Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work

Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work introduces the AAC’s important new collection of works by John Marin (1870-1953), given by the artist’s daughter-in-law, Norma Marin. Modernist at Work will bring the viewer inside the artistic process of one of America's outstanding modern artists. Marin is best known for his luminous watercolors of rural Maine and urban New York. This exhibition invites viewers to look over the artist’s shoulder as he created and honed the private sketches he would interpret into completed watercolors and etchings. The show follows the evolution of Marin’s style and methods as he transformed from intuitive draftsman to innovative modernist watercolorist and etcher.

The exhibition centers around 79 works from the collection of 290 drawings and watercolors by John Marin donated to the Arkansas Arts Center by the artist’s daughter-in-law. These works will be shown in the context of about 30 related art works by Marin loaned by outstanding public and private collections.

Viewers will see Marin developing his acclaimed images of New York City, and of the coast of Maine. The exhibition also follows the artist to lesser-known places, such as the Ramapo Mountains in New York and New Jersey. More obscure aspects of the artist’s career include portraits of friends and family, and charming drawings of zoo and circus animals. Several drawings and an unfinished and still very bright watercolor of the towering Woolworth Building, under construction in 1912, tell the inside story of a famous group of watercolors first exhibited in 1913 first at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery and then at the ground-breaking 1913 Armory Show that introduced much of the American public to modern art.

John Marin: Modernist at Work will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog of the complete, newly conserved, 290-work John Marin Collection at the Arkansas Arts Center, 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

Image" John Marin, American (Rutherford, New Jersey, 1870–1953, Cape Split, Maine), The Three Pines, Blueberry Barrens, Washington County, Maine, 1952; graphite and pastel on tracing paper, 8 11/16 x 11 1/2 inches, Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: Gift of Norma B. Marin, New York, New York. 2013.018.222 (catalog 60)

Whether you go or not,  the exhibition catalog, Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work, follows Marin to his most famous subject matter: New York City and the coast of Maine. Foundational drawings and an unfinished watercolor of the towering Woolworth Building, still under construction when they were made in 1912, begin the story of a renowned group of watercolors first exhibited in 1913 at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery and then at the ground-breaking 1913 Armory Show. Other images take us to lesser-known locales, such as the Ramapo Mountains in New York and New Jersey where Marin often painted when he couldn’t get to Maine. More obscure aspects of the artist’s career explored in this collection include portraits of friends and family, charming drawings of animals, and circus scenes. Catalogs the complete, newly conserved, 290-work collection, and features essays by AAC Curator of Drawings and curator of the exhibition, Ann Prentice Wagner, PhD, Independent Scholar Josephine White Rodgers, and other authorities.

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