AUG. 13-16 PART 6 WILDERENSS & THE ALASKA PAINTINGS

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Part 4 – Wilderness & the Alaska Paintings: The Reviews

Aug. 13-16, 2019

ABOVE – Seward, Alaska – Small Boat Harbor at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug.7, 2019 – as the sun rises above Mount Alice. BELOW – View looking south from the ruins of the Kent Cabin on Fox Island. Capra photos, taken on Aug. 7, 2019

I finished {Anada K.}Coomaraswamy’s “Indian Essays” to-day, an illuminating and inspiring book. Coomaraswamy defines mysticism as a belief in the unity of life. The creed of an artist concerns us only when we mean by it the tendency of his spirit. (How hard it is to speak of these intangible things and not use words loosely and without exact meaning) I think whatever of the mystic is in a man is essentially inseparable from him; it is his by the grace of God. After all, the qualities by which all of us become known are those of which we are ourselves least conscious. The best of me is what is quite impulsive; and, looking at myself for a moment with a critic’s eye, the forms that occur in my art, the gestures, the spirit of eh whole of it is in fact nothing but an exact pictorial record of my unconscious living idealism.

         Rockwell Kent in Wilderness, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1918

His exhibitions, within the recent years, have been pretty well looked at by his contemporaries. He has shown paintings of icy waters beating upon the rocky coasts of Maine and of the snows of even farther north, and in these pictures there was vigor, and breadth, and an almost suspiciously easy accomplishment. Then came symbolic mystical compositions, with curious ships on midnight seas, fierce lights beating upon lonely cabins where fate had just been knocking at the door, and constellations of unusual planets dotting all the skies. It was an event to the artists friends that he should have turned mystic.

         Henry McBride in a May 11, 1919 New York Herald review

For the past three weeks I have made on an average no less than one good drawing a day, really drawings I’m delighted with. I’ve struck a fine stride and moreover good system for my work here to continue upon. During the day I paint out-of-doors from nature by way of fixing he forms and above all the color of the out-of-door in my mind. Then after dark I go into a trance for a while with Rockwell subdued into absolute silence. I lie down or sit with closed eyes until I “see” a composition, -- then I make a quick not of it or maybe give an hour’s time to perfecting the arrangement on a small scale. Then when that’s done I’m carefree.

         Rockwell Kent in Wilderness, Thursday, January 23, 1919

Years ago, The Kent Collector published a special issue about Rockwell Kent and mysticism. In my article, because I viewed him from his Alaska experience. Was Kent a mystic? No. Was he influenced significantly by mystic writings during his early years, especially while on Fox Island? Yes. In Rockwell Kent: Shadow & Light in Vermont, Jamie Franklin writes: Remaining deeply rooted in the earthly, tangible reality of human experience throughout his life, Kent was drawn during his Alaska time, and shortly thereafter in Vermont, to a version of spiritual, mystical transcendence. Influenced by his reading of Coormaraswamy’s The Dance of Siva {Essays on Indian Art and Culture,} which addresses concepts such as “Art as Yoga” and the power of meditation as part of the creative act.

BELOW – Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1916. Wiki photo.

In a footnote, Franklin writes that in The Dance of the Siva, Coormaraswamy quotes the Hindi diety Sukracharya: Let the imager establish images…by meditation…In no other way, not even by direct and immediate vision of an actual object, is it possible to be so absorbed in contemplation, as thus in the making of images. Kent sent a book of Indian essays to his wife, Kathleen, from Fox Island as a present for Christmas 1918. In his New Year’s Eve letter to her Kent wrote: In the book I sent to you for Christmas are some essays on the women of India that you shall read first. They are you! All that is most beautiful in the ideals of womanhood of that good meditating people is the Kathleen that I am only just coming to (revere) as I should. See in what you read there that there are other and finer ideals than those of America. From no one can you learn to your advantage. Rather you should, if you (have) known, teach this world where its ideals are false. Keep your own beauty above from the contamination of “modern” womanhood. Give out your radiance and for yourself let yourself suffice. How little, or how coarse, how typical of an age of hate, are the women that I see. And the best, even our own friends, are sand by the little they have of what is all of you. On Jan. 11, 1919 she wrote back: I am enjoying the Indian essays tremendously. An interesting note: Joseph Campbell, renowned mythologist, listed Coormaraswamy’s The Dance of Siva {Essays on Indian Art and Culture as required reading for his students at Sarah Lawrence College

Franklin continues:  Kent embraced Eastern religious philosophies…Combining painting from observation with meditative visualization the artist was actively seeking to break down dichotomies in is work, such as the distinction between observation and imagination, reality and fiction, and the personal and the universal. This corresponded to Coomaraswamy’s description of yogic practice, which he described as, “mental concentration, carried so far as the overlooking of all distinction between the subject and the object of contemplation. In another passage from Wilderness Kent describes the artistic freedom afforded him by living simply: “In the midst of letter writing I stop to note down a dramatic cloud effect. I jump at once to my paints when the idea comes. It’s a fine life and more and more I realize that, for me at least, such isolation, not from my friends but from the unfriendly world, is the only right life for me.

Note that last quote. As I’ve pointed out in earlier entries, the kind of intense isolation Kent experienced on Fox Island was not what he expected nor desired. During his most desperate moments on the island, he called his situation an exile. He did obtain his ideal upon his return at “Egypt” in Vermont, a promise he made to Kathleen. He wrote about this to others as well, including his patron Ferdinand Howald on Feb. 19, 1919 from Fox Island: …I am determined to get out of the city. If I can manage it I will take my family to some remote country place in New England. After his divorce from Kathleen, he married Frances Lee. In This is My Own (1940), Kent recounts how they located property in far Upstate New York and built Asgaard, which he eventually turned into a working dairy farm.

ABOVE – The lake behind the north end of the Fox Island beachfront. This is the spot Olson brought Kent on Aug. 25, 1918 when they first met. Kent writes in Wilderness that when he saw that place he knew this was the spot they had to live. These are the times in life wrote, when nothing happens, Kent wrote, but in quietness the soul expands. Capra photo taken on Aug. 7, 2019.

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PART 7

WILDERNESS AND THE ALASKA PAINTINGS

THE REVIEWS