The Art of American Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)

.
Charles Burchfield (American artist, 1893-1967) North Wind in March

1916 Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Decorative Landscape, Shadow Wiliam- Proctor Institute, Museum of Art Utica, NY

In June of 2010, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, launched an exhibit of on the work of the visionary artist Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) curated by personal & political protest sculptor Robert Gober. Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield features more than 100 watercolors, drawings, & paintings from private & public collections, as well as selections from Burchfield’s journals, sketches, scrapbooks, & correspondence.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Backyards in Golden Sunlight. Christies

The Whitney had done a Burchfield retrospective in 1956, which also had traveled to Baltimore, among other sites. Organized by the Hammer Museum, in collaboration with the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, the summer 2010 exhibit provided the most comprehensive examination to date of modernist master, Charles Burchfield.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)

Born in 1893 in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, & raised nearby in Salem, Burchfield spent most of his adult life in upstate New York, in Buffalo & its suburb Gardenville, where he moved in 1921.

By age 21, Burchfield had written in his journal, “I hereby dedicate my life and soul to the study and love of nature, with the purpose to bring it before the mass of uninterested public.” Working almost exclusively in watercolor on paper, his principal subject was his experience of the natural world, which led him to create deeply personal landscapes often imbued with highly expressionistic light.

1918 Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Museum of Modern Art, NYC MOMA purchased its 1st Burchfield painting in 1929, not long after Edward Hopper's essay about Burchfield appeared in Art magazine.

His works quiver with color & the almost audible sounds of humming insects, rustling leaves, bells, birds, & vibrating telephone lines. In 1945 he noted, “It is as difficult to take in all the glory of a dandelion, as it is to take in a mountain, or a thunderstorm.”

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). A Dream of Butterflies, Sothebys

"An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which, if properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is in front of him," said Burchfield, who left a trove of sketches, jottings, notebooks, journals, & ephemera to the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). A Sea of Queen Anne Lace. Sothebys

The title of the Whitney show, Heat Waves in a Swamp, comes from the title of a Burchfield watercolor. Curator Gober writes of Burchfield in his catalogue introduction: “He loved swamps and bogs and marshes. He loved all of nature and was torn as a young man between being an artist and being a nature writer. He liked nothing more than to paint while literally standing in a swamp. Liked the mosquitoes and the rain and the decay of vegetation.”

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Orion in December 1959 Smithsonian Institution

From 1921 to 1929 Burchfield worked as a designer at the M. H. Birge & Sons wallpaper factory in Buffalo. His designs, like all his art, were based in nature. Burchfield then began full-time work as an artist.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Gateway to September 1946-56 Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga TN

Burchfield accepted commissions from Fortune magazine to paint railroads in Pennsylvania, sulphur mines in Texas, & coal mines in Virginia. Many of his paintings of this period deal with the rural & industrial worlds around him in a less fantastical way than in his earlier watercolors. By the mid-1930s, Burchfield was celebrated for his realist depictions of the American landscape.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY

In 1943, Burchfield faced a creative crisis, as he was approaching 50; & the country was in the middle of World War II. At that point, he began to look back at his earlier watercolors to expand them. Burchfield felt nature with all his senses. He described one piece on katydids as full of "monotonous, mechanical, brassy rhythms…combining with heat waves of the sun, and saturating trees and houses and sky."

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). An April Mood, 1946–55. Whitney Museum of Art, NYC

Burchfield created some of his most vibrant & fascinating works toward the end of his life. As curator Gober writes, “The works from this period of Burchfield’s life are immersed in what he perceived as the complicated beauty & spirituality of nature & are often imbued with visionary, apocalyptic, & hallucinatory qualities. In these large, late watercolors, Burchfield was able to execute with grace & beauty many of the painting ideas that he had developed as a young man…And in so doing, he transformed himself & his practice, producing one of the rarest events in the life of any artist: great art in old age.”

1959 Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). For the Beauty of the Earth. Sothebys


If you cannot get to the city, you can order the catalogue from the Whitney shop. Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield by Cynthia Burlingham and Robert Gober. Essays by Cynthia Burlingham, Robert Gober, Dave Hickey, Tullis Johnson, & Nancy Weekly.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Noontide.

You can also read Baur, John I. H., The Inlander: Life and Work of Charles Burchfield 1893-1967, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984. That book was produced for the 1984 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit. The Met bought its first Burchfield painting in 1924!

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). November Sun Emerging.

Or you can read Maciejunes, Nannette V. and Hall, Michael, D., The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 1997. .