Marsden Hartley: A Retrospective

Marsden Hartley: A Retrospective
19 September 2019 – 19 January 2020

This fall, Louisiana is presenting the largest exhibition in Europe to date of the painter Marsden Hartley, a key figure in American art history. It is also the first retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre in Europe in 60 years. The works in the exhibition are on loan from major American museums and private collections.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was a restless person and artist. In his adult life, he never spent more than 10 months in any one location. Instead, he moved around the United States and shuttled between America and Europe. His restlessness was no doubt a way of protecting himself against loneliness, though he never completely escaped it. As a gay man, Hartley had limited opportunities for forming lasting intimate relationships.

Hartley’s work was far from unaffected by the people he met, the writers he read or the art he looked at. He often changed tracks, valuing artistic experimentation above all else. In the 1920s, he scolded his great idols Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso for growing too comfortable and repetitive in their painting. Hartley never settled for anything, in art or in life. His ceaseless transatlantic travels make him a bridge for understanding the relationship between the art scenes in Europe and America.

In America as well as Europe, Hartley was at the centre of the art world and the latest trends. In New York, he was represented by Alfred Stieglitz at the photographer’s famous 291 gallery, alongside other great artists like Arthur Dove, John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe. In Paris, Hartley associated with Gertrude Stein, attending her salons and meeting artists like Robert Delaunay and Picasso. In Germany, he quickly got to know the avant-garde circle around the magazine Der Blaue Reiter and had opportunity to discuss his art with artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Franz Marc. The latter invited Hartley to participate in the path-breaking Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in Berlin, 1913.

As a counterweight to his intense experiences in Berlin, Paris and New York, Hartley sought a solitary existence in nature throughout his life – in Southern France, New Mexico and, not least, in his home state of Maine. In the last years of his life, he returned to Maine where he painted some of his best works.

Hartley’s painting was deeply influenced both by the European avant-garde, in particular German Expressionism, and by his fellow New Englanders, the great American philosophers and writers R.W. Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and, in particular, Walt Whitman. Through Emerson and Thoreau, Hartley arrived at his mission as an artist, describing the universal spirit. In Whitman, he found a soul mate who showed him how to express his love and desire for men in his art.

Marsden Harley: A Retrospective takes visitors on a journey through Hartley’s life from 1905 and up to his death in 1943. The exhibition embraces more than 110 paintings and over 20 drawings. Moreover, it will shine light on Hartley’s prodigious output of poems and essays, while a series of filmed interviews with living artists will underscore the continued significance of his work. The interviewed artists include David Hockney, Dana Schutz, Sam McKinnis, Tal R, Shara Hughes and David Salle.

The exhibition is supported by the Augustinus Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Curator: The exhibition is curated by Louisiana curator Mathias Ussing Seeberg.

Louisiana Revy: The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue in Danish and English.

Louisiana Channel: As part of the exhibition, a number of contemporary artists are contributing their thoughts on Hartley’s work in filmed interviews, including David Hockney, Dana Schutz, Sam McKinnis, Tal R, Shara Hughes and David Salle. The interviews are produced by Louisiana Channel and will be posted on https://channel.louisiana.dk/.