|Chadds Ford Arts| Following World War I, artists without formal training “crashed the gates” of the art culture in America and changed it forever. They’re now being celebrated in a new exhibit at the Brandywine River Museum of Art
‘Trespassing in the art world’s ivory tower’ By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer In the first chapter of her book Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self Taught Artist in America (University of California Press, 2020), author Katherine Jentleson wrote about the highly-anticipated Carnegie International exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in the fall of 1927. Melded within the collection, among the paintings and portraits from some of the world’s finest artists, was a painting that didn’t seem like it belonged there. The painting, entitled Scene from the Scottish Highlands (1927) was by John Kane, an immigrant who had arrived
Flag Day, 1935, by William Doriani 10
Chadds Ford Life | Spring/Summer 2022 | www.chestercounty.com
in the United States years before and became a coal miner, and steel and tire laborer. There was something about the painting that defied convention and the unwritten rules of contemporary art and captured the eye of the painter Andrew Dasburg, who was the exhibit’s lone juror to champion the work of the self-taught artist. Kane, Jentleson wrote, was “trespassing in the art world’s ivory tower.” “Here was an artist,” she wrote, “humble and self-determined, who translated the American dream of equality and prosperity into an art world parable that has been repeated dozens of times over the past century by artists who Continued on Page 12
