in painting, before Hogue and Steichen's intrusions of surrealist realism
The painting entitled "Memory" by the American artist Elihu Vedder exhibits a dreamlike horizon and vista of an unidentifiable, yet distinctly foreign land in sunbathed romantic colors. Over Vedder's illustrated ocean the viewer can see face hanging, as if the individual's image were suspended in the overhanging clouds. It is a Romantic vision of the presence of the individual in nature. The memory of the artist or the gazer is present eternally in the natural world, so long as the artist is in the act of remembering an individual. In contrast, Alexander Hogue's "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare" (1938) is also another medium-sized oil on canvas (40 x 56) but reflects the Great Depression when this work was created, long after the Romantic surrealism of "Memory." "Erosions No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare" shows the pillow-like fields of a farm that look like the nude flesh of a female. Hogue's painting is also surrealist, and suggests the presence of the human form in nature, a presence that is intensified by the sharp, phallic cutting scythe lying beside the female figure. But the surrealism present in the Hogue strives to create a social message of humanity's rapacious attitude towards agriculture, rather than a personal response to nature.
Thus although Hogue's work, and "Rodin with his Sculptures 'Victor Hugo' and 'The Thinker'" by the photographer Edward Steichen (1902) both act as reflections upon the human relationship with nature and the natural human body, they lack the pure Romanticism of Vedder's dreamlike work in their blending of surrealism with realistic social commentary upon nature and their ambiguous reflections upon humanity's relationship to art. The later works suggest a darker and more socially astute commentary on the often-fraught relationship between nature, art, and humanity -- and the human face and form in particular.
The qualities of "Memory" by Elihu Vedder (a 16"X23" print on canvas) instead harkens back to an earlier era of decadent and symbolist illusions, and show a more a playful...
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