The Adirondack Museum
Blue Mountain Lake, NY
518-352-7311
http://www.adkmuseum.org
The View from Asgaard: Rockwell Kent's
Adirondack Legacy
May 29 - September 18, 1999
June 1 - October 15, 2000
and by appointment
The Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York, presents, starting
in late May, 1999 and extending though October 15, 2000. "The View
from Asgaard: Rockwell Kent's Adirondack Legacy." This exhibition is
the latest in a series which began in the late 1960s of exhibitions, commercial
gallery shows, auctions, and scholarly studies and publications designed
to restore Rockwell Kent to his rightful place in American art. The focus
of this exhibition will be Kent's lyrical depictions of the landscape in
and around his Adirondack home and the breadth of artistic creations in
which he employed Adirondack imagery. Left: Mountain
Road, c. 1960, Adirondack Museum
Incorporating rarely exhibited paintings, drawings and
prints, fabrics, books, greeting cards, and Asgaard Farm and Adirondack
North Country memorabilia, the exhibition will illustrate the importance
of the Adirondack landscape to the artist's diverse work as well as highlight
the impact Kent had on the Adirondack community. The exhibition will be
enhanced by the potential loan of Asgaard's Meadows, and Oncoming
Storm: Adirondacks, two major paintings from the National Gallery of
Armenia, the first time in forty years that any of the "Great Kent
Collection" has returned to the United States. Also included will be
Mountain Road from the Adirondack Museum's own collection and works
loaned by major museums, galleries and private collections, including the
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress and The Mead Art Museum.
Rockwell Kent, acclaimed painter, a daring yachtsman, designer
of fabric, pottery, jewelry and flatware, of 
bookplates and marks and greeting cards; an extraordinary
illustrator, an architect and muralist; Rockwell Kent, socio-political activist,
recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, and first American artist to have a
solo exhibition of his work tour the Soviet Union; Rockwell Kent, subject
of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on un-American Activities, whose
work, as a result of the Committee's attention, was shunned by museums and
galleries during the 1950s, retaliated and gave "the Great Kent Collection"
to the Soviet Union. Right: Asgaard's Meadow,
1945, National Gallery of Armenia
The close of the twentieth century offers a great opportunity
to examine the artistic work of long-time (1928-1971) Adirondack resident
Rockwell Kent. In the cultural history of the Adirondacks there is no contemporary
figure more artistically prolific or more paradoxical than Rockwell Kent
(1882-1971). By the time Kent first came to the Adirondacks (1927) he was
already an important American artist. His earliest paintings were compared
to the work of Winslow Homer and his earliest writing (Wilderness, A
Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska) to Walt Whitman's Leaves of
Grass. At his diary farm in Ausable Forks Kent found tranquility and
escape from New York City, where he earned his living, as well as a doorway
to worlds of adventure. His firebrand style often put him at odds with his
Ausable River valley neighbors -- a fact he documents in This Is My Own
and It's Me O Lord -- and which eventually culminated in a 1948 boycott
of his dairy business. Of Rockwell Kent's Adirondack work, his oil paintings
are perhaps the most noteworthy. Much less known, and less understood than
any of his other paintings, they portray his stylistic development, capture
the essence of the man and add a unique vision to the artistic depictions
of the region.
"The View from Asgaard: Rockwell Kent's Adirondack
Legacy" will be accompanied by a generously illustrated full-color
catalogue authored by Scott R. Ferris, Rockwell Kent scholar, author, and
aficionado and Adirondack Museum Chief Curator and Curator of Art, Caroline
M. Welsh. The essays will focus on Rockwell Kent's Adirondack oeuvre, his
local activities, his impact on the community, and the inspiration the region
afforded him. A major contribution of the volume will be a comprehensive
checklist of all known Adirondack work and an extensive bibliography. Left: Oncoming Storm: Adirondacks, 1946,
National Gallery of Armenia
Rockwell Kent was forty-five years old when he settled
in the Adirondacks with his second wife, Frances, on two hundred acres they
purchased near AuSable Forks. Here he built a home and studio along with
a cow barn, operated a dairy business, and traveled to the ends of the earth
or to New York City to maintain his many art activities.
Rockwell Kent's enormous energy, athletic prowess, and
creative drive propelled him to levels of achievement and recognition rarely
reached by his contemporaries. He was a critically acclaimed painter and
muralist, a renowned printmaker, a world famous book illustrator, a distinguished
graphic artist and expert on typography, an architect and builder and craftsman,
from 1910 to 1948. He was also an author, lecturer, explorer, farmer, dairyman,
social activist, and amateur politician. His rugged individuality, nonconformist
views, and outspoken support of leftist causes during the early twentieth
century through the 1950s brought him denunciation at the height of his
career, a situation which was rectified towards the end of his life and
after his death. Since the 1970s, his work has been the focus of numerous
exhibitions and the demand for it has created a whole new generation of
collectors.
The Adirondacks served as Kent's muse and his home and
his solace when times were difficult. He and his third wife, Sally, recovered
from political adversity, rebuilt their home after a devastating fire two
years before his death, and saw the beginnings of the restoration of his
reputation. He died in 1971 of a heart attack in a hospital in nearby Plattsburgh
and is buried on Asgaard Farm in view of his beloved Whiteface, "the
noblest single mountain in New York State." The Adirondack Museum's
exhibit will bring Rockwell Kent's little known Adirondack legacy to the
fore in an opportunity to return his works to the environment where they
were created.
For more on Rockwell Kent please see the University
of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery online exhibition.
Read more about The Adirondack
Museum in Resource Library Magazine
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
rev. 9/20/10
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2010 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
The Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York, presents, starting
in late May, 1999 and extending though October 15, 2000. "The View
from Asgaard: Rockwell Kent's Adirondack Legacy." This exhibition is
the latest in a series which began in the late 1960s of exhibitions, commercial
gallery shows, auctions, and scholarly studies and publications designed
to restore Rockwell Kent to his rightful place in American art. The focus
of this exhibition will be Kent's lyrical depictions of the landscape in
and around his Adirondack home and the breadth of artistic creations in
which he employed Adirondack imagery. Left: Mountain
Road, c. 1960, Adirondack Museum
