John Marin: Wind, Maine and Middle Manhattan Movement
John Marin is an influential American modernist painter and printmaker largely known for his abstracted and cubist inspired watercolor landscapes. Before becoming an artist, Marin studied at a technical school and worked as an architect. Later, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Art Students League in New York City, as well as in Europe. Through his talent and the establishment of important relationships in the art world, Marin paved a successful career.
His surrounding landscape provided inspiration for much of his work, and his time spent in Europe observing modernist, impressionist, and cubist art inspired his technique. Marin’s works, Wind, Maine and Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan) highlight the movement, energy, and life that Marin captures in his landscapes. They exemplify the talent that make him an important contributor to the modern art movement in America.
Marin’s career gained momentum after Edward Steichen introduced him to his friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz. Both Steichen and Stieglitz were American photographers and instrumental figures in the fight for photography to be considered a valued artistic medium. Stieglitz, with assistance from Steichen, established the 291 gallery in New York City as a place to exhibit photography and modern American art; this is where Marin’s had his first important show. 291 was the center for progressive artists. Marin and Stiegletz formed a close friendship and a strong professional relationship.
Marin’s exhibitions at 291 paved the way for shows at many impressive galleries and museums and led to fame. His works were displayed at the Armory show – a radical exhibition of American and European modern art – alongside some of his Eruopepan inspirations such as Paul Cézanne. Later in his career both The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Institute of Modern Art in Boston, held retrospectives of his work. Marin also received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from both Yale University and the University of Maine. These accomplishments speak to Marin’s talent and successful career.
Maine’s landscapes are the subject of many of Marin’s works. He began to go to Maine every summer in 1914 and bought an island at Small Point. The sea and energy captivated Marin, “he drew his imagery directly from nature, but always sought to capture its spirit and imagery rather than merely imitate it.” Marin spent a lot of his time in New York City so the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York Streets, and the city’s commotion are also the subject of many of his works. His other works depict places around New England and the rest of New York, as well as New Mexico where he spent two summers.
Wind, Maine is an example of a work that draws inspiration from Maine’s powerful sea. Fred L. Palmer, who graduated from Hamilton College in 1923, gifted it to Hamilton college in 1962 after the institution founded the Edward W. Root Art Center. Alfred Stieglitz’s owned the painting prior to Palmer. Wild, Maine has been displayed at many galleries, including The Downtown Gallery, the America House, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Schenectady museum.
Wind, Maine depicts a sea in Maine with watercolor and graphite. Because the viewer is looking on the ocean from above, one can deduce that Marin painted this image looking down at the ocean from a higher vantage point, maybe a cliff. The majority of this painting is blue. The sky gradates from light blue to a transparent wash with a hint of blue. Marin uses various shades of blue, and blue-green, to capture the ocean. His application of paint, a combination of smaller strokes of broken color and larger areas of wash, captures the rhythm of the dynamic body of water and makes the subject more captivating. The passages of unpainted paper that represent the ocean’s whitecaps are the only areas in the painting where watercolor is not. Therefore, the points where the blue waves and the whitecaps meet have the highest contrast in the painting. The faint graphite on top of the watercolor in the waves indicates the curve of the wave, swelling until it reaches its breaking point. The waves travel from right to left, and the long grass in the foreground slants in the opposite direction of the waveflow, suggesting wind. Marin depicted the grass with fast, diagonal, graphite marks below a faint green-ish yellow wash. A small sailboat is located in the ocean, in the right middle ground of the painting. The masts and sails are faint barely suggested because Marin drew them with graphite, but a reddish-brown mark draws attention to it. On the right side of the painting there are small passages of pink and red paint that mirror the red on the boat. These balance the composition and break up the large passages of blue.
