"Rural Modernism"

On Sunday March 29, at 2:00 PM, I'll be giving the last gallery talk related to "The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England."  In this talk, as in the video below, I'll be discussing prints in the exhibition that suggest Nason's familiarity with the aesthetics of modern art.  It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but I think of Nason as a experimenting with something I'll call "rural modernism."  I'll also compare Nason's prints with work by Grant Wood, Charles Sheeler, and Charles Demuth.  This video takes a closer look at Nason's wood engraving Factory Village, the subject of which is a distinct departure from his  typical scenes of rural New England life.  

  

A Different Kind of Self-Portrait

In this video, we look at a Thomas Nason print entitled Engraving A Block.  Despite its minimal qualities (and size, at 1 1/2 x 2 1/8" it's the smallest print in our Thomas Nason exhibition), I think it speaks volumes of Nason's sense of self.  In the print Nason represents his own two hands, at work, cutting a block.  All of the images in this video are on view in The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England, along with Nason's own tools and blocks.

Love Letter to Lyme

Taking a walk through our galleries it dawns on me that Thomas Nason was deeply enamored not just of New England but of Lyme in particular. From his grand view of the Lieutenant River to The Grey Barn and A New England Scene, our current exhibition is filled with lovingly rendered views of Lyme and the surrounding countryside. Nason recalled his first drive up Joshuatown Road in 1931: "The road was unpaved, rough, winding and hilly... It was indeed back country... This was the beginning of the end of the truly primitive condition in this region. We were among the early invaders from the city."

Perhaps none of his works is more of a labor of love than Summer Storm, which Nason himself described as one of the most difficult prints he'd ever attempted. "I printed a hundred of this but upon going over them I found so many defective proofs that I destroyed the whole run and started afresh, with far better results." The finished work is his masterpiece of chiaroscuro printmaking that turns rural Lyme into a sublime and Romantic landscape.  Thomas Nason's love letter to Lyme is waiting to be discovered at the Florence Griswold Museum.  Visit The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England this Valentine's Day and see anew the land that inspired this "pastoral poet on wood."

The Flip Side of Nason

In the current Thomas Nason exhibition I've pointed out the modern elements incorporated into several of Nason's prints. I knew I was on the right track when I was able to examine some of his wood blocks up close. I thought the blocks would help to explain the process of printmaking and wanted to include a number of them in the show. I was very surprised to find that some blocks revealed a "flip side" to Nason's aesthetic. On one face of the block was a a typical landscape or farm scene, but on the other side. . .  well, let's just say the imagery leans more toward the Dada or Pop Art styles. This video explains what I mean.

Ex Libris

Shortly after Thomas Nason's death the Boston Public Library began work on a complete catalogue of his prints.  In 1977, Francis Comstock and William Fletcher released  The Work of Thomas W. Nason in conjunction with the BPL.  The book contains reproductions of every Nason print, critical essays, extensive indexes, as well as Nason's own essay on the history of wood engraving.  It is the definitive work on Nason that's been on my desk for months while I was preparing the exhibition.  In addition to a deluxe edition, a limited run of 1000 copies was printed.  

Our shop manager, Matt Greene, intrepidly tracked down the last remaining lot of these books and they will soon arrive in our shop. These are new, not used, copies of the original limited edition.  You may even find the deluxe edition on our shelves as well.  While you're shopping make sure to check out the the volumes of Frost poetry and other books illustrated by Nason on sale now.

Frost/Kennedy

In our current exhibition we're spotlighting the collaboration between printmaker Thomas Nason and poet Robert Frost. The two men met only once, in the Spring of 1961. Frost was, by that time, the most well-known poet in America. On January 20, 1961, Frost took the stage at President Kennedy's inauguration to read "Dedication," a poem he'd written for the event. The sun glinting off the snow made the glare too bright for Frost to read his lengthy work. Instead, he recited "The Gift Outright," a 1942 poem, from memory. 

The final lines of "Dedication" fittingly read:
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

See you on Sunday

I heard so many interesting questions about printmaking last night at the Member's Preview for the Thomas Nason exhibition that I'm thinking about adding an additional gallery talk focused on his technique.  Did you know that the Encyclopedia Britannica contacted Nason in 1951 to get permission to use his images in their entry on printmaking?  That's how technically admired he was in his time.  

This Sunday at 2 PM I'll be giving a gallery talk entitled "Nothing Gold Can Stay: Conjuring the Past in Thomas Nason's Prints of New England."  In this informal discussion, I'll focus on the melancholy evident in Nason's farm scenery.  Both Nason and Frost expressed, each in their own medium, a kind of despair at the passing of traditional New England ways.  We'll look in depth at Farm Buildings, A New England Scene, The Leaning Silo, A Deserted Farm, and Factory Village.

More gallery talks will follow, one comparing Frost and Nason and another on the modern elements in Nason's prints.

Thanks To Our Lenders....

Next week we'll begin to hang The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England. As of today all of our loans from other institutions have arrived safely. Our exhibition will be beautifully augmented by the cooperation of several other institutions and key objects from their collections.

The story of Nason's collaboration with Robert Frost would be impossible to explain without the loan of a number of rare Frost volumes from the Shain Library Special Collections and Archives from Connecticut College. For those interested in seeing even more first editions of American poetry their William Meredith Collection is not to be missed.

Also from Connecticut College are a number of prints that assist our show in explaining the visual history of wood engraving. These prints are a part of the College's Wetmore Print Collection, which maintains an excellent website of their diverse collection from Rembrandt to Hiroshige.

The region's premiere print room can be found at the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University. The DAC generously loaned four American wood engravings from their extensive collection, providing excellent examples of work by Nason's contemporaries in the field.

Not exactly a contemporary of Nason, Winslow Homer was renowned for his wood engravings which appeared in Harper's Weekly in the nineteenth century. We are lucky to have one of Homer's Civil War illustrations courtesy of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum.

Finally, the argument for Nason's position within the modern American art world could not be made without examples of the country's leading American Regionalists: Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood. The New Britain Museum of American Art provided us with an excellent example of each of these artists. Their complete collection of Benton lithographs allowed for the perfect comparison to Nason's work.

From A Milkweed Pod

Here's a preview of some of the works in the upcoming Thomas Nason exhibition. This video takes a look at the 1954 chapbook Nason illustrated for Robert Frost's poem "From A Milkweed Pod." Several of these booklets, along with other rare editions, will be on view beginning January 17.

An Inside Look at the Upcoming Thomas Nason Exhibit

Thanks for checking in with the Florence Griswold Museum's new blog! I'm the Museum's Fehrer Curatorial fellow, Amanda Burdan, and I've been working on putting the Nason exhibition together since my arrival here last summer. I'm really looking forward to sharing some new ways to think about the Lyme printmaker Thomas Nason with our visitors. I thought I'd give our online readers sneak peak at what's to come when The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason's Rural New England opens on January 17.

Thomas Nason was new to me when I began working at the Museum, but soon I learned that the Lyme Historical Society and the Florence Griswold Museum are the keepers of a trove of fascinating material related to Nason that goes well beyond their extensive print collection. Soon I was delving into Nason's personal papers, scrapbooks, tools, and more. Being able to immerse myself in Thomas Nason's world really helped bring out a side of the artist that I don't think has been seen before. It may seem unlikely, especially if you're already and admirer of Nason's work, but I think he was a bit of a burgeoning Modernist. Please check back again for more insider notes on the Nason exhibition.