It may lack the aromatherapy, quartz crystals and Enya music that its title suggests, but the John Nicholas Brown Center's latest exhibition, a thorough retrospective of prints from Edwardian art journal "The New Age," seems to have tapped all the right chakras. Unveiled Thursday at the Center's Carriage House Gallery, "New Art in 'The New Age': What was Modern?" showcases nearly a decade's worth of modernist illustration featured in the London-based review and marks a particular triumph for the skilled team of archivists behind the project.
"Art criticism has always been a popular subject for scholarly investigation," said curator Dawn Blizard GS. "But here, we're also bringing the concept of publication to the table."
Professor Emeritus of Modern Culture and Media Robert Scholes approached Blizard, a Ph.D. candidate specializing in literary modernism and visual art, in mid-January to join the collaborative venture with the Brown Humanities Center Working Group. "At the time, Bob needed help sorting through his personal collection of old magazines," Blizard recalled, adding that though Scholes was aware of the importance of "The New Age" as a cultural arbitrator, he wanted to demonstrate its important visual component as well. With funding from the Modernist Journals Project and Brown's Humanities and John Nicholas Brown Centers, the two set out to realize Scholes' vision.
The process of cataloging the myriad illustrations - social and political cartoons, pen and ink sketches and canvas reproductions - took time, but eventually common themes began to emerge.
The four years following 1910 witnessed a crucial stage in the formation of a Modernist art movement in England, with critics divided over its exact mission. As a widely circulated repository for such debate, "The New Age" provided writers and artists alike with the space necessary for distributing their work. Whole series of modernist pieces, executed in a variety of different media and styles, spanned several issues in a concerted effort to define the movement, distinguish it from the modernism of continental Europe and swing London into the new century.
Arranged in six short sequences ranging from two to six reproductions each, "New Art in 'The New Age'" highlights the published work of the movement's precursors, such as Walter Sickert and Tom Titt, as well as the later, high modernist achievements of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and William Roberts. Unfortunately, a brief tour around the gallery space may leave eyes hungry for some color - due to the publication's restricted palette, all prints are dully limited to blacks, whites and grays - but the sheer stylistic diversity of the period all but makes up for the lack.
In a first set, Sickert, a frequent contributor to the review, translates assorted scenes from both the seedy underbelly and upper crust of London into impressionistic line drawings. Privileging line over color as "an essential element in emphasizing the real" - explains the wall text - his oeuvre anticipates a brand of Modernism portraying momentary sensations and movement. In addition, his riskier cartoons, such as 1912's "Amantium Irae" depicting a partially clad woman dressing in her boudoir, challenged stodgy British sensibilities with their lurid subject matter.
In 1911, art critic Huntly Carter brought an early Picasso study to "The New Age's" pages - a controversial move reenacted in the gallery's second set. Introducing London readers to the in-vogue abstractionism of continental Europe, Carter startled his countrymen with nonfigurative drawings from France and Italy. A.D. Segonzac's "Les Boxeurs" elevates the style to a near-Futurist portrayal of man-to-man combat.
Interaction between modernist subgenres - some constructive, some not - is also treated throughout the exhibition. A contemporary drawing series dating from 1914 features five polemical responses by abstractionist artists to Sickert's "Neo-Realism," a movement favoring naturalism over abstraction. Pieces like Gaudier-Brzeska's "The Dancer" meld primitivism and colorful suggestions of movement - a subtle affront to the realist school.
In the midst of this debate, Blizard isn't one to take sides. "Each series represents a new type of modern art," she said, "and curating the exhibit's physical space, moving between movements, is more rewarding than standing still in front of any one."
"New Art in 'The New Age': What was Modern?" is on view through Oct. 30 at the Carriage House Gallery at the John Nicholas Brown Center. Opening hours are from 1to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Admission is free.
