Clarence Holbrook Carter: The Metamorphosis of an American Surrealist
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Clarence Holbrook Carter: The Metamorphosis of an American Surrealist WOLFS Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio April 16, 2020 - May 30, 2020 With an Introduction by Marianne Berardi
13010 LARCHMERE BLVD CLEVELAND, OH 44120 • (216) 721 6945 • INFO@WOLFSGALLERY.COM • WWW.WOLFSGALLERY.COM
CONTENTS Introduction 1 Early Work
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Rural Regionalism
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Magic Realism
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Madison Avenue
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Over & Above Series
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The Figure
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Collage 114 Beyond Earth
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Mandalas 126 Ovoids/Eggs 136 Transections 158 Architecture and Precisionism
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Eschatos 186 Various Subjects
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Drawings 200 Prints 230 Exhibitions 240
Foreword It has been a long time coming and the challenge considerable, but finally WOLFS is pleased to present “The Metamorphosis of an American Surrealist”, works from the Estate of Clarence Holbrook Carter. Carter Carter Carter what a brilliant character; a moving target, hurdling and sidestepping the fleeting realities that define the 20th century. Most artists choose a style, or prefer a certain subject matter, composition and design, but not Clarence Carter. Carter is an artist as hard to define as the times in which he worked. Carter’s journey begins in bucolic southern Ohio where his boyhood was marked by tragic loss in a humble world of circus merry-go-rounds and tough temperamental rivers. The abundantly talented boy of modest means eagerly embraces his artistic opportunities and soon joins the army of striving and struggling young American artists. With the perspective of the late, famed, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer James A. Michner, the incredible work of our staff and the piercing insight of art historian Marianne Berardi, the following catalog records this remarkable artist’s odyssey from buggy whips to Stanley Kubrick.
Foreword © 1971 by James A. Michener Originally published in Arts Magazine, May 1971. Reprinted by permission of the author in Clarence Holbrook Carter
For some time I have suspected that forty years from now American collectors and museums will be searching for examples of Clarence Carter’s work. His canvases will be appreciated both as masterful demonstrations of the painterly art and high points of abstract surrealism. There will always be a widespread interest in surrealism as one manner of reacting to physical phenomena. Granted, it will not constitute the major concern of art, but it will enjoy a permanent niche, if only because of the scintillating sidelight it throws upon human experience. Carter’s work, which constitutes some of the best surrealist painting done
in America, compares favorably with the imaginary visions of Max Ernest, Matta, and Kay Sage. In the field of abstract surrealism, I believe that Carter stands pretty much at the head of the class. His vision is exceptionally pure, his technique is unsurpassed; such a union produces works of great visual impact and tactile delight. He works in three styles, and his admirers seem about equally divided in their preferences. Over and Aboves for which he has been most noted, are tall canvases divided horizontally near the middle. The lower portion consists of a blank wall, resembling the side of an adobe house. Leering out from a background above the wall is some huge animal or bird, its chin often resting on top of the wall (one is a water buffalo, the other is a vulture). Some viewers find them particularly menacing, while others see them as evocative of the spirit of the animal kingdom. Effective they are: one man’s view of nature as perceived in a vision. They avoid the purely fanciful constructions of wildlife as seen in certain surrealist paintings and because of this, they might be criticized for showing a lack of imagination. Yet they are so forceful in their imagery that they command the viewer’s attention. They are very successful in conveying a sense of the mystery of animal life, and ought to be of increasing interest as we begin to grapple with the ecological problem of what man’s relationship to nature should be. In this respect they fulfill admirably one of the demands of surrealist art: by jolting our senses with a bright new vision of ordinary things, it prompts us to reconsider these things with new intellectual concepts. In this series, it is the surrealist half of abstract surrealism that dominates. A Mandala consists of a series of superimposed, translucent egg-shapes floating in space and interlocking in both design and color. They are beautifully intricate and each comes to focus in a series of increasingly smaller shapes which end in a minute, brilliantly colored central image – out of which all the other forms seem to have expanded. Color is sovereign. First there is a huge expanse of background, usually in a subdued flat color;
then the evanescent ovoid shapes in a complementary color; then the minute central core in a brilliant and contrasting hue; and finally, across the bottom, a broad band of an entirely new and vibrating color which seems to have been arbitrarily selected for its shock value. The result is a marvelous blend of harmonious movement, forward and backward oscillation of the forms, and vibrations of colors. There is something quite mysterious about these constructions. Although they represent the interaction of pure form and color, they do so in a way that captivates the imagination. In the dualism represented by the term “abstract surrealism,” these works stress the former. Their high imaginative content makes them more than mere abstractions, since they are infused with the mysteriousness that is essential to any good surrealist representation. Transections represent the apex of Carter’s art. In unworldly landscapes, innumerable cells disappear into the far distance or move upward and outward into space without definition. In this way a non-finite universe is established. In each cell, or emerging form, it appears an egg-shaped form points down; these seem to be in upward motion, with a strong sense of having just been born. Because the visual imagery is so much more powerful than in the Mandalas, the colors can be more subdued. The total effect is quite powerful – an almost ideal bending of the abstract and the surreal. To me, Transection #3; After Fra Angelico is one of the best paintings Carter has done. I saw it before it was titled and supposed that the coffin in the foreground had been taken from an early Renaissance painter such as Orcagna or Castagno. Then I remembered something Carter had once written – “I have always considered Giovanni di Paolo a great abstract surrealist painter” – and concluded that he had borrowed his central theme from this delightful
Sienese. So I thought to myself, What a felicitous borrowing. It fits the requirements perfectly. Only later did I discover that the coffin had come from a work by Fra Angelico. If ever a painting superbly illustrated the essence of the Resurrection, it is this – with the empty coffin in the foreground, the endless crypts reaching into the distance, the marvelous scattering of graveyard slabs. The assembly of images alone would have this notable surrealist painting, but when the ascending ovoid shape is considered, the essential element of the Resurrection becomes one of Carter’s most memorable paintings, for it has that timeless quality which marks all great surrealist works. More universal and less explicit, I believe, is Transection #8, 1970. The cell-like structures are very abstract, the horizon is infinite, the colors have no literary significance, and the emerging ovoid forms have a mysteriousness not evident in the preceding work. This is a tremendously satisfying painting, and the various elements coalesce in a remarkable way. The simplicity of design and execution makes it especially attractive, and it is perhaps one of Carter’s most balanced achievements in terms of striving for abstract/surrealist symbiosis. The excellence of Carter’s work will be increasingly appreciated, I think as its consistently high quality is recognized. His paintings grow in depth without becoming more complex, and their surrealist implications seem constantly more relative. His works are never thin, either technically or emotionally, and I believe they are assured a long life. He once said, “For me no great art has ever existed without some mystery and some awe. It is that vast intangible, which can never be defined but only felt in an elusive way, that stirs the spirit.” Some of his paintings stir the spirit profoundly.
Clarence Holbrook Carter CHRONOLOGY 1904 Born March 26 near Portsmouth, Ohio 1923-1927 Attended the Cleveland School of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1927-1928 Studied in Capri, Italy with Hans Hofmann 1930-1937 Taught at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1937-1938 Director of the Federal Art Project for Northeastern Ohio 1938-1944 Taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1944 Traveled to Venezuela, Trinidad and Surinam 1944-1959 Completed series of commercial design projects for advertisements in national publications 1948 Guest Instructor at Cleveland Institute of Art 1949 Guest Instructor at Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, Minnesota 1954 Guest Instructor at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1955 Guest Instructor at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 1957 Guest Instructor at Atlanta School of Art, Georgia 1959 Traveled to Denmark, Germany, Austria, France and England 1961-1969 Guest Instructor and Artist-in-Residence, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania 1969 Traveled to London and Amsterdam 1970 Guest Artist at University of Iowa, Iowa City 1971 Traveled to England, Belgium and Holland 1973 Workshop Chair for Symposium “Philosophical Aspects of Thanatology� at Columbia University, New York 1975 Artist-in-Residence at Eight Blossom-Kent Art Program, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Guest Instructor at Iowa State Univeristy, Ames, Iowa 2000 Died June 4 in Milford, New Jersey
MEMBERSHIPS Member, American Watercolor Society, New York City, New York (Board of Directors 1961-1962; Vice President 1962) Associate Member, National Academy of Design Delaware Valley Art Association (President 1962-1963)
COMMISSIONS Tapestry Design, Morris R. Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, Easton, New Jersey, 1927 Two Murals, Cleveland Public Auditorium, Cleveland, Ohio, 1934 Mural, United States Post Office, Ravenna, Ohio, 1936 Mural Series, United States Post Office, Portsmouth, Ohio, 1938 Mural, David Sarnoff Research Center, RCA, Princeton, New Jersey, 1967 Mural, 791 Bergen Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1972
HONORARY DEGREE 1994
Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
AWARDS The Cleveland Museum of Art May Shows 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
3rd Prize for Oil Painting, Portrait 1st Prize for Watercolor 3rd Prize for Oil Painting, Figure Composition 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Figure Composition 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Landscape 1st Prize for Watercolor 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Still Life 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Portrait 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Landscape 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Figure Composition Honorable Mention for Watercolor Special Award for Oil Painting, Figure Composition 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Landscape 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Industrial 2nd Prize for Oil Painting, Figure Composition Honorable Mention for Watercolor 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Landscape 3rd Prize for Oil Painting, Still Life 3rd Prize for Watercolor 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Portrait 2nd Prize for Oil Painting, Industrial 1st Prize for Oil Painting, Landscape and Miscellaneous 2nd Prize for Oil Painting, Still Life 2nd Prize for Watercolor 2nd Prize for Oil Painting, Still Life
Annual New Year Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio 1937 1940 1943
1st Popularity Prize 1st Prize in Oils 2nd Prize in Oils
“Painting in the United States,” Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1943
1st Popular Award
1944
2nd Popular Award
Annual Exhibition, Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute Galleries, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1943 1944
1st Prize for Oil Painting Charles J. Rosenbloom Award
Art Director’s Club of New York City 1953 1955
Honored for Artistic Excellence Honored for Artistic Excellence
The Saturday Review’s Annual Award 1954
Distinguished Advertising in the Public Interest
Butler Institute of American Art Medal for Life Achievements in the Arts, 1992 New Jersey Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, 1976, 1989, and 1993
Clarence Holbrook Carter
MUSEUMS Ackland Art Museum, University of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Allentown Museum of Art, Allentown, Pennsylvania Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York Baukunst, Cologne, Germany Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland The Brooklyn Museum, New York City, New York Butler Institute of Art, Youngstown, Ohio Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Davidson College Art Gallery, Davidson, North Carolina Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo Michigan Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio Macedonia Center of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland, California Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Nelson-Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey Northeast Ohio Art Museum, Cleveland, Ohio Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida Noyes Museum, Oceanville, New Jersey
Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma Schumacher Gallery, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln Sheldon Swope Art Gallery, Terre Haute, Indiana Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford, Connecticut Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, Maryland University of Oklahoma Art Museum, Norman, Oklahoma University Art Gallery, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England College of Wooster Art Center, Wooster, Ohio Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Allied Bank of Houston, Houston, Texas Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts Chase Manhattan Bank, New York Citibank, New York First National Bank of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Foote Cone Belding, Chicago, Illinois Gould, Inc., Chicago, Illinois Los Angeles Athletic Club, Los Angeles, California Michigan Bell, Detroit, Michigan Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey New York Public Library, New York City, New York Peat, Marwick, Mitchell, Nebraska Pfizer Company, New York City, New York The Prudential Insurance Company of America, Newark, New Jersey Public Service Electric and Gas, Newark, New Jersey Southwestern Bell, Houston, Texas
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ADAM AND EVE 1926 Oil on board 17.5 x 15.5 inches Private collection
INTRODUCTION Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000) achieved a level of national artistic success that was nearly unprecedented among Cleveland School artists of his day, with representation by major New York dealers, scores of awards and solo exhibits, and streams of praise flowing from pens of the top art critics. Over the course of his 60+ year career Carter evolved from an exceptionally fine American Scene painter capable of evoking deep reservoirs of mood, into an abstractionist with a strongly surrealist bent. While his two bodies of work seem at first to be worlds apart, owing to their different formal vocabularies, they, in fact, explore virtually the same subject: the nexus between life and death and the transition from earth to spirit. The early work finds its expressive power through specific people, events, and landscapes—most of which are drawn from his experiences growing up in the river town of Portsmouth, Ohio—while the later work from the 1960s on evokes potent states of being through pure flat shape, color and form that read as universals. As his primary form he adopted the ovoid or egg shape, endowing it with varying degrees of transparency. Alone or in multiples, the egg moves through Carter’s landscapes and architectural settings like a sentient spirit on a restless quest. Born and raised in southern Ohio along the banks of the mercurial Ohio River and its treacherous floods, Carter developed a love of drawing as a child, and was encouraged by both his parents. Apart from some private watercolor lessons on Saturdays, there was little opportunity there for art education, but young Carter did not even register the privation. He was self-directed, found inspiration all around him, and was strongly encouraged by the fact that his teenage work consistently captured art prizes in county and state fairs. Although money was tight after his father (who was a postal worker) died suddenly of a stroke, Carter’s mother supported his desire to study at the Cleveland School of Art from 1923-27, where he trained under painters Henry Keller, Frank Wilcox and Paul Travis. All three artists gave him important tools: Keller, an openness to a wide variety of artistic styles; Wilcox, a deftness for handling paint, especially watercolor, and a firm grasp of color; and Travis, a model for listening to the beat of one’s own drum. Carter recalled that as a student he didn’t go home on breaks, preferring to use the time off to work on various projects, and haunt the galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art, just a stone’s throw from the art school. Over Easter
