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Provincetown :: Friday, May 16th 2008
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Untitled (or Boatyard) by Ross Moffett.
Ross Moffett - A Retrospective
PAAM Presents Artworks by a Provincetown Modernist
By Kahrin Deines
May 5th, 2007
In his history of the early years of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, “Art in Narrow Streets,” Ross Moffett wrote this about the meaning of abstraction in art: “The process of relating is, of course, entirely abstract, since relations have no representatives in outward nature; two colors may exist side by side in the exterior world, but not so the thought that relates them. So it seems correct to say that, as regards its intrinsic character, all art is abstract.”
| Moffett’s figures are unique. They stoop as if the sky were too low and the men were too big for their world. - Josephine del Deo in her book ''Figures in a Landscape.'' |
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Ross Moffett, one of Provincetown’s most famous painters, was involved with the Provincetown Art Association and Museum since its beginnings, taking part in every one of its exhibitions except two until his death in 1971. This long involvement, as well as his own move towards modernist exposition in his work, made him particularly suited to write a history of the association’s early years, which after a short halcyon period were characterized by often fractious relations between an old conservative guard and a group of newly self-styled modernists, such as Moffett, Karl Knaths and Edwin Dickinson.
Moffett, whose work will be on exhibit at PAAM until June 3 in the Patrons Gallery and Jalbert Gallery, wasn’t just an American modernist, though. He had also been a student of Provincetown’s favorite impressionist Charles Hawthorne and he brought to his work a similar preoccupation with the texture of the town, especially its Portuguese population and fishermen.
Writing about his work in her book “Figures in a Landscape,” Josephine del Deo traces his preoccupation with the figure, and its relationship to setting, from his early years as a Hawthorne acolyte to his later modernist works. “At the time he painted Ben Atkins, it was clear that he was still hugely influenced by the virtuoso examples of his teacher, Charles W. Hawthorne, but there is unmistakably the predisposition to a rather sinuated form, imaginatively conceived and provocatively placed . . . Moffett’s figures are unique. They stoop as if the sky were too low and the men were too big for their world. This technique Ross Moffett employed again and again . . . ,” wrote del Deo.
Although always a student of the human figure, Moffett did move away from the styles of painting taught by his mentor Hawthorne. In some autobiographical notes that are included in del Deo’s book, Moffett says that it was in 1916 that he first discovered an independent artistic path. “The thought came to me to try something radically different . . .,” he wrote. “So I began and hurriedly completed a small canvas from which I discarded all drawings from actually presented objects. Eliminated also were bright, high-keyed colors, and all representations of sunlight, with the consequent cutting up of the picture with cast shadows. I invented places and shapes instinctively, without premeditation.”
Provincetown, though, continued to be central in Moffett’s artwork, even as he began to develop a unique style that led him to be considered one of America’s foremost modernists. “My subject was life in Provincetown as I absorbed it visually during my many walks in the town, particularly in the west section where the Portuguese flavor was especially manifest.”
The PAAM exhibit presents 36 works by Moffett, drawn in combination from the museum’s permanent collection and the collection of Napi and Helen Van Dereck. It will be on display in the Patrons and Jalbert Galleries until June 3. Josephine del Deo’s book “Figures in a Landscape” is also available at the Museum Store at PAAM. PAAM is located at 460 Commercial Street. To find out more, go to www.paam.org or call 508.487.1750.
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