Dove, Arthur (1880–1946)

Arthur Dove (1880–1946) was a pioneer of abstraction and probably the first American to create purely non-representational paintings. His interest in natural forces, processes and forms inspired most of his work. His use of nature epitomizes a broad trend in early American modernist painting that includes many artists in the Alfred Stieglitz circle. Dove came from the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Ridiculously Modern Marsden: Tragicomic Form and Queer Modernity

In “Ridiculously Modern Marsden”, Tyrus Miller (University of California, Santa Cruz) explores the peculiar comic register of ‘the ridiculous’ and its modernity through the self-directed laughter of modernist painter and poet Marsden Hartley. A marginal figure of the Stieglitz circle, Hartley found his homosexuality too often the butt of the joke amongst his friends, and so chose to turn himself into an object of comedy. Tracing the play of this ostentatious self-ridicule, Miller shows how Hartley twins comedy and tragedy, turning laughter into a sign of ridiculous authenticity, a strange mode of gay affirmation.