If, in the future (as in the past), the Whitney Museum’s director, board and curators experience identity issues, I hope the powers that be there recall Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World, the exhibition that opened there last week.
It is exactly the kind of show the Whitney should be doing, far more often than it has done: one that makes a definitive statement, showing the full range of work of an artist whose reputation is not what it should be or who (perhaps) isn’t well known.
It’s a scholarly show that is a delight — and may just change Feininger’s reputation. Barbara Haskell, with Sasha Nicholas, are the curators and to them I say congratulations.
I review the show in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, favorably, ending with:
In Germany, Feininger is not only known and shown regularly, but loved. In 2002, a stamp was created in his honor, depicting one of his church paintings. With the Whitney exhibition as evidence, one hopes, he is on his way to long overdue recognition in his native land.
But I have more to say. In the review, I mention that critics like Clement Greenberg shoved figurative modernism aside in favor of abstract expressionism, but there wasn’t room to say that even Greenberg thought that Feininger was a good artist.
In a review of a gallery show of Feininger’ work in 1943, including works from 1911 through 1938, Greenberg said Feininger had “genuine talent as a draftsman” — perhaps damning him with faint praise except that there was more. “Feininger always paints with honesty and grace…he is not important in a large sense but he has a definite and secure place in contemporary painting.” Not bad, really, coming from someone whose heart and mind were in a different place.
Haskell told me that about one third of the works in the exhibition were borrowed from Germany, which makes sense, considering that he is more appreciated there than here. But I was surprised to see that many U.S. museums also own some very fine Feiningers — including the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Met, MoMA, the North Carolina Museum of Art (its Green Bridge II is shown above left), the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center (its Church of the Minorites II is above right), among others. One wonders why his time for a retrospective like this hasn’t come up before.
The Whitney, btw, owns only one Feininger painting, and it’s fine, but is not one of his best.
This may be Feininger’s moment, however. Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World moves to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts next January. And, meanwhile, the Harvard Art Museums are circulating two Feininger shows: Lyonel Feininger: Drawings and Watercolors from the William S. Leiberman Bequest to the Busch-Reisinger Museum has been traveling in Germany and Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939 is in Germany now and moves to the Getty Museum in October and then back to Harvard.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art (top) and the Walker Art Center (bottom).