In a thread about the vileness of Thomas Kinkade, a few spare brickbats were thrown at Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell. Well, I’m no Rockwell fan–I’ve been to his danged museum, and he was actually a fairly crappy arist. All his faces are screwed up comically; he couldn’t do hands, and his perspective sucked.
But I saw the Maxfield Parrish exhibit a couple of years ago at the Penna. Academy of Fine Arts, and you could’ve knocked me over with a large paving stone. There was his campy calendar stuff which we all know–and which is still well executed, whatever you think of the subject matter. But there were some terrific little magazine pieces, and some landscapes that knock Turner and the whole Hudson valley Schoool off their asses. Click on some of the links here and take a gander!
oooh yeah. I was equally outraged at the bizarre slagging-off of Maxfield Parrish and his oeuvre. I think his stuff is pretty damned good.
His brother, Dillwyn (what were Mr and Mrs Parrish Senior thinking?) was married to MFK Fisher. I’d like to have been present at some of those gatherings in Switzerland.
I bear no ill-will towards Max, honestly. Beautiful colors. Nice light. I also don’t mind Klimt or most of the Pre-Raphs and other popular 19th c stuff. My husband is also of Parrish stock of an American line that claims relation (I don’t believe it but I don’t mention the fact to the aunts. . .)
But. . . I DO hate Ford Maddox Brown. Can I share that here? Despise with a passion.
The second painting that came up on the initial page is one that I have as wallpaper. But I don’t recall ever seeing the first painting on the initial link – the woman standing on the rocks with wind in her hair. Now it’s my wallpaper! Somewhere inside – from times remembered – I am she.
I, too, am a Parrish fan. As a die-hard lover of modern and contemporary art, he’s my little guilty secret. I love the work “Aquamarine” and regularly search for it in some type of decent print, thus far to no avail.
I’m so jealous, Eve, that you got to see the PAFA show!
On a different note, I’m confused by capybara making some connection between Parrish and Klimt?
The connection (in my mind)-- popular turn of the century art that lots of people like and have posters of and hence the scholarly community avoid like the plague. Make sense? Symbolism/ Pre-Raphs/ Jugundstil/ art nouveau/ art deco-- styles you don’t see art history courses taught in very frequently.
One of the lovely bits of serendipity in my life came when I remarried several years after my wife died and my second wife brought to our merged households four vintage Parrish prints, beautifully framed. They hang in our bedroom, and I think have contributed a small subtle joy to our lives every day.
It may be my computer, but that site’s prints seem very dark. My mother has a print of Aircastles and the tones are much lighter. It’s possible that the print has faded, but I doubt it. The lighter colors seem much more appropriate to the feel of the work.
I’m not sure whether that’s a very good last line, or a very bad one.
Will you please write and post the rest of the poem so I can judge the piece as a whole?
i saw the pafa exhibit as well. i worked at the curtis center and walked past his work every day. while the office was in the curtic center a coworker named his son maxfield. there is a fantastic mural to his memory in northern liberties.
Ah, that would explain my not getting you. My first college-level art history course was about fin-de-siecle Vienna. The turn of the century has been an ongoing interest for me in terms of art, culture and gender roles, so I’ve studied art of that period in England, France, Vienna and Germany.
If I had gone the route of art history rather than museum studies for my master’s, I was planning on writing on the topic. I could have been your scholar!
Parrish was one of the true American Masters. He would dry his canvasses for years before painting on them. He used transparent water colors, laying down the darker hues first and combining primaries to create secondary colors. His paintings glow because they are luminous. The light travels all the way through the painting and back to your eye.
His backgrounds look authentic for a good reason. He would ramble out of doors and collect exotically shaped rocks and stones. Grouping these together on a table, he would strike the top with a mallet a few times to settle the stones into a natural position. These would from his backdrop.
He first taught himself to draw photographically. Once he had mastered that ability he routinely used slide projectors to sketch his subjects. Often, he was his own subject. He would pose for the camera using a remote shutter release.