break in 1925 (his junior year), Carter set up his easel in the Museum and made a faithful exact-scale copy of a Pieta (see no. 2) by the contemporary Belgian symbolist Anto Carte that was on view there. Carter recalled Anto Carte’s “work interested me because at that time I was interested in morbid subjects.” The Belgian’s figures were large, unhappy and reductive. The Pieta, which Carter had too-faithfully copied, portrayed a dead soldier on his mother’s lap in the pose traditionally reserved for the Dead Christ being mourned by the Virgin. Not insignificantly for Carter, the composition features a large person whose dead weight is borne by the body of a smaller one. The work doubtless had a more personal meaning for him, because throughout his childhood, he had experienced so much death. When Carter was just fourteen, his father came into his bedroom one morning, fell down on top of Clarence who was still in bed, and died shortly thereafter. His death was not only a huge emotional loss for Clarence, but also the event which on so many levels transformed him from a boy to a man. Clarence Carter had to go to work to support the family, even while in art school. At one point he was forced to take a sabbatical to regain his health because he had been working himself so hard. Unbeknownst to Carter, copying a work of art the same size as the original was not kosher—a fact pointed out to him in irritation by Cleveland’s then-Curator of Paintings, William Milliken, who insisted Carter’s copy be sent to the painting’s owner and Anto Carte himself for approval before he could have it back. Despite some egg on his face, everything worked out swimmingly for Carter in the end. The infraction brought him into contact with Milliken, who became not only a great admirer of his work, including those accepted into the Museum’s annual May Shows (1927-1939), but an enthusiastic patron as well. Significantly, Milliken personally organized a subscription scholarship that enabled Carter to obtain the necessary resources for two years of travel abroad in Europe following his graduation in 1927. He went to Italy, Switzerland, North Africa, Belgium, England and France. The archive of the Cleveland Museum of Art preserves the large cache of letters from Milliken to various well-heeled Clevelanders energetically soliciting funds for Carter’s European education. Before leaving Cleveland, 23-year-old Carter painted his most monumental work to date, The Lady of Shalott (see no. 3), a literal interpretation of someone passing between life and death. Carter recalled his inspiration for the painting: “I had the fraternity house all to myself…It was
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dusk and I was listening to the radio. A poem—The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred Lord Tennyson—was being read. It struck a responsive chord. I was very interested in death, and the poem appealed to me as a subject.” In Carter’s painting, the Lady is stretched out horizontally, wearing a bright white garment, heavy like a funeral shroud. She floats down a river under a starry sky, while all around her in the darkness incongruous morning glories twinkle like fireflies with little white stars in their throats (Carter painted these from life). The Lady’s head is tilted uncomfortably so far back that her nose and chin point high in the air. This is a sharp, unusual and powerful face, decidedly more masculine than feminine. (In fact, Anto Carte’s Pieta was the visual source for Carter’s Lady of Shalott, but with the dead Christ figure shown in reverse.) Surrounding it, however, is a brilliant and elliptical chartreuse halo that lights up the night, transcending her mortal body, which has frozen to death. This halo is the beginning of Carter’s later symbolic language. In the summer of 1927, Carter studied in Capri with the modernist Hans Hofmann, where he carried out compositional exercises in charcoal and paint, recording the lucid spatial order of stairs, walls, roofs, arches and other elements of the island’s compressed architecture. While Carter admitted to having rebelled against Hofmann’s prescribed program, he seems to have been influenced by it nonetheless: his compositions become more spatially inventive afterwards. There is a lot written about Hofmann’s emphasis on the push-pull of color, but his insistence on the plasticity of space (a Cubist concern) can be felt keenly in Carter’s work from then on. It is worth noting that this trip to Italy was the only one he ever made in his life, yet it made an indelible mark on his late work. He fell in love with Siena in particular, which he described as “A dream city. Even the many bells that tolled added to this dreamlike atmosphere, which was soft and languid. The art of Siena was mostly fragile and spiritual.” Returning to Cleveland in 1929, Carter had his first solo show, and through Milliken taught studio classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1930-37. In 1934, he worked under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project (first of the New Deal programs) and won a commission to paint two murals in Cleveland’s Public Auditorium. In 1936, he painted a post office mural in Ravenna, Ohio, as well as one for the post office in his hometown of Portsmouth, where his father had worked. He then headed the Northeast Ohio division of the painting projects arm of the Works Progress Administration, a subsequent government art program. In 1938, he moved to Pittsburgh to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) until 1944.
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The American Scene Carter’s American Scene paintings of the ’30s and ’40s, which launched his artistic star, are the works for which the artist remains best known. They are powerful by any yardstick. These canvases draw upon the indelible experience of growing up in a river town poignant in its dichotomy of natural beauty and terror. The rolling green Appalachian landscape, ravaging floods, and its proud subsistence farmers populate his paintings. He recorded women collecting coal along the railroad tracks, expressionless farmers taking bushels of potatoes to market by horse and cart, and itinerant circus performers waiting in the shadows of a tent flap for their cue. He trained his eye to record places and expressions of lonely beauty, unselfconscious glimpses of fear, wariness, boredom, and candor. What makes Carter’s images unforgettable is their ferocious lack of sentimentality. He paints something utterly ordinary, treating it with such intensity and sincerity, that it rises to the level of magic, otherworldliness. In one such painting, Outside the Limits (see no. 414), which Carter worked on over a period of years (193846), a roadside fireworks stand flutters with American flags, and is staffed by a sullen woman who watches her all-female shoppers make their selections. Although its purpose is selling items associated with celebration, the stand has the undercurrent of danger instead. Gunpowder inside the fireworks can freakishly explode, of course, which is why the stand must be outside of town. But the whole construction of the booth with the brooding woman inside, as Carter conceived it, looks more like a baited trap for the unwary. In Carter’s Behind the Tents (1945, see no. 19) we are confronted by a strange scene of camels decked out in their circus regalia, feeding in a synchronized line while their groom looks on. A clown appears at the far-right edge of the composition, cut off by the frame, staring directly at the viewer. The effect is unsettlingly confrontational, as though we (the circusgoers) are doing something transgressive by looking behind the scenes, thereby destroying the magic. The very same year, Carter painted what at first blush appears to be a summertime frolic, with swimmers riding the waves at the beach (Riding the Surf, see no. 58). On closer inspection, the wave is a monster, several times the height of the swimmers, who are soon to be engulfed by it. In paintings such as these, Carter the Regionalist morphs directly into Carter the Magic Realist. In perhaps the most brilliant work of his career, War Bride of 1940 (see no. 59, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh), Carter harnesses his virtuosity as a designer to create
the ultimate symbolic commentary on war: a diminutive woman dressed as a bride stands before the altar of red hot steel mill machinery. The bride, her husband, and their love doesn’t stand a chance in the face of this monstrosity that will roll right over them. Mad Man During and immediately after World War II, Clarence Carter realized his attraction to bold pattern, dramatic perspective and eye-catching hard-edged design was a poor fit with the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism. Fortunately, these same hallmarks of his style were prized within the realm of commercial art. Thus, from 1944-1959, Carter became a veritable “Mad Man [Madison Avenue Man],” designing ambitious series of advertisements for major corporations such as Alcoa and The National City Bank of New York (Citibank) which appeared on the back covers of Fortune magazine, and on inside pages of Time, Newsweek, Business Week, and US News & World Report. Carter described this period of his life as one of incredible inventiveness and imagination. It freed him up to be far more experimental in his approach to image-making. This phenomenon of commercial art influencing fine art and vice versa was a leitmotif among many of the Cleveland School artists of the highest caliber, such as William Sommer, who did not regard the realms as mutually exclusive. In his commercial work, Carter drew upon his Regionalist vocabulary but also launched into a far more abstract course. He experimented with collage, and in a special advertising campaign for City Bank’s optimistic postwar investments in mining and agriculture, developed a new brand of sharp, uncluttered image. It was striking, reductive, and powerfully legible. In his study for his ad for Farm Equipment (1955, see no. 73), for example, the various tractor parts (tire, tiller and plow) are essentially disassembled and superimposed on one another, floating against an abstract background pattern of vivid green and brown patches that read intuitively as a farmer’s field. Without being literal, the upbeat image trumpets ‘burgeoning economy.’ Such works, employing a symbolic language, paved the way for Carter’s stylistic shift in his paintings. Ovoids/Eggs: Transections, Mandalas and the Super-Real One of Carter’s greatest champions, the art critic Edward Alden Jewell, saw something simmering beneath the surfaces of mere “naturalism” in the artist’s work from the start. As early as 1943, he had a sense of the direction Carter’s work would eventually assume: “Carter’s ‘Naturalism’ is not, of course, to be disputed. Nevertheless, I have been again and again conscious
of a reticent aura cousining that of the borderline or unorthodox surrealist. It appears to be largely a matter of atmosphere or of the unexpected; or the surrealist aura, if we choose to call it that, derives from a sense, often hinted at, of some curious veiled imminence.” Around 1964 Carter acknowledged a need to break from the confines of representational painting: “Beyond reality I felt there must be another realm to explore. I needed some symbol broader and more encompassing than human figures within actual environments. I experimented with symbols that grew naturally into the ovoid. Pure abstraction never satisfied me completely. I needed a contact with all that was and is. The ovoid has been an understandable symbol and a living part of life and cultures. It not only symbolizes life but also death and rebirth. I can use it in any context and it works emotionally, visually and abstractly. As a design element it can give meaning to an otherwise lifeless composition.” Once Carter had found a potent symbol in the egg, he used it to create an astounding body of imagery for the rest of his life. Among the most ambitious of all his later paintings were his Transections (see pg. 158), a theological term meaning to cross, specifically between life and death. In these ambitious works, which are often altarpiece size in scale, semi-translucent egg shapes populate architectonic spaces that recall the lonely Surrealism of a De Chirico, the immutable geometry of a Piero della Francesca Resurrection from an open tomb, and the exquisite architecture Carter had discovered in Siena. The eggs behave like spirits emerging from crevices in the ground floating and hovering, resting on surfaces, penetrating them, and disappearing behind walls and tucking inside holes. While formally precise and reserved, the late work has an emotional resonance that connects directly with his earlier efforts. Carter noted: “There is a strange correlation between my childhood and what I am painting today [in Transections]. As a child I would spend days digging deep holes, being careful to square up the holes and smooth down the sides. Then I would squat down in these holes, look up at the blue sky, and contemplate the mystery of the cubicle shutting me off from the visible world.” Carter’s powerful series of Mandalas (see page 126) showed the egg form radiating from a central egg. Formally and iconographically, these paintings are as pure as a Josef Albers square. As Carter explained: “From the beginning of life, an ever-expanding wave or vibration develops and expands to reach the infinite, the egg of life interweaving the never-ending circle of the universe to form a pulsating interplay. Through the symbol of the universe, you can achieve communion with a super-real awareness.” Marianne Berardi
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PIETA 1925 Watercolor on paper 32.5 x 27 inches The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
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Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000)
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EARLY WORK “For by all means this artist’s expression in paint is irradiated with strongly personal traits. Yet it is as happily free from evidence of a defiant, febrile, surface-grounded effort just to be ‘different.’ Carter has said: ‘I paint as I please, and always shall.’ I suppose it could be argued that all artists, save those committed to follow out the strict specifications of a patron, might feel justified in saying as much. Yet many artists are not in reality as unfettered as all that. In Carter’s case, at any rate, this terse pronouncement amounts to a great deal more than words.” -Edward Alden Jewell (Art Critic of The New York Times), American Artist, November 1946
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THE LADY OF SHALOTT 1927 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 37.25 x 53.25 inches
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BOTTLES AND BEAKERS 1923 Watercolor on paper Signed lower left 16.5 x11.5 inches
LEMONS 1933 Oil on canvas Signed lower right 20 x 18 inches
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STILL LIFE WITH APPLES
STILL LIFE WITH WATERMELON
1940 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 18 x 24 inches
1968 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 10.5 x 10.5 inches
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STILL LIFE WITH PHEASANT 1925 Oil on panel Signed and dated lower right 20 x16 inches
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SIENA STEPS 1928 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 20 x 13.25 inches
TRAVEL TO EUROPE After Carter graduated from the Institute in 1927, he won third prize at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s May Show. Once William Milliken purchased the third prize winner for the Museum’s collection, the rest of Carter’s works in the show sold. With these funds, Carter traveled to Italy where he studied with Hans Hofmann. Despite being taught a certain style by Hofmann, Carter painted and drew what caught his eye. Carter would meet Milliken in Berlin, where they continued to travel around Italy painting and drawing in Capri, Florence, Siena, and Taormina. While he mostly produced watercolors and pencil drawings during his travels, this excursion would have a profound impact on the rest of his career. Carter was particularly entranced by what he saw in Siena. Even though Carter only produced three finished works of Siena, the architecture and spiritual essence of the city led him to draw inspiration for works later in his career.