These details in Marin’s painting come together to represent the coast of Maine on a cool, windy day. The scene is very fresh and open. The breaking waves, and the movement of the grass indicated by swift, diagonal, lines inform the viewer that it is a windy day. The contrasting directions of the wave flow and the blowing grass adds movement to the painting. The green wash over the grass is very dull, which could have been intentional or a result of fading overtime. This muted color indicates a lack of sun, which makes the scene colder. The tiny boat is also slanted, indicating that it is struggling against the wind on this blustery day.
Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan), is one of many of Marin’s pieces that depicts New York City. This watercolor is currently part of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute’s collection.
Marin’s Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan) is an abstract cubist inspired painting of the streets of New York City. Marin combined watercolor, graphite and charcoal to make this painting. The artwork is dominated by angular shapes, blocks of color, smudges, and lines. Some of these elements are more clearly descriptive of city buildings than others. The top half of the image is more clearly representational; there is less smudging and a city scape is recognizable. The yellow shape in the upper left hand corner becomes the focal point of the image because it is the brightest pop of color: the only yellow in the painting. To the right of the yellow building there are three overlapping squares. The one in the front is patterned with diagonal stripes. In the top right hand corner there is a blue square that contains smaller blue squares. Marin predominantly uses muted greys, blacks, greens, browns and tans in this painting, but there are moments of pink, blue, and yellow. The bottom half of the painting is more out of focus. The shapes are smaller and go in every direction. The shapes are also less distinguishable; the lines are not as defined and the shapes smudge and morph into each other. Marin also uses his materials to create various textures in the painting.
These elements in Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan) serve to represent bustling dynamism of a New York City Street. The yellow shape is a simple representation of a city building, rectangular with small windows. The overlapping squares adjacent to the yellow building allude to layers of buildings that would be silhouetted in a cityscape. The white square the contains the blue squares looks like a window with a white frame and blue glass. These details inform the viewer that they are looking at an abstract streetscape. The colors – grey, brown, black, tan and blue – indicate metal, glass and concrete: the materials of a city. The lower half of the painting depicts more motion because of the smaller, smudged, miscellaneous shapes. They indicate that Marin sees the city as a busy, moving place. The buildings are only one part of the city, the people and commotion are another. Although Marin did not depict the people or cars in the city, the viewer can feel their presence because of the activity Marin created using shapes, texture, and marks.
The juxtaposition of two dramatically different landscapes in Wind, Maine and Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan) demonstrates how Marin handles his materials and uses color, line, and shape to infuse his landscapes with energy. At a glance, the paintings look starkly different from one another. Wind, Maine is a representation of a sea. It also uses softer shapes, lighter graphite marks, curvy lines, and more color. It consists mostly of water and sky, with a high horizon line. Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan), which has darker lines, and jagged, dark, bold shapes, is more abstract. But, in both paintings the the energy of the landscape is the subject. In the Wind, Maine the spirit comes from the motion of the waves and the grass. In the other, the overlapping buildings and complex interactions between the shapes, marks, and smudges represent the bustle and commotion of an active city. Marin’s modernist techniques transform his landscapes into narrations about the movement and life of the landscape itself.
Works Cited
“Brooklyn Bridge,” The Met, date accessed September 30, 2019, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488326.
Hostetler, Lisa, “Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and American Photography,” The Met, last modified 2004, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm.
“John Marin (1870-1953),” The Phillips Collection, date accessed September 30, 2019, https://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/marin-bio.htm.
Murray, Mary E., “John Marin, Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan),” MWPAI Online Collections, last modified 2017, http://collections.mwpai.org/objects/11790/middle-manhattan-movement-abstraction-lower-manhattan?ctx=dde33fd0-a056-4d0b-8fec-07b43673f116&idx=0.
Tochia, Robert, “John Marin,” National Gallery of Art, last modified September 29, 2016, https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2643.html.
“Wind, Maine,” Wellin Museum Hamilton College, date accessed September 30, 2019, http://wellin-emuseum.hamilton.edu/objects/12/wind-maine?ctx=0195c636-39e7-4742-8339-4acafa5570c9&idx=0.