His ability to portray classical figures and architecture in near-iridescent colors created a fantasy world that held many people in rapture. This was long before color television’s advent with its mind-numbing parade of drivel. His pictures were complete fantasy-lands one could enter and thereby see the world as it is often thought of but rarely seen.
Here is a link to an online gallery for those who are curious about his work. Let’s please not mention him in the same breath as that so-called “Painter of Blight.” If there was any other rightful heir to Parrish in America it was Eyvind Earle. His work with Disney and later efforts were head and shoulders above the tripe of wannabes like LeRoy Neiman. Fer cripes sake, that guy paints with a flipping sponge!
Well now, Eve, I’m sorry you felt your defense of Maxfield Parrish had to come at the expense of Norman Rockwell. An exhibit of Rockwell’s work came to Atlanta’s High Museum a couple of years ago, and I was blown away. I can’t imagine anyone looking at such paintings as The Problem We All Live With and denying the strength, emotion and dignity Rockwell was capable of. Or claiming he couldn’t draw hands, for that matter.
Rockwell, of course, took inspiration from Howard Pyle…just like Maxfield Parrish. Rockwell and Parrish are both inheritors and exemplars of Pyle’s style of illustration; it’s astonishing to me you could like one and not the other.
Maxfield Parish was the first artist who I “discovered” on my own and liked. Never knew who he was, and saw one or two reproductions and found out who he was, and now I love him.
I especially enjoy the very layered look his stuff seems to have, with lots of high contrast and interesting colors.
I’d love to see a site of what you consider his screwed up faces or badly drawn hands. Admitedly, I’ve only seen a handful of his originals, but I’ve seen hundreds of reproductions. I’ve never once thought that the hands or faces were badly rendered. Stylized, perhaps. But “screwed up comically”?!
It’s easy to dismiss his stuff due to overexposure. Heck, I have a hard time stomaching a lot of Beatles tunes nowadays- not because they’re bad songs, they’ve just been endlessly drilled into my head from birth.
Being an illustrator, of course I’m biased. But I can assure you that this guy was firing on all his artistic cylinders. Not to mention his ability to tell a story within a painting, which goes beyond mere technical ability.
So many “serious” artists dismiss his work because their elitest fine art teachers told them it was bad. I’ve always felt that anyone who could separate his actual work from the countless calendars, totebags, coffee mugs, t-shirts, etc. his work’s appeared on would have an appreciation for what he did.
I am honestly surprised that you saw his stuff in person and still couldn’t appreciate it.
Again, I’d love to see an example of what you found so crappy.
Oh, and IMHO Kincade’s a hack (albeit a marketing genious) and Parish was brilliant
I’d love to see a site of what you consider his screwed up faces or badly drawn hands. Admitedly, I’ve only seen a handful of his originals, but I’ve seen hundreds of reproductions. I’ve never once thought that the hands or faces were badly rendered. Stylized, perhaps. But “screwed up comically”?!
It’s easy to dismiss his stuff due to overexposure. Heck, I have a hard time stomaching a lot of Beatles tunes nowadays- not because they’re bad songs, they’ve just been endlessly drilled into my head from birth.
Being an illustrator, of course I’m biased. But I can assure you that this guy was firing on all his artistic cylinders. Not to mention his ability to tell a story within a painting, which goes beyond mere technical ability.
So many “serious” artists dismiss his work because their elitest fine art teachers told them it was bad. I’ve always felt that anyone who could separate his actual work from the countless calendars, totebags, coffee mugs, t-shirts, etc. his work’s appeared on would have an appreciation for what he did.
I am honestly surprised that you saw his stuff in person and still couldn’t appreciate it.
Again, I’d love to see an example of what you found so crappy.
Oh, and IMHO Kincade’s a hack (albeit a marketing genious) and Parish was brilliant
The turn of the century has been an ongoing interest for me in terms of art, culture and gender roles, so I’ve studied art of that period in England, France, Vienna and Germany.