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FORMS CAPRI
SIENA
1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower right 25 x 18.25 inches
1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated upper right 27.5 x 20.25 inches
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STEPS AND VINEYARD 1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower right 18.25 x 12 inches
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COMPOSITION CAPRI 1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower left 18 x 11.25 inches
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THE PATIENT COW, TAORMINA 1928 Watercolor and pencil on paper The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1928.213 Exhibited: 1928 May Show (1st Place), Cleveland Museum of Art. Image Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art
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STUDY FOR THE PATIENT COW 1928 Watercolor and graphite on paper 12 x 16 inches
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DONKEY ON A HILL TOP, ITALY 1928 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 31.5 x 11 inches Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
“My last year in art school eased me into the life I loved: freedom of thought, freedom of travel, and freedom from want (somewhat). I had five paintings, oils and watercolors, accepted at the annual May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I won a third prize and sold all paintings, thanks to the interest of William M. Milliken. That was enough to set me off across the Atlantic to Italy, Africa, France, Belgium, and England and to see those paintings and works of art I had so admired in reproduction. It gave me a chance to live and think and try my new wings. The group of watercolors I sent back from Taormina, Sicily, won first prize, the Cleveland Museum buying one. All of these were sold. These were radical for their day, not consciously so on my part. I was only painting as I saw and reacted at the time. Now time has caught up with me and I am not radical.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, American Artist, November 1946 269
STUDY FOR DONKEY ON A HILL TOP, ITALY 1927 Conté crayon and ink on paper Signed and dated lower left 14 x 10.5 inches WOLFS GALLERY |
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OLIVE TREES, CAPRI 1932 Colored aquatint Signed and dated lower right 5.5 x 7 inches
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COMING STORM OVER ROVIANO, ITALY 1927 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 8.75 x 11.75 inches
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VOLCANO, TAORMINA 1956 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 9.5 x 6 inches
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VOLCANO AND ARCH, TAORMINA 1961 Watercolor on scintilla paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 11 inches
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VOLCANIC ERUPTION, TAORMINA c. 1961 Watercolor on textured paper 11 x 11 inches
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LAFONSON’S PRIDE 1928 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right, inscribed Paris 13 x 16.5 inches
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STUDY FOR LAFONSON’S PRIDE 1928 Graphite on paper 4 x 5 inches
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The watercolors Carter painted in Taormina won first prize in the 1928 May Show allowing him to travel to Paris. His watercolors and drawings from Paris start to show influence from the precisionists that were popular at the time. The crisp and bold strokes of color mixed with the mindful compositions begin to hint at Carter’s maturing work. Lafonson’s Pride exemplifies Carter’s quick mastery of precisionist forms while adapting it to his own sense of composition. The prominence of the
butchered hog juxtaposed with the hazy figures in the Parisian café windows creates a surreal focus that challenges the viewer’s perception. These early sketches and watercolors would lead to his heightened interest in more literal forms of descriptive realism. His interest was supported by his friend and renowned painter Charles Burchfield, to whom Carter created an homage in The Buckling House (see no. 26).
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SLEEPING CAT 1929 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated upper right 15 x 19 inches WOLFS GALLERY |
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THE CIRCUS “My fascination with the circus and the activities that revolved around it came very early, as did my interest in art. In fact, they went hand in hand. The marginsof my school books were always a temptation to draw circus parades raveling around each printed page. I would sit on the curbstone enthralled as the
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THE CLOWNS MAKING UP 1979 (original painting, 1934) Lithograph Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 22 x 28.5 inches Exhibitied: 1934 May Show (Special Award), Cleveland Museum of Art
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morning sun shone on the glittering exotic world of circus animals and performers passing before my eyes. No wonder that it all had to be recorded on the margins of my dreary school books. I would watch the roustabouts early in the morning putting up the tents, the concession stands being prepared for a busy day, the animal wagons being washed down in
preparation for the parade. I always enjoyed these intimate scenes that were as much a part of circus life for me as were the glamour and thrill of the big top. This vivid world of the circus captivated me for many years.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, as quoted in Frank Anderson Trapp, Clarence Holbrook Carter (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 18.
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BEHIND THE TENTS 1945 Oil on plywood 27 x 39.5 inches Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
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CAROUSEL BY THE SEA 1979 (original painting, 1939) Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 22 x 28 inches
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CAROUSEL STUDY c. 1920 Graphite on paper 10 x 14 inches
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MERRY-GO-ROUND 1949 Oil on canvas 29.25 x 39.25 inches Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
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CAROUSEL c. 1946 Graphite on paper 11 x 15 inches
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SQUIRRELS IN A CAGE 1949 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 11.25 x 10.75 inches
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ACROBAT 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 8 x 8 inches
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PERFORMING ELEPHANTS AND SEAL c. 1930s Watercolor on paper Each signed and titled verso 6 x 6 inches each
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“In the United States, this form of spectacle had attained vast proportions in the mid-to-late 19th century, when began the long heyday of large touring circus companies such as Barnum and Bailey and their competitors. But these colorful and exciting traditions of live performance were also upheld by smaller enterprises, which made appearances for even quite modest audiences along their accustomed routes....Carter shared in the enthusiasms of this golden age of the Amerian circuses, which lasted roughly until World War II, when a sense of grave national emergency undercut the fortunes of many enterprises not essential to the war effort. Ironically, the national thirst for diversion from the grim realities of daily life was especially strong in the days of the Great Depression and its aftermath, when the circus, along with the new cults of moviegoing and listening to the radio, provided a valuable form of escapism.� Frank Anderson Trapp, Clarence Holbrook Carter (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 18.
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TUNISIAN AND MEXICAN GIRL c. 1930s Watercolor on paper Each signed and titled verso 6 x 6 inches each
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CIRCUS PERFORMERS c. 1930s Graphite on paper 6 x 8 inches
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AERIAL PERFORMER 1931 Etching and aquatint Signed and dated lower right 11 x 6 inches
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SKETCH FOR CIRCUS PERFORMER 1947 Graphite on paper Signed lower right 10 x 7.5 inches
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THREE STUDIES FOR TRAPEZE ARTISTS 1933 Graphite on paper Signed and dated, two lower right; one upper left 9 x 6 inches each
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TRAPEZE ARTISTS 1933 Oil on canvas 54 x 38 inches Private collection
“...the most ambitious painting I did with circus material. The subject appealed to me because it suggested both the intimate life outside the big top and the excitement inside. The girls were waiting outside for the moment they would dash into the tent to perform acts of daring and precision.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, as quoted in Frank Anderson Trapp, Clarence Holbrook Carter (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 18.
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GAS IS CHEAP 1931 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 21.5 x 15 inches The billboard rendered by Carter is advertising the 13th National American Legion Convention (1931) in Detroit, Michigan. The triple heads featured on the billboard represent the convention’s commemorative advertising medal presented to convention attendees. The gas pump is from SOCONY Motor Gasoline (Standard Oil Company of New York, precursor of Mobil).
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COLD NIGHT 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right Inscribed verso “from the second floor of pantry where my studio was at the corner of Euclid Ave. and 107th St. Cleveland Ohio” 14 x 19.5 inches
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25C
GREEN HOUSE 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 14 x 19.5 inches
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SUBZERO, CLEVELAND 1939 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated bottom center 15 x 22 inches This scene was painted near East 107th and Carnegie in Cleveland, Ohio. In the background, the brick building is the Tudor Arms Hotel located at the corner of Carnegie Avenue and Stokes Boulevard. The year Carter painted this watercolor was the year the Tudor Arms took over the lease of the building from the Cleveland Club.
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25E
ELMIRA STAR BARN 1931 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left and lower right 19 x 14 inches This rendering of the old observatory dome at Elmira College in Elmira, New York seemingly bears resemblance and foreshadows Carter’s eggs/ovoids so prevalent in his later works.
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THE BUCKLING HOUSE 1928 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 14.5 x 21.75 inches
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CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS’ CEMETERY, CAMP CHASE, COLUMBUS, OHIO 1929 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 14 x 20 inches
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SNOW IN THE FOREST 1945 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 19 x 23.75 inches
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KENTUCKY HILLS 1929 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 13 x 19 inches
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PORTSMOUTH AND KENTUCKY HILLS 1932 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper left 13.75 x 16.75 inches
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AT SEA 1935 Watercolor and gouache on paper Signed and dated lower right 6 x 9 inches
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ON BOARD THE FINK 1935 Graphite on paper Signed and dated upper left 5 x 8 inches
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LAKE GEORGE STEAMER 1931 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper left 6 x 9 inches
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LAKE SUPERIOR LOCKS 1935 Graphite and conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper right 5 x 8 inches
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MILLIKEN AT THE CENTURY OF PROGRESS, CHICAGO 1940 Oil on canvas Framed: 90.2 x 125 x 9 cm (35 1/2 x 49 3/16 x 3 9/16 in.) Unframed: 74 x 109.5 cm (29 1/8 x 43 1/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1992.6 Image Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art
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CLARENCE CARTER AND WILLIAM MILLIKEN c. 1975-80 Photomontage
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“[Carter] has never gone in search of quack nostrums or flamboyant sensationalism. He is too sincere for that, and that sincerity shows in the penetrating and persuasive mood which his canvases and watercolors create. They have clarity, fine color, but they have always, as well, an inner subjective existence, a haunting, sometimes troubling mystery, which is the expression of the mental questioning of an ever-searching and probing personality.” -William M. Milliken (Director, Cleveland Museum of Art), Clarence Holbrook Carter Retrospective Exhibition, New York City, November 1947
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MONUMENT TO KOSSUTH 1929 Watercolor and gouache on paper Signed and dated upper right and lower right 19.5 x 14.25 inches
“No fortune could have been greater for me than to have been noticed and befriended while I was a student by William Milliken and provided by him with many opportunities to be recognized early in my career. He kept collecting my work to the very end and I am happy that he continued to gain pleasure from it.We traveled together here and in Europe and it was on a trip to the Chicago Century of Progress exposition that the painting above was conceived as we were returning by bus from the fairgrounds to the Palmer House.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, April 24, 1978
“The advice and guidance that William Milliken gave to me in those early days helped to mold my career. He encouraged me always to be myself which strenghtened my own conviction. It was this very intelligent and constant advice that made it possible for me to make the move from being a student to a recognized professional. He felt that I should spend some time in Europe and, therefore, sold enough of my paintings to collectors to make this possible. I would like to dedicate this exhibition to William M. Milliken who played such a great part in my life and career. -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Retrospective Exhibition, Center for the Arts Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, May 1978
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EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967) CHAIR CAR 1965 Oil on canvas 40 x 50 inches Private collection
Hard to say who is influencing whom here. Clearly the Carter, painted thirty-five years earlier, may have been seen by Hopper; but Hopper, twenty years Carter’s senior, may have had some sway in Carter’s development. (Carter and Hopper exhibited several times together at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1933-1934, 1936-1943 and 1945.) Most paintings we have seen from Hopper remain stylistically consistent, but that is certainly not the case with Carter whose compositions continued to dramatically evolve. The similarities in design and technical ability, however, beg the inevitable questions around a painting’s monetary value. The Hopper, done thirty-five years after the Carter painting, brought fourteen million dollars at auction in 2005, which is five to ten times the current valuation of the Carter. A curious example of the enigmatic world of fine art valuation and perhaps making the “one trick pony” a better bet for the buck. 33
POOR MAN’S PULLMAN
-Michael Wolf
1930 Oil on canvas 35 15/16 x 44 5/16 inches (91.3 x 112.6 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the Edith H. Bell Fund, 1979-163-1 WOLFS GALLERY |
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BLONDE 1932 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 20 x 16 inches
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“I mentioned a moment ago that Clarence Carter’s work has been varied. There is, indeed, no single sort of theme that could be called ‘typical.’ He has painted landscape, still life, portrait, figure subject, genre. His approach has been straightforwardly descriptive; again he has addressed his brush to forms of symbolic expression. He holds even pure abstraction in healthy esteem, though this phase has not yet been published on gallery walls. Yet into whatever category a picture may seem best to fit, his work, in general, has remained allegiant, I feel to the attributes cited: clearness of intent, cleanness of line and form, coolness (with respected especially to color), balance in the orchestration of the sundry factors involved.” -Edward Alden Jewell (Art Critic of The New York Times), American Artist, November 1946
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MARY ANNE MOORE 1932 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 17 x 15 inches
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HOSPITALITIES LONG PAST 1941 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 37 x 27 inches
“Looking into store front windows has always intrigued me. It is the strange other world that goes on behind the plate glass.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, 1984
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CHICKENS THROUGH THE WINDOW 1942 Oil on canvas 33 x 46 inches The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
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RURAL REGIONALISM “My credo is simple and changeable. I may not change radically but if I wish to I have no preconceived theories to hold me back. I feel that theories tend to make an artist academic no matter how advanced and radical these theories may appear to be at the present time. My paintings at various times have been termed cubist, surrealist, realist, neoromanticist, and even Oriental, but at no time did I ever follow any school. I have painted my world as I have seen and felt it.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, American Artist, November 1946
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416
THE FLOOD 1981 (original painting, 1937) Lithograph Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 200 22 x 27.5 inches
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SKETCH FOR OHIO RIVER FLOOD MURAL IN PORTSMOUTH OHIO POST OFFICE 1937 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower right 6 x 9.5 inches
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JANE REED AND DORA HUNT 1941 Oil on canvas 36 x 45 in. (91.44 x 114.3 cm) Columbus Museum of Art Museum Purchase, Derby Fund 2014.023
Inspired by a visit to his hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, Carter’s Jane Reed and Dora Hunt shows two women gathering coal fallen from rail cars. The faceless figures along the railroad tracks at twilight transform a mundane task into a surreal depiction of rural America. According to Frank Anderson Trapp in the 1989 monograph on Carter, “a devotion to gleaning coal was in this instance probably inspired more by ingrained frugality than by outright need, for the brother of one of the woman was a professor
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at the University of Kentucky” (24). These distant, and mysterious figures move away from the viewer. He captures in their search for coal a contrast between the “clothed spirits” of his home in Portsmouth with the complexities of a larger, more complicated world. Painted in 1941, World War II had been raging in Europe for two years. Yet the regional attitude in the painting recreates a scene in which the women are both separate and part of a more globalized world.
