European film premier

Marsden Hartley "He was really not a very nice man."

Last night I attended the European Premier of "Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet,"An Essay in Film. Ok, so "European Premier" sounds a bit more exciting than it was, but it was still cool. About 100 or so people (most affiliated with DFAS - the Decorative Fine Arts Society of The Hague) attended this event at the American School of The Hague (which is here in Wassenaar).

Now, I definitely don't claim to be an expert (or a fan, really) of modern art, nor had I heard of Marsden Hartley (who died in 1943) before this event - but it was still very interesting and I'm glad I went. He is, in fact, considered a master. He was actually from Lewiston, Maine.

The hour-long film is a "deeply personal view of Marsden Hartley, who has long been considered one of the fathers of American Modernism. Forty-three paintings and some of his writings capture the essence of Hartley." The film's director and narrator (Michael Maglaras), and his wife (Terri Templeton), the producer, came from the U.S. (Greenwich, CT) own a film company and recording company, and this kind of work is quite clearly their passion. This is Maglaras' second film about Hartley.

(see http://www.two17films.com/AboutMarsdenHartleyforVS.htm for more details.'

According to Wikipedia Hartley was in the cultural vanguard, in the same milieu as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Gorgia O´Keefe and several others with whom I am also not familiar!

A bit (ok, maybe a lot) above my level of understanding of art, the film still captured my interest. Hartley's personal story is quite interesting. His mother died when he was eight, and he lived a life of loss and isolation. Quite sad, really. And Chonoweth Hall, a scuptress who lived near Corea, Maine, where Hartley lived during his latter years, said of him, "He was really not a very nice man." Among other things, he became fascinated and charmed by Germany, and actually by Hitler himself, whom Hartley had wanted to meet but never did.

Hartley, who was gay, painted Portrait of a German Officer (1914), which was an ode to Karl von Freyburg, his friend's cousin and a Prussian lieutenant of whom he became enamored before von Freyburg's death in World War I (pictured here).

Mt. Katahdin in Maine

Some of his most important works, according to experts, were thos of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, and the narrator went on about his clouds, but I didn't really get it. Anyway...

I won't go into his story at length, but it is worth a lookup on Wikipedia or somesuch site. I'm sure that my brother-in-law Scott knows his work. I will tell you that his painting Lighthouse was sold in May 2008 for a whopping $6.3 Million. Sadly, during Hartley's lifetime he lived in poverty and never had a permanent address. He chose to paint and write and nothing else.

Lighthouse which sold for $6.3M in May 2008

"It is because I love the idea of life better than anything else that I believe most of all in the magic of existence, and in spite of much terrifying and disillusioning experiences of late, I believe." Marsden Hartley

Roses was apparently his last (or perhaps one of his last) works, understood to represent his time with the Mason family with a rose representing each member of the family. Adelard Mason was Hartley´s lover. Hartley had lived with the Mason family in Nova Scotia for a couple of years seven years before his death. The tragic of the death of the three drowned brothers, including Adelar, inspired Hartley´s return to the human form and portraits.

Adelard the Drowned

Roses

All very educational! I'm trying to be cultured, really I am :)