‘Gatecrashers’ exhibit opens at Brandywine River Museum of Art

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 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

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Flag Day, 1935, by William Doriani

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

The exhibit is being curated by Katherine Jentleson and is inspired by her book Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self Taught Artist in America.

similarly overcame their lack of formal academic training and achieved recognition from the highest arbiters of elite culture.” Within a decade of Kane’s arrival, other selftaught artists like Horace Pippin, Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Roberson Moses), Morris Hirshfield and Jacob Lawrence burst onto the national art scene and reshaped the notion of who could be called an artist in America.

Many of these artists will be acknowledged and celebrated this year in Chadds Ford.

Beginning on May 28 and running through Sept. 5, more than 60 works of art in this genre will be on display as part of Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America. The Brandywine River Museum of Art will serve as the second stop for the exhibit, which premiered at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga. and will conclude at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pa.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

Scene from the Scottish Highlands, 1927, by John Kane

Saying Prayers, 1943, by Horace Pippin

Organized by the High Museum of Art and curated by Jentleson, the exhibit will celebrate two dozen earlytwentieth century painters who without formal training, diversified the field across lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender and ability to “crash the gates” of the elite art world after World War I.

“Gatecrashers -- both the book and the exhibition -- establish an origin story for how self-taught artists first succeeded within the mainstream art world,” said Jentleson. “Kane, Moses, Pippin and the other artists in the exhibition deserve to be reconsidered not only because of how their work intertwined with major cultural and social change of their day, but also because of how their gatecrashing set the stage for the vital role that self-taught artists still play in the 21st century, greatly diversifying our cultural canons across race, gender, class, ability and other important markers of identity that are all too often underrepresented.”

Mythologies, workers first, national identity and trends

Expanding upon Jentleson’s book, the Gatecrashers exhibit is organized into several thematic sections that explore the rise of self-taught artists in the era between the wars. The exhibition section entitled “American Mythologies” focuses on how these artists were eagerly embraced under the belief that by virtue of being self-taught they were examples of a creative excellence that was “uniquely American,”

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Black Horses, 1942, by Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses)

free from the traditions and innovations that had made European artists dominant for centuries.

During the Great Depression, the idea of the practical, multitasking American gained particular resonance. In the “Workers First” section, the exhibit examines the role that self-taught artists’ jobs outside the art world played in advancing their reputations. Whether it was Morris Hirshfield’s rise through the ranks of Brooklyn’s textile factories, or Israel Litwak’s trade as a cabinetmaker, critics noted how these artists’ occupational histories influenced their subject matter and helped shape their artistic development.

A number of self-taught artists were recent immigrants who painted memories and customs from their homelands, as well as the places, symbols and history of the United States. The exhibit’s “Negotiating National Identity” section outlines the ways in which self-taught artists often employed distinctly American subjects to establish national identity in their work.

Horses and Rattlesnakes, 1946, by Lawrence Lebduska

The section entitled “Related Trends in American Painting” reflects the ways in which work by self-taught artists in this period to the art of the American Modernists. Alignments in style and subject matter led to exhibitions that integrated these artists’ work with that of their trained peers, foreshadowing how many museums today display self-taught artists within their American and contemporary art collections.

“This exhibition offers a fascinating new perspective on how self-taught artists were perceived and elevated in the years between World War I and II,” said Thomas Padon, the James H. Duff Director of the Brandywine River Museum of Art. “During this period, the work of self-taught artists was thought to embody a more direct experience of American life. The exhibition reveals how this group brought a heretofore unknown degree of diversity to the inner sanctums of museums and galleries in this country.

“The exhibition provides such a fascinating context to the Brandywine’s own holdings of self-taught artists.”

The exhibit Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America will be on view from May 28 to Sept. 5. To learn more, visit brandywine.org/museum.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email rgaw@chestercounty.com. Waterbirds Nesting, 1935-39, by Josephine Joy