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WOMAN GATHERING COAL, STUDY FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT
SKETCH FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT
1941 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 6.75 x 6 inches
1941 Graphite on paper 9.25 x 12.75 inches
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FINISHED STUDY FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT 1941 Graphite on paper 9.25 x 12.75 inches
“Carter’s ‘naturalism’ is not, of course, to be disputed. Nevertheless, I have been again and again conscious of a reticent aura cousining that of the borderline or unorthodox surrealist. It appears to be largely a matter of atmosphere (as in the striking Jane Reed and Dora Hunt, owned by the Museum of Modern Art); of unexpected associations; or the surrealist aura, if we choose to call it that, derives from a sense, often hinted at, of some curious veiled imminence.” -Edward Alden Jewell (Art Critic of The New York Times), American Artist, November 1946
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SMOLDERING FIRES 1941 Oil on canvas 45 x 36 in. (114.3 x 91.44 cm) Columbus Museum of Art Museum Purchase, Derby Fund 2000.001
“Smoldering Fires, a mother and child set against a background of desolate mining region and flaring coal piles, is a fine achievement. Technically, there is much to be said for the skill of the arrangement, for the soundness of the figures, the surety of the brushwork. But the real triumph of the canvas is the tender humanity that pervades it without sentimentality, the sense of life that seems to flow out of it.� -Margaret Breuning, The Art Digest, January 15, 1944
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MINERVAS 1947 Oil on canvas Signed and dater lower right 36 x 45.25 inches Private collection
In Carter’s earliest period he painted what he saw around him, which was the rural countryside of southern Ohio where he was born and raised. Many of his subjects were those that were “close at hand” as he says, but were infused with his own personal visual vocabulary, his DNA imprint, if you will, resulting in a painting style that was controlled and technically
precicse, while at the same time imbued with a sense of the mystical and the super real. The themes that would occupy his work over the course of his long career were generated from memorable events in his childhood and serve as the framework around which he built his artistic output. The mysteries of life, including death, and the state between human life and through his painting.
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MODEL TOBACCO 1941 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 14.5 x 21.5 inches Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
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KENTUCKY HEAT 1942 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 17.75 x 23 inches
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TOBACCO PLANT STUDY
KENTUCKY TOBACCO
1930 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 9 x 6 inches
1934 Etching Signed and dated lower right 9.5 x 6.5 inches
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PLANTING TOBACCO 1962 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower left 10 x 12 inches
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GATHERED AT THE TABLE, STUDY FOR LET US GIVE THANKS 1930 Graphite on paper 3.5 x 2.25 inches
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“GIVE US THIS DAY”, SELF-PORTRAIT STUDY FOR LET US GIVE THANKS 1933 Graphite on paper 12 x 8 inches
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LET US GIVE THANKS 1943 Oil on canvas 66 x 55 inches Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
“In Let Us Give Thanks, one of the masterpieces from Carter’s early period, the artist has turned a realistic genre subject into a universal symbol of the value of the family. Seemingly a literal rendering of a particular family (Carter’s own) at lunch on the side porch of a southern Ohio house, Carter transforms his family into an ideal family by depicting them joined together, heads bowed, united by a moment of prayer.” -Jean Robertson, “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, 1984
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MAGIC REALISM “Earlier in my career I was interested in the life that I knew around me as material for my art. Along with that was a keen interest in things that were not always tangible. Death had a strong pull, the unseen was keenly felt. In other words, there were metaphysical aspects to reality, real yet unreal. Now the real has become further removed. The unreal has taken over but yet it is still all very real but no longer tangible. The imaginative is dominant.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, 1977, Mead Art Gallery, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
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THE BIRD VENDOR OF CARACAS 1946 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right, titled verso 32 x 22 inches
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WOMAN OF CARACAS 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 15.25 x 22 inches
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PETORE, VENEZUELA 1944 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower center 18.75 x 23.75 inches
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MACUTO MANNEQUIN 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated upper right 14.75 x 22 inches
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ARMANDO REVERON 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left 15.25 x 22.75 inches
VENEZUELA AND ARMANDO REVERÓN Carter first travelled to Venezuela in 1944 to gather material for an advertising design project. Along the way he met and came to admire the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Armando Reverón (1889-1954), today considered one of the most important Latin American artists of the 20th century. As Carter reveals in these watercolors, Reverón, who suffered from mental illness throughout his life, was known for surrounding himself with muñecas or dolls that he created, named, and used as models.
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REVERON’S LADIES 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated upper left 22.25 x 15 inches
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YOUNG FARMER 1946 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 28 x 22.5 inches
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“For my part, I have responded with most keen and instant delight to some of Clarence Carter’s landscapes, or to subjects (in oil or watercolor) in which landscape provides more than an incidental background for figures. One finds such amble quiet freshness in his subtly grayed greens and yellows. More than once in the past I have alluded to the flavorsome acetic tang of his color, its acid strength. Then there is the resolute honesty with which–if in fine spareness, with never the attitude of one whose report must be photographically exact, inclusive– he gives the reins to unromanticized nature’s bitter-sweet affirmations and denials.” -Edward Alden Jewell (Art Critic of The New York Times), American Artist, November 1946
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OUTSIDE THE LIMITS 1979 (original painting, 1938-46) Lithograph Signed and dated lower right 18 x 26 inches
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WE DEMAND (STRIKE) 1946 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated upper left 19 x 23 inches
“Too many watercolors produced today seem meaningless to me. They appear to be all skill and bravado without an inner message. I believe that a serious work of art must go deeper than mere surface manipulation.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, American Artist, December 1958
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WHITE SUPREMACY 1943 Gouache on board 12 x 15.25 inches Private collection
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PENSIVE GIRL (PHYLLIS) 1941 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper left 30 x 25 inches
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In this period Carter continues to paint everyday subjects, including landscapes and scenes of rural life, but the works of this period are even more infused with a sense of isolation, whether it be a landscape painting or portait. There is a feeling of complete hyper-focus, as such that objects in the foreground, middle ground and background are all rendered in exceedingly sharp detail. Portraits of individuals are painted from reality, and interestingly from photographs that Carter took himself
and used. These compositions and subjects are combined and reconfigured in ways that portray an acute reality that appears as if every surface has been honed to a smooth sheen. Individuals are set against stark and often desolate or empty backgrounds heightening this sense of isolation. As this period coincided with the Second World War, one senses a feeling of loss, even while beauty manages to continue to exist.
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PENSIVE GIRL c. 1941 Gelatin silver prints As reproduced in William H. Robinson, Clarence Carter, 1904-2000: The Unknown Spanshot Studies (Portsmouth, Ohio: Southern Ohio Museum, 2004) figures 77-78.
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WOMAN WITH MANTILLA 1948 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper center 13.5 x 17 inches
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RIDING THE SURF 1945 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 25 x 30 inches
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WAR BRIDE 1940 Oil on canvas 36 x 54 inches (91.40 x 137.16 cm) Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh: Richard M. Scaife American Painting Fund and Paintings Acquisition Fund, 82.6
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“...it occupies an important place within Carter’s personal development. Furthermore, it has attracted a great deal of serious critical attention, both at the time of its creation and also very recently, in the flush of renewed interest in the art of the machine age. Carter has described the origin of the piece, and its early history. In 1940 he had been invited to join an official tour of Pittsburgh steel mills organized for the benefit of a special Chinese delegation. Although the Chinese party did now show up, he and his host of the occasion, a well-known city official, decided to make the tour on their own: The mills were going full blast and it made a great impact upon us. That night I dreamed I painted a picture that was very vivid in my mind. Some of the girls in my senior painting class were getting married to servicemen before they were shipped overseas. This got mixed into my dream of painting of the steel mill which became a sanctuary. The painting that resulted was so different from my other paintings that I wasn’t sure if I should exhibit it. Nonetheless, it was shown in the Pittsburgh Art Association exhibition at Carnegie Institute and although it was reproduced in the paper, I still was not sure if I should continue to exhibit it. Edward Alden Jewell was in Pittsburgh at the time, and he came to my studio. I told him that I had been invited to send something to the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum, but did not know what to send. When he saw the painting, which I was then calling Bride in a Mechanized World, he said, ‘Send that and call it War Bride.’”
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INDUSTRIAL ROLLER, STUDY FOR WAR BRIDE 1953 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 7 inches
Frank Anderson Trapp, Clarence Holbrook Carter (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 18.
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MADISON AVENUE “During the war years, so called ‘fine art’ was going in only one limited direction which I was not sympathetic to. I found that the creative things that I did for advertising developed my desire to experiment and become more inventive. This might seem strange to many, but during my commercial art period I become more abstract and more daring than I had been before.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, 1984
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STUDY FOR “SHIPPING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1953 Acrylic on paper 9.5 x 11 inches
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SHIPPING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1953 Signed and dated lower left 11.5 x 8.5 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in 1953, first reproduced in Fortune
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STUDY FOR “ALUMINUM . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1953 Gouache and silver ink on paper 9.25 x 11.5 inches
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STUDY FOR “ALUMINUM . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1953 Gouache and silver ink on paper 8.25 x 10.5 inches
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ALUMINUM . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1953 Signed and dated upper left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of color page advertisement in February 1954 Magazine of National Circulation, first reproduced in Fortune
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GLASS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1953 Signed and dated lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in June 1953 Magazine of National Circulation ,first reproduced in Fortune
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STUDY FOR “GLASS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1953 Graphite on paper 9 x 11 inches
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STUDY FOR “PHARMACEUTICALS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1953 Gouache, watercolor and pastel on artist board Signed and dated upper left 7.75 x 10.25 inches
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PHARMACEUTICALS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1954 Signed and dated lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in December 1954,first reproduced in Fortune
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STUDY FOR “MEAT PACKING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
STUDY FOR “MEAT PACKING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
1954 Watercolor and gouache on paper 7.5 x 9.5 inches
1954 Watercolor and gouache on paper 7.5 x 9.5 inches
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MEAT PACKING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1954 Signed and dated lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in May 1954, first reproduced in Fortune
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KING COTTON, STUDY FOR “COTTON . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1954 Gouache and pastel on cardboard 4 x 5 inches
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COTTON . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1954 Signed and dated lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in April 1955, first reproduced in Fortune
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STUDY FOR “FARM EQUIPMENT . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1955 Acrylic on paper 9 x 11.5 inches
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FARM EQUIPMENT . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
PIG IRON, “THE PIG THAT BECAME A COMBINE”, KOPPERS COMP. INC.
1955 Signed and dated lower right 13 x 10.25 inches
1951 13.25 x 8.75 inches
Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in May 1955, first reproduced in Fortune.
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Reproduction of advertisement in January 1951 Time
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STUDY FOR “PAPER . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” 1952 Watercolor and graphite on paper 8 x 10.25 inches
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PAPER . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1952 Signed and dated lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in March 1953, first reproduced in Fortune
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BLACK DIAMONDS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1956 Signed lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in February 1956, first reproduced in Fortune
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MINING . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1952 Signed lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in April 1952, first reproduced in Fortune
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STUDY FOR “BLACK DIAMONDS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK” c. 1956 Graphite on paper 7.25 x 10.25 inches
In the 1940s and 1950s the National City Bank, now known as Citibank, commissioned famous artists to produce advertisements representing the bank’s role in financing American products, industries, and businesses. Carter completed two paintings for the first series, and would go on to complete 25 advertisements for the bank’s project. His work for the National City Bank would lead to other commercial work for national brands like Alcoa, Kellogg’s, and American Locomotive. These advertisements would come to grace the pages
and covers of prestigious magazines like Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Business Week. While he maintained his regionalist style, his commercial work allowed him to experiment. He used the emotive language of advertising and his experience in graphic design to create powerful messaging through abstraction, texture, and collage. Through this work he was able to eliminate the barrier between fine art and commercial art. Advertising served as Carter’s lab to experiment with different visual elements that would influence his abstract surrealism.
