One super-prime
example of why it is often unwise to stick with labels for artists’ styles is
the term “Painters of the American Scene,” or “American Scene Painting.” This
term is so hugely umbrella-like that it makes certain art historians dizzy (not
really). In many texts, studies of the American Scene include Regionalism;
Social Realism; Magic Realism (a distant cousin to Surrealism); and plain,
unadulterated personal forms of realism. If I had to choose one of those
designations to describe the paintings of Peter Blume, Magic Realism comes the
closest, but it so does not sum up the breadth of expression in his body of
work.
Realism blossomed in American art in the isolationist and
ethnocentric aftermath of World War I (1914–1918), particularly during the era
of the Great Depression (1929–1939). It was during this time in the 1930s that
Blume’s mature work evolved. However, Blume’s form of realism was far from that
of Edward Hopper or Thomas Hart Benton. Blume emigrated from Russia with his
family at the age of five. He studied art in New York and had his own studio by
the age of 18. His historical artistic interests lay in Renaissance painting
from both Italy and northern Europe, although, in his obsessive detail of
objects from the physical world, his paintings lean closer to the passionate
observed realism of Flanders and Germany during the Renaissance. He trained
under brothers Raphael (1899–1987) and Isaac Soyer (1902–1981), Russian immigrant
artists who were avid realist painters, whose depictions of everyday American
life during the Depression could appropriately be called Social Realism.
In 1932 Blume won a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent a year
in Italy, which inspired his first major sensation of a painting in 1934: The Eternal City. Inspired while
standing in the Roman forum, the jack-in-the-box menacing head of the fascist
dictator Mussolini is a portent of rapidly approaching World War II (1939–1945).
On the left side of this painting is the Man of Sorrows, Jesus during his
ordeal before crucifixion, a running theme in Blume’s work.
Throughout his career, Blume maintained his own personal
vision in his work, even with the ascendancy of Abstract Expressionism during
the 1950s. The Shrine is one of
several versions of the Man of Sorrows theme, one that could easily come out of
private devotional images from Spanish Renaissance or Baroque art, particularly
in the placement of the figure on what looks like a draped altar. In both of these
paintings one sees elements of Surrealism, although Blume himself denounced the
movement in print because of its theories about unconscious creation and its
associations with sensual themes from the subconscious. Many of Blume’s
paintings included everyday objects that he observed in his travels around the
Northeast. Many of Blume’s post-war paintings reflected the sorrow at its
destruction, yet the hope for rebuilding. In The Shrine, Blume’s Surrealist experiment comes the closest to any
examination of the psychology of suffering in the badly scarred and emaciated
body of Christ. At the same time, it reflects a sense of faith in the tiny pilgrim
badges adorning his loincloth—symbols of the faithful, a tradition dating back
to the pilgrimages in Europe during the Middle Ages (ca. 1000–1400).
After leaving New York, Blume and his wife moved to
Connecticut and grew vegetables. He produced many landscapes and still life paintings.
While one is tempted, in this pre-war landscape, to read a contrast between the
poppies symbolizing life and hope and the stark, craggy rocks as the coming
devastation of war, I see it more as evidence of Blume’s uncanny ability to
depict nature in minute detail, almost like Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da
Vinci. Stones recur in many of his works.
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Landscape with Poppies,
1939. Oil on canvas, 18" x 25 1/8" (45.7 x 63.8 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. © 2015 Estate of Peter Blume / Licensed by VAGA, New York.
(MOMA-P0702buvg)
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Blume did copious studies of figures and elements of nature
for all of his paintings. This lovely little pine tree branch may have been a
study for a painting, but is lovely on its own. It has an almost Japanese
quality in its craggy branches and asymmetrical composition. It may have been
inspired by something he saw during a trip to the Pacific in the mid-1950s.
![]() |
Untitled (Branch of
Tree), 1957. India ink on Japanese paper, 8 1/4" x 11" (21 x 27.9
cm). Brooklyn Museum. © 2015 Estate of Peter Blume / Licensed by VAGA, New York.
(BMA-5051buvg)
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Correlations to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 3: 3.17-18 studio; Explorations in Art Grade
4: 6.31, 6.34; Explorations in Art Grade 5: 6.34, 6.35, 6.33-34 studio; A
Personal Journey: 1.3, 7.4; A Community Connection: 6.2, 7.4; Experience
Painting: 6; Exploring Painting: 10; Exploring Visual Design: 1, 10; The Visual
Experience: 9.3; Discovering Art History: 15.3
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