Fog and Trees, Dove and O'Keeffe, in short

So much to love in Arthur Dove.
Can you hear the fog horn, dear?
Blaring red, over the sea,
Blooming like a peony.


Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Fog Horns, 1929
Oil on canvas, 18 x 26 in. (45.7 x 66 cm)
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Anonymous Gift, FA 1954.1

"Fog Horns" is my favorite work by Arthur Dove, America's first abstract painter. I was thrilled to see it this past Sunday while visiting the wonderful exhibition at The Clark here in Williamstown, MA, "Dove O'Keeffe, Circles of Influence." Many people know and love Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings: her images of seductive flowers and the dry bones of the American Southwest, for example. But fewer are familiar with Arthur Dove. Some may even look at his paintings and say, "oh, he was copying O'Keeffe!" But actually, O'Keeffe herself credited Dove's works as her primary introduction to modern art.

There is so much I love about this painting: to me, it is the consummate feeling of fog horns. I hear the fog horns, and I see the fog horns. If I try hard, I can smell and taste the beach, the ocean. The fog horns emerge from the air, how do you paint the essence of sound? Why are they red? Can sound be red? My daughter was intrigued by this painting. "What are fog horns?" she wondered. I reminded her of our trip to Maine last summer, seeing the lighthouse during the day and hearing the fog horn at night. I made a low plaintive moaning sound. "Oh," she simply said, trying to remember, "okay."

The painting makes me want to head right back to the foggy coast of Maine and sit on a beach, dig my toes into the cool wet sand, inhale the salt spray, listen to the waves, listen for the fog horn.

****




Look up, my sweet, into that tree,
And think of all the things that be:
The earth, the sky, the stars and moon,
A mid-summer's eve ends too soon.



Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), The Lawrence Tree, 1929
Oil on canvas, 31 1/8 x 39 1/4 in. (79.1 x 99.7 cm)
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund

And my favorite O'Keeffe painting, "The Lawrence Tree." It is to me the essence of a summer evening, of lying beneath an enormous tree and gazing at the stars. The painting seems off-kilter, one's head might cock to the right, trying to get the perspective right, to enter the painting and take part in the activity of lying on a blanket, listening to the bullfrogs and the crickets and the rush of the river, watching for a shooting star.

"Fog Horns" and "The Lawrence Tree" are so much more than merely visual images. They make you feel, taste, and smell. They might make you remember, or long for a certain memory. They impart sensational, full body experiences. They invite you to return, again and again.