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SEMI-TRUCKS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1955 Signed and dated lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in December 1955, first reproduced in Fortune
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SEMI-TRUCKS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK c. 1955 Graphite on tracing paper 9 x 11 inches
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COMMUNICATIONS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1951 Signed lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in September 1951, first reproduced in Fortune
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POWERLINES NO. 1, STUDY FOR “COMMUNICATIONS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
POWERLINES NO. 2, STUDY FOR “COMMUNICATIONS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
c. 1950s Graphite on tracing paper 6 x 8.5 inches
c. 1950s Graphite on tracing paper 6 x 8.5 inches
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OVERSEAS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
OVERSEAS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
1958 Signed lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in December 1958, first reproduced in Fortune
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INSURANCE . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1951 Signed and dated lower left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in May 1951, first reproduced in Fortune
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1958 Signed lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in October 1958, first reproduced in Fortune
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“COUNTRY MILK RUN”, AMERICA THE PROVIDER, MILK AND EGGS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1948 Signed and dated lower right 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in October 1948, first reproduced in Fortune
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AUTOMOBILES . . . THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
TEXTILES . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
1953 Signed and dated lower right 13 x 10.25 inches
1952 Signed and dated upper right 13 x 10.25 inches
Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in 1953, first reproduced in Fortune
Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in October 1952, first reproduced in Fortune
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“THE BOWL WITH THE WHEAT FIELD IN IT”, KELLOGG’S
“SUGAR . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
1944 Signed and dated upper right 13.75 x 10.5 inches
1953 Signed and dated upper left 13 x 10.25 inches
Reproduction of advertisement in October 7, 1944 The Saturday Evening Post
Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in April 1954, first reproduced in Fortune
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“WHAT’S AROUND THE BEND?” AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE COMPANY 1944 14 x 10.5 inches Reproduction of advertisement
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JANE REED AND DORA HUNT 1941 Oil on canvas 36 x 45 in. (91.44 x 114.3 cm) Columbus Museum of Art Museum Purchase, Derby Fund 2014.023
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PUBLIC WORKS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK 1953 Signed and dated upper left 13 x 10.25 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in December 1953, first reproduced in Fortune
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VOLCANO AND ARCH, TAORMINA 1961 Watercolor on scintilla paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 11 inches
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STUDY FOR COVER OF MODERN PLASTICS MAGAZINE September 1958 Gouache and color pencil on paper 9.25 x 8.5 inches
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COVER OF MODERN PLASTICS MAGAZINE September 1958 Signed and dated lower right 11 x 8.25 inches
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STUDY FOR MODERN PLASTICS MAGAZINE 1958 Watercolor and gouache on paper 11.5 x 9.5 inches
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COVER OF MODERN PLASTICS MAGAZINE July 1958 Signed and dated upper left 11 x 8.25 inches
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OFFICE FILES AND CITY VIEW c. 1950s Acrylic and watercolor 13 x 10 inches
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STUDY FOR OFFICE FILES AND CITY VIEW c. 1950s Acrylic on paper 11 x 10 inches
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STUDY FOR “SPLENDID IN ASHES” BOOK COVER FOR THE VIKING PRESS 1958 Gouache on paper Signed and dated lower right and inscribed verso 9 x 8 inches
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“SPLENDID IN ASHES” BOOK COVER FOR THE VIKING PRESS 1958 8.25 x 20 inches
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LATE NIGHT STREET NO. 1, STUDY FOR NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK CHRISTMAS CARD 1950 Gouache on paper 14 x 10 inches
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LATE NIGHT STREET NO. 2, STUDY FOR NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK CHRISTMAS CARD 1950 Gouache on paper 9.5 x 8 inches
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STUDY FOR LATE NIGHT STREET NO. 2, NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK CHRISTMAS CARD c. 1950 Graphite on paper 8 x 10.5 inches
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CARIBBEAN SUGAR HARVEST, “THEY’RE HARVESTING DOLLARS . . . TO BUY U.S.A. PRODUCTS”, ALCOA
CARIBBEAN CARGO, “A POSTWAR EXPORT MARKET FOR YOUR PRODUCTS”, ALCOA
1944 Signed and dated upper right 14.75 x 11 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
1944 Signed and dated upper right 14.75 x 11 inches Reproduction of full-color page advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
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KING STREET, KINGSTON, JAMAICA, “EXPORTING? CONSIDER THE CONVENIENT CARIBBEAN . . .”, ALCOA 1944 18 x 12.25 inches Reproduction of advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
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WEST INDIES CUSTOMERS, “THEY HAVE MILLIONS TO SPEND FOR U.S. EXPORTS”, ALCOA
GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA, BRITISH GUIANA, “BUYERS ARE WAITING IN THIS CARIBBEAN AREA”, ALCOA
1944 Signed and dated lower right 11 x 8.5 inches
1944 11 x 8.5 inches Reproduction of advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
Reproduction of advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
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WAREHOUSE, PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD, “THIS PORT-OF-SPAIN WAREHOUSE AWAITS YOUR EXPORTS”, ALCOA
SHIP AT DOCK, LA GUAIRA, “WILL YOUR PEACETIME PRODUCTS UNLOAD HERE?”, ALCOA
1944 Signed and dated lower left 11 x 8.5 inches
1944 Signed and dated lower left 11 x 8.5 inches
Reproduction of advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
Reproduction of advertisement in March 1944 Time Weekly Newsmagazine
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OVER AND ABOVE SERIES “It is the mysterious and magical elements in life which have always captivated me, things suggested but only partyly seen. One element in this strange world of partial knowledge is the world of other creatures. We look at them in fascination and wonder. From this strange world of fact and fancy star back images, both real and unreal, of what perhaps we might be to others, but never to ourselves - the Somebody Else. The barrier creates a tension that heightens the mystery of the subject and isolates it from us. It is across this barrier that we perceive the silence and pervading mystery which transport the subject to the realm of conjecture.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Solo Exhibition at Pardee Hall Gallery, Lafayette College, October 1966
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OVER AND ABOVE NO. 8 1963 Oil on canvas 69 x 53.5 inches
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FINISHED STUDY FOR OVER AND ABOVE NO. 13 1963 Oil on canvas Signed lower right 13.25 x 13.25 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE NO. 13 1964 Oil on canvas Signed and dated on the reverse 75 x 77 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE NO. 14 1964 Oil on canvas Signed and dated verso 75 x 77 inches Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Mari and James A. Michener, 1968
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OVER AND ABOVE NO. 17 1965 Oil on canvas Signed and dated verso 75 x 77 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE: CAT, “WHO ME?” 1963 Watercolor on scintilla paper Signed and dated upper left 30 x 22 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE: FISH c. 1960s Colored pencil on paper 7 x 3.5 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE: CICADA 1963 Mixed media on cardboard Signed and dated upper right 30.5 x 20 inches
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CICADA c. 1960s Watercolor on scintilla 30 x 20 inches
“Carter, in his animal series, deals with humanized facial expressions. And since he deals with humanity, traditionally the highest form of subject matter, he can offer social comment. He does this in an exceedingly subtle way, avoiding the worn-out traditional banalities of the American figurative painters of the 1930’s. Looking at the expressive physiognomies of Carter’s birds, gorillas, apes, monkeys, bulls or insects, one seems vaguely to recall having met people who looked just like them. The closeness to easily recognizable appearances, to life as we may have known it, makes Carter’s social satire all the stronger. He offers us an unpleasant suggestion of humanity, but a true one.” -Gordon Brown (Senior Editor, Arts Magazine), Clarence Carter, Exhibition at Pardee Hall Gallery, Lafayette College, October 1966
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OVER AND ABOVE: LION 1974 Acrylic on textured paper Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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FINISHED STUDY FOR OVER AND ABOVE: LION c. 1970s Graphite on paper 14 x 16.5 inches
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PAPPY (STUDY FOR OVER AND ABOVE: GORILLA) c. 1973 Colored pencil on paper Signed and dated lower left 7 x 7 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE SURPRISE (SERPENT) 1967 Casein on board Signed lower right 7.75 x 5.5 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE NO. 15 1964 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 31 x 53.25 inches
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OVER AND ABOVE: KANGAROO c. 1960s Acrylic on paper, mounted on matte board Signed lower right 14 x 5 inches
“It is a measure of Carter’s intellectual curiosity and courage that he changed his artistic vocabulary in the mid-1960s when he found he had new things to say. The result has been that he is not only one of the few important regionalists still living but is also one of the most interesting contemporary artists working today.” -Jean Robertson, “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, 1984
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LEDA AND THE SWAN 1965 Pastel and graphite on textured paper Signed and dated upper right 11.5 x 8 inches
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“THERE IS ALWAYS A DIVISION DIVIDED” c. 1960s Colored pencil and ink on paper 6.75 x 3 inches
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THE FIGURE “When I left my home town of Portsmouth, Ohio in 1922 to enter the Cleveland School of Art, I had no idea what I would be doing...To make copies from objects was a new experience. First came the plaster casts of classic figures which prepared me for the actual nude figure of the life class several years later. Anatomy the next year and learning how it all fitted together and worked. I was fortunate to have good sympathetic teachers in these fields which gave me a knowledgeable foundation... When it came to working with the nude model I felt very inferior as most of the class were very facile and made beautiful drawings. Mine were clumsy and awkward by comparison. I felt that I would never be a draftsman. But one day all of that was turned around. I had taken a portfolio of Daumier’s work to my room. I also had just acquired my first box of litho crayons. The freedom and power of the Daumiers inspired me to try a quick composition with the crayons of a young man diving into the surf swirling around his ankles. The next morning I put my drawing in the Daumier portfolio and took them to school. On the way in I showed the portfolio and my drawing to my friend Elizabeth Bart. After we entered life class and started drawing, Henry G. Keller, my teacher, came to criticize my drawing. As was his practice, he picked up the portfolio and started discussing the Daumiers and what a great draftsman he was in a matter of fact manner until he came to my drawing of the night before. Then his voice began to rise and with much excitement he said ‘look at this.’ At that time Elizabeth broke in to say ‘Mr. Keller, Clarence did that.’ He rubbed his beak-like nose with the back of his hand and looked up at me from where he was sitting and said, in his usual salutation, ‘Mr. Man, keep that up and you will be a great draftsman.’ That was my turning point and I gained the needed confidence and went on to what is shown here.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, December 1992, “Aspects of the Figure,” Harmon-Meek Gallery
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WALKING NUDE 1945 Watercolor and ink on paper Signed and dated upper left 22 x 15 inches
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SEATED NUDE 1940 Graphite and conté crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right 11 x 7.5 inches
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TORSO 1940 Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 10 x 8.75 inches
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MATHILDE 1935 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 30 x 25 inches Exhibitied: 1933 May Show (First Prize), Cleveland Museum of Art
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RECLINING TORSO 1941 Graphite and conté crayon on paper 4.5 x 6 inches
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STANDING NUDE c. 1940s Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed lower right 16.75 x 11. 25 inches
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TORSO c. 1960 Gouache on paper 14.5 x 12.5 inches
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TORSO NO. 4 1967 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower right 24.5 x 19.5 inches
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TORSO NO. 3 1967 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower right 13 x 9 inches
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TORSO 1961 Acrylic, watercolor and ink on paper Signed and dated lower right 25 x 20 inches
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T
COLLAGE “Experimentation by no means makes an artist, but it helps keep him out of the same old rut. Experimentation in itself is creative; trying new materials and media keeps an artist alert and protects him from using short cuts and superficial repetition that become monotonous.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, American Artist, December 1958
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IT’S TIME 1974 Collage Signed and dated upper right 10.5 x 8.25 inches
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JOHN BUNYON IN BEDFORD JAIL - 1667 1975 Collage Signed lower left 18.75 x 27 inches
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PROCESSION c. 1980s Collage 19.5 x 30 inches
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“IS THAT SO?” 1980 Collage Signed and dated lower right 5.5 x 6 inches
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EYE OF THE DESERT 1965 Collage, graphite and gouache on paper Signed and dated lower right 16 x 12 inches
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NUN 1965 Acrylic and collage on paper Signed and dated lower right 4 x 5 inches
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IN THE ATMOSPHERE
THE LAUNCH
c. 1950s Collage on paper 8 x 8 inches
c. 1950s Collage on paper 8.5 x 8 inches
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CHRISTMAS IN SPACE 1961 Collage Signed and dated lower right 21 x 15.5 inches
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BEYOND EARTH “There is more in Clarence Carter’s art than is wont to appear at first glance, or on the surface –how much more, only those who have delved or are responsive to overtone, can hope to know.” -Edward Alden Jewell (Art Critic of The New York Times), American Artist, November 1946
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STUDY FOR TERROR OF HISTORY NO. 4 (THE BIRD THAT HATCHED THE EGG OF EXPERIENCE) 1963 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 7.5 x 10 inches
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ROCKEFELLER CENTER 1962 Acrylic and sand on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 25 x 20 inches
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WEIGHT OF HISTORY 1953 Acrylic and sand on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 22.5 x 30 inches
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“In 1961 I began new experimental approaches using mixed media, largely done on a glass fiber paper that I helped develop for art purposes and which I called ‘Scintilla.’” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, 1984
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TERROR OF HISTORY NO. 1 1962 Acrylic and sand on scintilla Signed and dated upper left 23 x 30 inches
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TERROR OF HISTORY NO. 2 1962 Mixed media on scintilla mounted on panel Signed and dated upper left 24 x 30 inches
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ORB WITH GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE, AND GOLD c. 1950s Acrylic and sand on scintilla 16.5 x 12 inches
“Our ready acceptance of Carter’s world is a proof of his universality. But, as is the case with all superior artists, Carter’s vision is personal. He reveals to us a neglected nook in one corner of our memories. We would never have thought of it without Carter’s help, but once he reminds us of his world, we dimly remember having once lived in it, perhaps in a dream, perhaps in a glimpse of a shadowy, hulking shape, seen off to one side in peripheral vision. Whatever it was, it represented danger. We tried to avoid it; we ought to have face it.” -Gordon Brown (Senior Editor, Arts Magazine), Clarence Carter, Exhibition at Pardee Hall Gallery, Lafayette College, October 1966
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ASTEROID 1955 Collage and mixed media on paper Signed and dated lower left 7 x 10 inches
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PRECARIOUS BALANCE NO. 2 1960 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 20 x 25 inches
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DEPARTING FROM THE SYSTEM 1961 Mixed media on paper Signed and dated lower right 36 x 24 inches
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MANDALAS “You arrive at the pure core of existence where the spark of life is conceived. From the beginning of life, an ever-expanding wave or vibration develops and expands to reach the infinite, the egg of life interweaving with the never-ending circle of the universe to form a pulsating interplay. Through the hypnotic Oriental mandala, symbol of the universe, you can achieve communion with a super-real awareness. -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Art News, May 1971
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ICON CRUCIFERON 1972 Acrylic on canvas Signed and dated lower right 50.25 x 36.25 inches
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RAINBOW MANDALA 1983 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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GREEN AND RED MANDALA 1969 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 24.75 x 18 inches
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EXPANDING MANDALA c. 1970s Acrylic on scintilla 23 x 30 inches
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ICON NO. 18 1969 Acrylic on cardboard Signed and dated verso 21.5 x 32 inches
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BLUE MANDALA 1970 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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YELLOW MANDALA c. 1970s Acrylic on canvas 36 x 39 inches
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MANDALA NO. 15 1969 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated verso 27.5 x 22 inches
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MANDALA NO. 4 1968 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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MANDALA NO. 5 1968 Acrylic on scintilla Signed on verso 29.5 x 22 inches
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GREEN MANDALA 1976 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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GREEN MANDALA 1970 Acrylic on cardboard Signed and dated lower right 15 x 11 inches
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GREEN ORB NO. 2 c. 1970s Acrylic on scintilla 30 x 22 inches
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OVOIDS/EGGS “Beyond reality I felt there must be another realm to explore. I needed some symbol broader and more encompassing than human figures within actual environments. I experimented with symbols that grew naturally into the ovoid. Pure abstraction never satisfied me completely. I needed a contact with all that was and is. The ovoid has been an understandable symbol and a living part of life and cultures. It not only symbolizes life but also death and rebirth. I can use it in any context and it works emotionally, visually and abstractly. As a design element it can give meaning to an otherwise lifeless composition.� -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Ltd., New York, 1982
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BALANCING ACT 1965 Acrylic and collage on paper Signed and dated 30 x 22 inches
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ENTR’ACTE 1977 Pastel on board Signed and dated lower right 8 x 10 inches
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ON THE RED LINE
HESITANT
1965 Acrylic on textured paper Signed and dated lower right 24 x 31 inches
1979 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated upper left 22 x 30 inches
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ICON MANDALA 1967 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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DOUBLE OVOIDS WITH BLUE AND BLACK 1960s Acrylic on textured paper 15.25 x 12.25 inches
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GRAY EGGS c. 1965 Acrylic on paper 3.5 x 2.5 inches
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DOUBLE OVOIDS WITH GREEN AND BROWN 1965 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 12 x 12 inches
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CONFINED 1965 Acrylic and collage on paper Signed and dated upper right 5.5 x 4 inches
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PINNACLE c. 1960s Acrylic and collage on scintilla 22 x 8 inches
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TRIPLE BALANCE: RED AND BLACK c. 1960s Acrylic on textured paper 8 x 8 inches
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TRIPLE BALANCE: BLACK, RED AND BLUE c.1965 Acrylic on paper 8 x 7.5 inches
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TRIPLE BALANCE: FOILED 1993 Acrylic and colored foil on textured paper Signed upper left 10 x 10 inches
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NEON OVOIDS c. 1960s Acrylic on paper 9 x 12 inches
“The egg affirms life, the germ and first principle of everything...but biological life in time passes away, becoming spirit. In death the shape remains only in silence - eternal all-encompassing silence. Complete silence would be maddening to man as he knows it is death. The symbolic value of the egg is that it emphasizes newness and spiritual rebirth. Death and silence were always part of my expression. -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma, March 1975
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STUDY FOR TRIPTYCH c. 1960s Acrylic on paper 8.75 x 9 inches
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STUDY FOR TRIPTYCH c. 1960s Acrylic on paper 7.25 x 8 inches
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PEOPLE 1964 Ink and crayon on paper Signed and dated upper right 36.5 x 24 inches
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EGG AND HEART (VALENTINE’S DAY CARD) c. 1970s Acrylic and collage on paper 6 x 6 inches
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VETRICULUS c. 1970s Acrylic on paper 4.5 x 3.5 inches
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VETRICULUS EGG 1965 Acrylic and collage on textured paper Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
Carter’s quest for a symbolic artistic language continued in this period with the introduction of the Ovoid or Egg form into his work. Perfectly suited to his preocupation with the mysteries of life and the themes of death and transfiguration, the Ovoid or Egg symbolized all of these mysteries in a succinct and visually simple form. The Ovoid/Egg is employed in various fashions to wonderful effect by Carter. It is at once tough and fragile, and in Carter’s depcitions it is opaque or translucent; it is reminiscent of the shape of a human head, it becomes a substitute for a person or a soul. The Egg/Ovoid that is devoid of human features is given a single eye, or mouth, and is an instantly recogmizable reduction of the human being.
