Chapter 121: Heaven in the Detail

Culture vulture that I am, not long ago I agreed to my wife’s suggestion that I join her in seeing an exhibition of paintings at a gallery on the swanky Upper East Side of Manhattan. She did not feel it was necessary to sweeten the invitation with the promise of ice cream if I did not whine. I like to think I have come a very long way.

I will confess that, nonfiction soul that I am, my taste in art veers toward the literal; invite me to a photography exhibit – especially of urban scenes in black and white – and I am there. It’s not that I cannot appreciate the abstract and experimental. It’s just that my mind inevitably races to images that transport me to the faces, expressions, poses, and interactions of the people who come alive inside the frame. Photographed or painted, I like to be taken to a place that makes me wonder what lies beyond the frozen moment.

This exhibit promised something different: work by the early 20th century painter Arthur Dove, a contemporary of Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz whose most celebrated work was decidedly abstract.

I am not a checklist gallery/museum goer – making sure to give every work its due. I prefer to see what stops me. And so it was that I found myself at the Alexandre Gallery spending a good deal of time in front of several paintings, the likes of which felt altogether new, and as a nonfiction writer, inspiring.

I will confess that I had not heard of Dove, but it took no time to see why, almost a century on, his work stands up. 

As the show’s curator, Debra Bricker Balken, wrote: “While nature was always Dove’s primary subject, he was also drawn intermittently to mechanical and architectonic forms. During the 1920s and early ‘30s especially, he painted numerous images of lanterns, gears, water mills, barges, telegraph poles, and storage tanks that seemingly counter his stock inventory of natural forms.” 

Three images in particular caught my eye: a tractor; a train; a barge and derrick. None was what could be considered a literal rendering. The tractor looked like it had been stomped on by a size-128 boot and sat beneath a telegraph pole whose lines vanish into the clouds; the train cars appeared warped; and the derrick looked like it was about to sink slowly into the barge.

Just now I am looking again at the photos I took of them on my phone that day; much as I hate people taking photos of paintings at museums, I somehow knew I needed to record these. The colors in all three are muted – as if each moment occurred on a cloudy day. No people are present. No action occurs, other than the sense of movement by the train. 

(Arthur Dove Town Scraper, 1933 Private Collection, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York.)

Even now I cannot stop staring at them. And as I stare, and allow my eye to focus on, say, the rusted wheels of the tractor, I feel as if something has been ignited in my imagination. There is a story in each painting. And because the images leave so much to the viewer, whatever story emerges will be mine alone.

I remember driving to work early on in my career and listening to an interview with James Clavell, the author of such door-stoppers as “Shogun” and “Tai-pan.” Great literature these are not. But. Clavell could tell a story, so well in fact that 1000 pages or so never felt long. What I recall in particular was Clavell saying that writers best served their readers by providing just enough physical detail of a character to allow the reader to fill in the rest. In doing so, he explained, the writer could perform the small miracle of allowing readers to bring the character to life, and see him or her only as each of those readers saw them. 

(Arthur Dove Cinder Barge and Derrick, 1931 Private Collection, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York.)

I am reminded of that long ago interview as I look at these three paintings by Arthur Dove and their impact on me. I am reminded, too, how the temptation in journalism is to focus on all the words being said, or gathering as many images as can fit into a notebook. In other words: the emphasis is on being comprehensive, a legacy, I suspect, of what was rewarded in term papers all through high school and college; tell me everything you know and I will reward you with an A.

Years ago, in fact, a very industrious student thought the best way of completing an assignment on describing a bodega was to itemize every last item on the shelves. It was a little heartbreaking having to tell her she had gotten this all wrong – that by listing everything she had, in effect, avoided deciding what item or image captured the story she wanted to tell.

Much is made in editing and teaching writing of the “telling detail,” the image that distills so much so simply and effectively. (When I was in journalism school a classmate wrote a feature on a distance runner and described, minutely, the runner’s sinewy arms. Alas, a telling detail only if he ran on his hands. We learn.) 

But in looking and looking and looking some more at what Arthur Dove captured so long ago, something far more important is happening than merely capturing a somewhat twisted image of a plow, a train or a crane.

Dove is transcending the telling detail. I feel that he is speaking to me. He is saying: I noticed these things and this is how I saw them.

You, in turn, can see them however you like. And if you’re so inclined, stick around for a while and wait to see what story unfolds. 

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