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AIR CHAMBER 1965 Collage, graphite and gouache on paper Signed and dated upper left 30 x 22 inches
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MEDIEVAL HEADS 1966 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 23.5 x 30 inches
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PEERING OUT, STUDY FOR MEDIEVAL HEADS c. 1966 Gouache on scintilla 3.5 x 9.5 inches 184
SEEING EGG c. 1960s Acrylic on textured paper 30 x 22 inches
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THE CRY 1979 Acrylic and collage on canvas Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
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THE GOLD COAST 1979 Collage and acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
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THE MAYOR 1979 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed lower right 30 x 22 inches
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SEEING EGG NO. 2 1965 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 30 x 22 inches
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QUADRATIC 1979 Acrylic and collage on textured paper Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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DIVIDED 1965 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 20 x 25 inches
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CHROMATIC 1965 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 22 x 30 inches
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192A
CHIMERA NO. 6 1973 Acrylic on board Signed and dated lower right 7.25 x 9.5 inches
192B
CHIMERAS 1974 Acrylic and pastel on textured paper Signed and dated lower left 25 x 20 inches
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TORSO NO. 5 1967 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated upper right 25 x 20 inches
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TORSO NO. 1 1967 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated upper right 15 x10 inches
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TORSO NO. 3 1967 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 25 x 20 inches
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TRANSECTIONS Transection is a theological term meaning to cross, and specifically to cross between life and death. Carter’s Transections are composed of ovoids/eggs that rise from precisely rendered spaces and recall the artist’s own childhood behavior, as he stated in a letter to a colleague, “There is a strange correlation between my childhood and what I am painting today. As a child I would spend days digging deep holes being careful to square up the holes and smooth down the sides. Then I would sit down in these holes I had so carefully dug and contemplate the mystery of this cubicle shutting me off from the visible world. It was such a satisfying state to be enveloped in the rich brown earth . . . and look up at the blue rectangle of sky and try to relate these two elements, the confinement of the earth with the spaciousness of the universe outside the hole I had dug for myself.” With the Transections there is a sense that while Carter has always been curious about death, he is perhaps more intently contemplating his own mortality, and has found yet another way to visually express these inner thoughts. Carter had long admired the work of Piero della Francesca and Piero’s Resurrection of 1463 was part of the inspiration for these works.
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TRANSECTION NO. 15 1972 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 78 x 60 inches
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FAULT LINES 1971 Acrylic on textured paper Signed lower right 22 x 30 inches
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ASCENDING EGGS c. 1970s Acrylic on paper 11 x 15 inches
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199
CITY SCAPE 1978 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
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161
200
TRANSECTION NO. 3 1972 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated upper right 30 x 22 inches Provenance: Collection of William H. Milliken
162
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201
STUDY FOR SURVEILLANCE 1981 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower left 30 x 22 inches
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163
202
CAGED 1971 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower right 24 x 20 inches
164
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203
KING TUT NO. 2 1968 Gouache on paper Signed and dated upper right 11.25 x 8.25 inches
204
TRANSECTION IN RED AND GREEN c. 1960s Acrylic on paper 12 x 8.75 inches
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165
205
UP THE AVENUE 1979 Acrylic and collage on paper Signed and dated lower right 15 x 11 inches
206
TRANSECTION WITH ARCHITECTURAL FORMS c. 1980s Acrylic and graphite on board 12 x 20 inches
166
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207
REVERBERATIONS 1970 Acrylic on illustration board Signed lower left 20 x 30 inches
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167
208
GHOSTS 1986 Pastel and watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 8 x 10 inches
209
STUDY FOR GEISTES ENDE 1989 Gouache on cardboard Signed and dated upper left 6 x 8 inches
168
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210
IN THE WINDOW 1973 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
211
ABLAZE 1973-79 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 22 x 30 inches
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169
394
TRANSECTION NO. 24 AFTER PERUGINO 1975 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower left 24 x 18 inches
397
TRANSECTION: CRYPTS 1976 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated upper left 15 x 10 inches
170
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212
TRANSECTION 1972 Acrylic and collage on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 22 x 30 inches
393
STUDY FOR TRANSECTION NO. 26 1976 Pastel and graphite on paper Signed and dated upper left 9 x 12 inches
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171
213
TRANSECTION 1978 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
“My parents used to pull the shades whenever a funeral passed our house. Then one morning when I was fourteen, my father fell across my bed gasping ‘I’ve had a stroke and am going to die.’ I pulled myself out from under him and ran down to tell my mother. He died two hours later and I learned that life and death are both important and that man must always reconcile the two.” -Clarence Holbrook Carter, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma, March 1975
214
TRANSECTION 1978 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 30 x 22 inches
172
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215
TRANSECTION NO. 2 1991 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 56 x 40 inches
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173
ARCHITECTURE & PRECISIONISM He refused to limit his efforts to a small world of exhibitions and art criticisms, nor would he surrender to the tinselled mechanical world of commercial necessity. Although variously labelled, he has followed none of the contemporary mannerisms in either the fine or the commercial arts. Nevertheless his work has consistently withstood both the sharp scrutiny of the art critics and the popular reaction of the public to national advertising programs sponsoring him. It is Carter’s belief that the artist should serve the millions as well as the few, but he can do so only if he preserves that personal integrity which will permit him to produce only his best. -Laurence Schmeckebier (Director, Cleveland School of Art), Clarence H. Carter in Review, November 1948
216
STUDY FOR SENTINELS “B” 1985 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower left 30 x 22 inches
174
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515
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175
217
THE VISITOR, NO. 1 1986 Acrylic on cardboard Signed and dated lower right 6.25 x 4.5 inches
176
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218
THE VISITOR, NO. 2 1986 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower left 6.25 x 4.75 inches
219
IN THE COURTYARD 1985 Acrylic and oil crayon on paper Signed and dated lower left 7.75 x 9.75 inches
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177
220
THE WAY OUT 1992 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated upper right 24 x 30 inches
221
BALCONY 1986 Acrylic on cardboard Signed and dated lower left 4 x 5.5 inches
178
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222
IN AND OUT 1963 Acrylic on paper Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
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179
223
MAZE 1991 Acrylic on canvas Signed and dated lower left 40 x 56 inches 372
SKETCH FOR MAZE 1991 Graphite on illustration board 4.25 x 5.75 inches
180
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224
MAZE 1991 Pastel on paper 40 x 56 inches
225
MAZE 1982 Acrylic on cardboard Signed and dated upper right 7 x 9.5 inches
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181
226
INTRIGUE 1982 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 72 x 52 inches
182
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227
WATERBURY MONUMENT 1990 Pastel on paper Signed and dated upper right 38 x 43 inches
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183
228
HAUNTED BY MEMORIES 1986 Acrylic and pastel on paper Signed and dated lower right 40 x 56 inches
229
STUDY FOR HAUNTED BY MEMORIES 1986 Graphite and colored pencil on paper Signed and dated upper left 7 x 9 inches
184
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230
OVERSIGHT 1989 Graphite, white heightening and collage on paper, mounted on board Signed and dated lower right 9 x 12 inches WOLFS GALLERY |
185
ESCHATOS The Eschatos series is the last stylistic evolution in the work of Clarence Carter. Eschatos is a Greek term meaning the study of what is last. Again Carter makes a very conscious decision in regards to his subject matter and the feelings and thoughts he chooses to transmit to the world through his art. His continuing exploration of the subject of death and the mytseries surrounding the transition from earth to spirit is made apparent both by his use of the term eschatos itself and by the placement of the Egg/Ovoid in a series of mysterious and unfamiliar backgrounds that can be seen as moonscapes, spacescapes or mountainscapes. There is a feeling in these works that the artist may now be feeling his own mortality at the age of 75 and beyond in a very real way. A key development in the Eschatos works is that the Egg/Ovoid now appears to be moving through these mysterious terrains, as opposed to the earlier Transections series works where the Egg/ Ovoid is floating and hovering, yet mostly still among sharply rendered architectural forms. The addition of this feeling of movement in the Eshatos works signifies a journey for the artist himslef into the unknown and the mysterious, to the place that is beyond all understanding.
186
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231
ESCHATOS 1974 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 42 x 60 inches
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187
232
ESCHATOS NO. 16 1973 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 22 x 30 inches
398
STUDY FOR ESCHATOS NO. 6 1973 Graphite on paper, mounted on cardboard Signed and dated upper right 22 x 30 inches
188
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233
ESCHATOS NO. 32 1976 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 22 x 32 inches
234
ESCHATOS: STORMING, STUDY FOR ESCHATOS NO. 32 1976 Acrylic and pastel on board Signed and dated upper right 7 x 11 inches
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189
235
FOLLOWING 1973 Watercolor and pastel Signed and dated lower right 30 x 22 inches
190
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236
ESCHATOS 1983 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
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191
“
VARIOUS SUBJECTS “I later came to know [Carter] personally while studying under him one summer at the then Cleveland School of Art in 1948. On one occasion we travelled together to the Toledo Museum of Art to examine the paintings of his which had long been in the museum collection. He was able to describe them to me in exacting detail before we ever arrived there. It became clear to me then and many times subsequently that Carter did not complete a painting and walk away from it, but rather the painting stayed with him, lived in his mind through a seemingly photographic memory.” Joseph McCullough (President, Cleveland Institute of Art), Clarence Holbrook Carter: Detwiller Artist/Lecturer, April 1980
192
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237
NINTH HOUR 1961 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated upper left 36 x 24 inches
238
ST. FRANCIS BEFORE THE CROSS 1964 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated upper left 36 x 24 inches
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193
239
YELLOW GEOMETRIES 1953 Watercolor on paper Signed upper right 8 x 10 inches 240
STUDY FOR MATH MAN NO. 4 1960 Acrylic and graphite on scintilla 7 x 10 inches
194
241
242
ARROWS
LOOKING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
1961 Acrylic on scintilla Signed and dated lower left 20 x 25 inches
c. 1960s Acrylic on scintilla 30 x 22 inches
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243
FLAG STRIPES NO. 1 c. 1960s Gouache on cardboard 8.75 x 15 inches
244
FLAG STRIPES NO. 2 c. 1960s Gouache on cardboard 8.75 x 13 inches
245
246
FOUNDRY
ROMANESQUE
c. 1950s Pastel on paper 8 x 10 inches
c. 1960s Mixed media on scintilla 11 x 11 inches
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195
247
SPHINX c. 1930s Graphite and watercolor on paper Signed lower left 10 x 10 inches
248
DICHOTOMY 1962 Oil on paper Signed and dated upper left 20 x 25 inches
249
DICHOTOMY NO. 2 1962 Oil on paper Signed and dated upper left 20 x 25 inches
196
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250
251
SUN
SUN
1960 Acrylic on scintilla Signed lower right and verso 11 x 11 inches
1961 Watercolor on paper 11 x 11 inches
252
253
RADIOACTIVE
STUDY FOR THE VICTIM
1961 Mixed media on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 25 x 20 inches
1962 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated upper left 11 x 8.5 inches
254
255
DEER
BIRD WOMAN
1971 Acrylic on paper Signed verso 10 x 7 inches
1960 Watercolor on scintilla Signed and dated upper right 9 x 9.5 inches
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197
256
PROJECTIVE NO. 3 1962 Painted wood and egg carton sculpture relief Signed and dated verso 25.5 x 25.5 inches
257
PROJECTIVE NO. 1 1962 Painted wood and egg carton sculpture relief Signed and dated verso 33.25 x 25.25 inches
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258
GEAR 1964 Assemblage Signed, dated and inscribed verso “Gift to Blake Carter - Christmas 1968” 13 x 12.5 x 3.25 inches
259
CONSTRUCTION: TORSO 1964 Painted wood Signed verso 14 x 10 x 3.25 inches
260
CONSTRUCTION: EYE 1964 Painted wood Signed verso 8.75 x 12.75 x 3.25 inches
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199
DRAWINGS Hundreds of fine drawings and studies for larger works make up an important part of the Carter collection. It is very fortunate and a tribute to Carter’s well organized methodology that so many fine works on paper were preserved and well ordered throughout his career. The abundance of very fine drawings serves not only as a testament to his technical brilliance, but also as a window into his mysteriously creative mind.
200
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261
262
263
EATING ALONE
THE PLUMED HAT
1924 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 5 x 8 inches
1930 Graphite on paper Signed lower left 6 x 4.5 inches
STUDY FOR HAT DISPLAY ON THE RUE GRAMMANT, PARIS 1928 Pencil on paper Signed and dated upper left 12 x 9 inches
264
265
266
MOTHER AND CHILD
WOMAN SPINNING, ANTICOLI CORRADO, ITALY
MOTHER AND CHILD
c. 1930s Graphite on paper 3.5 x 2.75 inches
1927 Graphite and conté crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right 14 x 11 inches
c. 1927 Ink and conté crayon on paper Signed mid right 18 x 13 inches
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201
267
268
THE WATER CARRIER, ANTICOLI CORRADO, ITALY
CONVERSAZIONE, ANTICOLI CORRADO, ITALY
c. 1927 Charcoal on paper 18 x 13 inches
269
STUDY FOR DONKEY ON A HILL TOP, ITALY 1927 Conté crayon and ink on paper Signed and dated lower left 14 x 10.5 inches
202
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1927 Graphite on paper Signed and dated upper right 8.5 x 10.5 inches
270
STUDY FOR LAFONSON’S PRIDE 1928 Graphite on paper 4 x 5 inches
271
272
FORMS CAPRI
COMPOSITION CAPRI
1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower right 25 x 18.25 inches
1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower left 18 x 11.25 inches
274
275
276
ANTICOLI AT NIGHT
ANTICOLI CORRADO, ITALY
SIENA
1927 Pastel on paper Signed and dated lower right 10.5 x 9.25 inches
1927 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 5 x 7 inches
1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated upper right 27.5 x 20.25 inches
273
STEPS AND VINEYARD 1927 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower right 18.25 x 12 inches
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203
277
DRAWINGS FOR ENTRANCE HALL OF WILLIAM M. MILLIKEN AT WADE PARK MANOR, NO. 1-3 1938 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 20 x 13 inches
278
279
“FIRE OUT THE WINDOW OF A JOHN HUNTINGTON CLASSROOM”
JACK GREITZER AT THE PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO WORLD’S FAIR
1926 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 11 x 6 inches
204
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1933 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 9 x 6 inches
280
SUMMER NIGHT 1932 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right 17 x 13.5 inches
281
282
PORTSMOUTH AND KENTUCKY HILLS
FENCE AND CORN CRIB, CHILLICOTHE, OHIO
1932 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper left 13.75 x 16.75 inches
1932 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right, titled verso 13.5 x 17 inches
283
284
WORKING IN THE SUN
PLANTING TOBACCO
1949 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 6.5 x 6.5 inches
1962 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower left 10 x 12 inches
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205
285
286
WOMAN GATHERING COAL, STUDY FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT
FINISHED STUDY FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT 1941 Graphite on paper 9.25 x 12.75 inches
1941 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 6.75 x 6 inches
287
288
289
SKETCH FOR JANE REED AND DORA HUNT
GATHERED AT THE TABLE, STUDY FOR LET US GIVE THANKS
“GIVE US THIS DAY”, SELF-PORTRAIT STUDY FOR LET US GIVE THANKS
1930 Graphite on paper 3.5 x 2.25 inches
1933 Graphite on paper 12 x 8 inches
1941 Graphite on paper 9.25 x 12.75 inches
206
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290
291
J.F.K. ELECTION
EGGS AND FLAGS, J.F.K. ELECTION SKETCH
1960 Colored pencil on paper Signed and dated lower right 18 x 14 inches
c. 1960 Graphite and watercolor on paper 14 x 14 inches
292
J.F.K. ELECTION SKETCH 1960 Graphite on paper 8.75 x 7.75 inches
293
THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN PITH HELMET c. 1930s Graphite on paper 2 x 2 inches
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207
294
295
WAITING FOR THE TRAIN
COMMUTERS
c. 1940s Graphite on paper 7 x 4.5 inches
c. 1940 Graphite on paper 4 x 4.75 inches
208
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296
297
WOMAN ON TRAIN
MEN
c. 1940s Graphite on paper Signed lower center 3.5 x 2 inches
c. 1940 Graphite on paper One signed lower center 2.5 x 3; 3 x 2.5 inches
298
BOX CAR 1943 Graphite and charcoal on paper Signed and dated upper left 7 x 9.5 inches
299
COUPLES AT DINER c. 1930 Graphite on paper 8 x 11 inches
300
CAFÉ 1930 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower left 4 x 5 inches
301
STORE INTERIOR - SURINAME 1944 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 1.5 x 2 inches
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209
302
ON BOARD THE FINK 1935 Graphite on paper Signed and dated upper left 5 x 8 inches
303
CONDUCTOR 1930 Graphite on paper Signed and dated 3 x 4 inches
304
LAKE GEORGE STEAMER 1931 Conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper left 6 x 9 inches
305
OHIO RIVER BOAT 1949 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 7 x 9.5 inches
210
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306
LINE OUT OF BOAT 1930 Graphite on paper 7.75 x 10 inches
307
LAKE SUPERIOR LOCKS 1935 Graphite and conté crayon on paper Signed and dated upper right 5 x 8 inches
308
SKETCH FOR OHIO RIVER FLOOD MURAL IN PORTSMOUTH OHIO POST OFFICE 1937 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower right 6 x 9.5 inches
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211
309
310
311
CRUCIFIX
SKETCH FOR ST. FRANCIS BEFORE THE CROSS
ANGEL
1957 Graphite on paper Signed upper right 10 x 7 inches
1964 Graphite on cardboard Signed upper left 5 x 15 inches
312
THE MOURNERS 1930 Graphite on paper 7.5 x 9 inches
212
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c. 1950s Graphite on paper 14 x 12 inches
313
CIRCUS HORSES c. 1930s Graphite on paper 9 x 10 inches
314
CAROUSEL SKETCH c. 1946 Graphite on paper 11 x 15 inches
315
CAROUSEL STUDY c. 1920 Graphite on paper 10 x 14 inches
316
CIRCUS HORSE c. 1930s Graphite on paper 6 x 6 inches
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213
317
RACE HORSE AND JOCKEY c. 1940s Graphite on paper 2.25 x 3.75 inches
318
CIRCUS ACROBAT c. 1920s Graphite on paper 3.5 x 4.5 inches
319
STUDY FOR MUMMERS 1933 Conté crayon on paper 14.25 x 11.25
320
CIRCUS PERFORMERS c. 1930s Graphite on paper 6 x 8 inches
214
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321
THREE STUDIES FOR TRAPEZE ARTISTS 1933 Graphite on paper Signed and dated, two lower right; one upper left 9 x 6 inches each
322
323
324
SKETCH FOR CIRCUS PERFORMER
CIRCUS GIRL
CIRCUS FIGURE SKETCH
1947 Graphite on paper Signed lower right 10 x 7.5 inches
c. 1930s Graphite on paper Signed lower right 9 x 6 inches
c. 1920 Graphite on paper Signed lower right 6 x 9 inches
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215
325
326
327
STANDING NUDE
STANDING NUDE
STANDING NUDE
c. 1940s Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed lower right 16.75 x 11. 25 inches
1940 Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed and dated lower left 15.75 x 10.75 inches
c. 1930s Charcoal and white heightening on paper 18 x 11.5 inches
328
329
330
STANDING NUDE
STANDING NUDE
STANDING NUDE
1934 Pen and ink wash on paper Signed and dated lower right 17.5 x 11.5 inches
1934 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated lower right 6 x 9 inches
1935 Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 16 x 10 inches
216
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331
332
333
SEATED NUDE
STANDING NUDE
SEATED NUDE
1941 Graphite and conté crayon on blue paper Signed lower middle 8 x 5 inches
1941 Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed and dated lower left 8 x 5 inches
1940 Graphite and conté crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right 11 x 7.5 inches
335
336
337
RECLINING NUDE
RECLINING TORSO
RECLINING NUDE
1932 Graphite on paper Signed lower right 8.5 x 10 inches
1941 Graphite and conté crayon on paper 4.5 x 6 inches
c. 1930s Graphite and white heightening on paper 11.5 x 16 inches 334
TORSO 1940 Conté crayon and graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 10 x 8.75 inches
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217
338
STUDY FOR SPHINX c. 1930s Graphite on paper Signed lower left 14 x 10 inches
339
COMMUNICATION 1951 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed lower right 11 x 8 inches
340
FINISHED STUDY FOR OVER AND ABOVE: LION c. 1970s Graphite on paper 14 x 16.5 inches
341
STUDY FOR DICHOTOMY 1962 Graphite on paper 4.5 x 6 inches
218
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342
343
344
OVER AND ABOVE STUDY: FISH
OVER AND ABOVE STUDY: FISH
TARANTULA STUDY
c. 1960s Graphite on paper 5.5 x 4 inches
c. 1960s Graphite on gray paper 9 x 6 inches
1965 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 11 x 8 inches
345
346
347
OVER AND ABOVE STUDY: MOUNTAIN GOAT
OVER AND ABOVE STUDY: SQUIRREL
OVER AND ABOVE STUDY: MOUSE
1960 Graphite on paper 4.75 x 5.5 inches
c. 1960s Graphite on gray paper 8 x 5 inches
c. 1960s Graphite on gray paper 5.5 x 4 inches
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219
348
349
350
CALISTHENICS
ATLAS SHRUGGED
STUDY FOR AN ATOM
c. 1950s Graphite on paper 14 x 7 inches
1960 Graphite on paper 13 x 10 inches
c. 1950s Graphite, colored pencil and watercolor on paper 4.75 x 4 inches
351
352
353
ASTRONAUT
DEVICE
ZEBRA MAN
c. 1960s Graphite and white heightening on paper 8 x 9.75 inches
1963 Graphite and colored chalk on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 10.25 x 8.25 inches
1970 Graphite on paper 12 x 10 inches
220
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354
RADIATION ROOM AT SLOAN KETTERING 1947 Graphite on paper Signed and dated upper left 4.25 x 6.75 inches
355
STUDIES ON PERSPECTIVE c. 1970s Graphite on paper 4 x 6.25; 6.75 x 7.5; 4.5 x 9.5 inches
356
STUDY FOR TERROR OF HISTORY NO. 4 (THE BIRD THAT HATCHED THE EGG OF EXPERIENCE) 1963 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 7.5 x 10 inches
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221
357
358
STUDY FOR “GLASS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
STUDY FOR “BLACK DIAMONDS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
1953 Graphite on paper 9 x 11 inches
c. 1956 Graphite on paper 7.25 x 10.25 inches
359
360
POWERLINES NO. 1, STUDY FOR “COMMUNICATIONS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
POWERLINES NO. 2, STUDY FOR “COMMUNICATIONS . . . AND THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK”
c. 1950s Graphite on tracing paper 6 x 8.5 inches
c. 1950s Graphite on tracing paper 6 x 8.5 inches
361
362
SEMI-TRUCKS, THE NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK
STUDY FOR LATE NIGHT STREET NO. 2, NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK CHRISTMAS CARD
c. 1955 Graphite on tracing paper 9 x 11 inches
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c. 1950 Graphite on paper 8 x 10.5 inches
363
364
365
HIGHWAY SKETCH
INDUSTRIAL ROLLER, STUDY FOR WAR BRIDE
MANHATTAN VIEW
1962 Colored pencil on paper 8.5 x 6 inches
1953 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 7 inches
1955 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed lower right 8 x 8 inches
366
367
368
PIPELINES
ARCHITECTURAL SKETCHES
1955 Graphite on tracing paper Signed lower right 9.5 x 11 inches
1962 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 5 x 6.5 inches
ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES 1962 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower right 10 x 7 inches
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223
369
370
STUDY FOR TWIN TOWERS
SURVEYING THE RAMPARTS
1984 Pastel on paper Signed and dated lower right 7 x 5 inches
1986 Graphite on paper Each signed and dated 4 x 5 inches each
371
372
MONUMENT NO. 2
SKETCH FOR MAZE
1962 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower left 8.25 x 10.25 inches
1991 Graphite on illustration board 4.25 x 5.75 inches
224
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373
374
375
SPIRAL STAIRCASE
STUDY FOR STAIRWELL AT THE CLEVELAND SCHOOL OF ART
STUDY FOR ASPIRATION
1960 Graphite on paper 3.25 x 5.5 inches
376
1927 Graphite on paper 5.5 x 3.5 inches
1982 Graphite and white heightening on paper 4 x 5 inches
377
378
STUDY FOR VISITATION NO. 1
STUDY FOR VISITATION NO. 2
TRANSECTION WITH STAIRS
1980 Graphite and colored pencil on paper Signed and dated upper right 9.75 x 7.75 inches
1980 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated lower right 10 x 8 inches
c. 1990 Graphite and white heightening on paper 3.5 x 6 inches
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225
379
380
381
STUDY FOR LABYRINTHINE
TOP OF THE STAIRS
AMIDST THE MAZE
1982 Graphite on paper 8.25 x 6.5 inches
1960 Graphite and white heightening on paper 4.75 x 3.75 inches
1970 Graphite, white heightening and colored pencil on paper 3.5 x 4.5 inches
382
383
STUDY FOR DEPARTURE
STUDY FOR MAZE
1981 Graphite on paper 5.75 x 8.5 inches
1982 Graphite and white heightening on illustration board Signed and dated lower right 7.5 x 9.5 inches
384
HIDING 1970 Graphite and colored pencil on paper 3.5 x 4.5 inches
226
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385
386
387
STUDY FOR WORLDS BEYOND
STUDY FOR RELEASE
SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS
1980 Graphite, collage and white heightening on paper 11 x 4.5 inches
1980 Graphite, white heightening and collage on paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 4.5 inches
1979 Graphite, collage and white heightening on illustration board Signed and dated lower right 10 x 7.5 inches
388
389
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
LOOKING WITHIN
1979 Graphite, collage and white heightening on illustration board Signed and dated lower right 7.5 x 10 inches
1979 Graphite, collage and white heightening on paper Signed and dated upper right 10 x 7 inches
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227
390
391
STUDY FOR WORLDS BEYOND
TRANSECTION STUDY
1980 Graphite, collage and white heightening on illustration board Signed and dated lower right 10.75 x 4.5 inches
c. 1970s Graphite and white heightening on paper 9.5 x 3.5 inches
392
VISITATION 1980 Graphite and white heightening on paper Signed and dated upper right 11 x 4.5 inches
393
STUDY FOR TRANSECTION NO. 26 1976 Pastel and graphite on paper Signed and dated upper left 9 x 12 inches
228
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394
395
396
TRANSECTION NO. 24 AFTER PERUGINO
STUDY FOR TRANSECTION NO. 1
IN GLORY NO. 1
1975 Graphite on paper Signed and dated lower left 24 x 18 inches
c. 1970 Graphite and ink on scintilla 36 x 24 inches
1973 Charcoal and chalk on paper Signed and dated lower left 18 x 22 inches
397
TRANSECTION: CRYPTS 1976 Charcoal on paper Signed and dated upper left 15 x 10 inches
398
STUDY FOR ESCHATOS NO. 6 1973 Graphite on paper, mounted on cardboard Signed and dated upper right 22 x 30 inches WOLFS GALLERY |
229
PRINTS “In 1969 the Cleveland Institute of Art honored Clarence Carter as its Distinguished Alumnus of the Year with a one-man exhibition of his work... At that time I wrote of Carter: Precision without dryness Analysis without boredom Simplicity without obviousness Impeccable craftsmanship always... The passing of another decade has changed none of those characteristics, either in the works or the artist himself.� Joseph McCullough (President, Cleveland Institute of Art), Clarence Holbrook Carter: Detwiller Artist/Lecturer, April 1980
230
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399
NINTH HOUR 1978 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 40.5 x 26.25 inches
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231
400
THE GATHERING OF GRAPES 1932 Aquatint Signed and dated lower right 2 x 5.5 inches
401
402
403
TOILET D’UNE FEMME
SISTERS
FLORA
1932 Etching and aquatint Signed and dated lower right 11 x 7 inches
1934 Etching Signed and dated lower right 10.5 x 7 inches
1935 Etching Signed and dated lower right 4.25 x 2.25 inches
404
CAPRI CAT 1932 Aquatint Signed and dated lower right 5 x 8 inches
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OLIVE TREES, CAPRI 1932 Aquatint Signed and dated lower right 5.5 x 7 inches
406
PATTERNS OF ANTIQUITY 1937 Etching and drypoint Signed and dated lower right 5 x 6 inches
407
KENTUCKY TOBACCO 1934 Etching Signed and dated lower right 9.5 x 6.5 inches
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408
RIDERLESS RACERS 1935 Etching Signed lower right 13.25 x 15 inches
409
CAROUSEL BY THE SEA 1979 (original painting, 1939) Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 22/30 22 x 28 inches
410
THE CLOWNS MAKING UP 1979 (original painting, 1934) Lithograph Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 22 x 28.5 inches
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411
TWO ACROBATS 1979 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 10/30 35.25 x 17.5 inches
412
HOMESTEAD 1979 Lithograph Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 3/30 21.5 x 28 inches
413
AERIAL PERFORMER 1931 Etching and aquatint Signed and dated lower right 11 x 6 inches
414
OUTSIDE THE LIMITS 1979 (original painting, 1938-1946) Lithograph Signed and dated lower right 18 x 26 inches
415
MAIDENHEAD 1978 (original painting, 1929) Lithograph 29.75 x 22 inches
416
THE FLOOD 1981 (original painting, 1937) Lithograph on paper Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 200 22 x 27.5 inches
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417
418
GREEN MANDALA
GREEN MANDALA
1969 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right Multiples from a series of 75 29.75 x 21.75 inches
1976 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 25 30 x 22 inches
419
420
RED MANDALA
YELLOW MANDALA
1969 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right Edition 59/64 22 x 30 inches
1969 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from an edition of 65 30 x 22 inches
421
422
UNIQUE
BLUE MANDALA
1970 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right 22 x 30 inches
1970 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 75 30 x 22 inches
423
WHITE AND BLACK MANDALA 1969 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 50 25 x 20 inches
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SILVER AND BLACK MANDALA 1969 Silkscreen Signed lower right Edition AP 2 24.5 x 20 inches
425
426
THE BURNING BUSH
FLAMING MANDALA
1977 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 40 x 25.5 inches
1975 Silkscreen Signed and dated upper right 15 x 11 inches
427
428
TULIP
ABSTRACT TULIP
1977 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 29.5 x 21.5 inches
1978 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition 6/30 29.5 x 22 inches
429
430
FIERY FURNACE
HIGHWAY
1978 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiples from a series of 30 30 x 22 inches
1979 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiples from a series of 30 30 x 22 inches
431
432
WATCHER
VILLA BY THE SEA
1979 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiples from a series of 30 31.5 x 24 inches
1979 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 18/30 30 x 24 inches
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433
TRANSECTION NO. 3 1973 Silkscreen Signed and dated upper right Multiple from a series of 75 30 x 22 inches
434
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS 1971 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 3 22 x 30 inches
435
REVERBERATIONS 1971 Silkscreen on scintilla Signed and dated lower right Edition AP No. 8 22 x 29.5 inches
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436
SUNSET 1977 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition 29/30 22 x 30 inches
437
ESCHATOS NO. 18 1977 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition 18/30 22 x 30 inches
438
ESCHATOS NO. 21 1979 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Multiple from a series of 30 17 x 24 inches
439
ESCHATOS NO. 23 1977 Silkscreen Signed and dated lower right Edition AP 28/30 24 x 24 inches
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EXHIBITIONS 1929 Cleveland Art Center, Cleveland, Ohio (solo exhibition) “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “International Exhibition of Watercolors,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Watercolor Paintings by American and European Artists,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Annual International Exhibition of Paintings,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “National Watercolor Exhibition,” Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Watercolors by Cleveland Artists,” Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York “Cleveland Artists,” Milwaukee Art Institute, Milwaukee, Wisconsin “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1930 Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York (solo exhibition) “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Watercolor Exhibition,” The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Cleveland School of American Painters,” Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 1931 “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Paintings from the Museum’s Permanent Collection,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “International Print Exhibition,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Thirty Paintings by Cleveland Artists,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California “Paintings by Contemporary American Artists,” Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York “American Scenes and Subjects,” Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery, New York 1932 “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “International Exhibition of Etchings and Engravings,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 1933 “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “American Color Prints,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Paintings by Cleveland Artists,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Annual International Exhibition of Watercolors,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cartoons and Caricatures,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Watercolor Exhibition,” Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio “Oil Paintings by Cleveland Artists,” Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York “Paintings and Sculpture from Sixteen American Cities,” Museum of Modern Art, New York
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“43rd Annual Exhibition of Paintings,” Nebraska Art Association, Morrill Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska “American Painting During the Past Fifty Years,” Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri “Annual Exhibition of Paintings,” Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1934 Milwaukee Art Institute, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (solo exhibition) “International Exhibition of Watercolors,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “International Exhibition of Contemporary Prints for a Century of Progress,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “National Exhibition, Public Works of Art Project,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Drawings and Watercolors by Americans,” Keppel Gallery, New York 1935 “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Contemporary American Painting,” California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California “American Still Life and Flower Paintings,” Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio 1936 “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio “International Exhibition of Etchings and Engravings,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Gallery Artists,” Ferargil Galleries, New York 1937 Little Gallery, Cleveland College, Cleveland, Ohio (solo exhibition) “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “National Exhibition of American Art,” American Fine Arts Society Galleries, New York “American Painting from 1860 Until Today,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Fourteen Former Students,” Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Art of the Americas,” Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas “Exhibition of Watercolors,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey “Paintings and Prints by Cleveland Artists,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
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1938 “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual International Exhibition of Paintings,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition of Paintings,” Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio “Contemporary Watercolors,” Ferargil Galleries, New York “Fifty American Prints,” Ferargil Galleries, New York “American Watercolor Exhibition,” Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio “Paintings by Ohio Artists,” Macbeth Gallery, New York “Contemporary American Painting Annual,” University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis “American Art Today,” New York World’s Fair, New York “Thirty-Two Watercolors by Leading American Artists,” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “American Watercolors,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia 1939 Ferargil Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) “International Exhibition of Watercolors,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual International Exhibition of Paintings,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen Annuals,” (The May Show), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Gallery Artists,” Ferargil Galleries, New York “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Annual Oil Exhibition,” Ferargil Galleries, New York 1940 Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio (solo exhibition) Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (solo exhibition) Canton Art Institute, Canton, Ohio (solo exhibition) Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “National Competitive Exhibition,” Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan “National Art Week,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Nebraska Art Association, Morrill Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska “Semi-Centennial Annual Exhibition of Oil and Watercolors,” Nebraska Art Association, Morrill Hall, University of Nebraska
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1941 Ferargil Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Survey of American Painting,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Fifty Great American Painters,” Ferargil Galleries, New York “Paintings from Late 17th Century to Present,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “Watercolor Painting in the United States,” Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts 1942 “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia “Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1943 Chautauqua Gallery of Art, Chautauqua, New York (solo exhibition) “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “International Exhibition of Watercolors,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Group Exhibition of Paintings by Fourteen American Artists,” Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan “American Paintings,” Ferargil Galleries, New York “American Realists and Magic Realists,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1944 Ferargil Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia “Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Paintings by American Artists,” Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan “Annual Exhibition,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California “Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “Artists for Victory,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “4th Annual Exhibition - Oils and Watercolors,” Parkersburg Art Center, Parkersburg, West Virginia “Painting in the United States,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Portrait of America,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Chautauqua Art Gallery, Chautauqua, New York WOLFS GALLERY |
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1945 Findlay Galleries, Chicago, Illinois (solo exhibition) “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Contemporary American Painting,” California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Painting in the United States,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “A Survey of American Painting from Colonial to Modern Times,” Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio “Group Show,” Ferergil Galleries, New York “Contemporary American Paintings Annual,” Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana “American Watercolors,” Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey “Special Invitational Exhibition,” Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1946 “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Painting,” The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Annual Exhibition,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio “New Year Shows,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia “Painting in the United States,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Contemporary American Paintings Annual,” Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana “Two Hundred Years of American Painting,” The Tate Gallery, London, England 1947 Ferargil Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) Grand Central Art Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) “Biennial Exhibition of American Oil Paintings,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Paintings to Live With,” Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York 1948 Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (solo exhibition) Suffolk Art Museum, Stony Brook, New York (solo exhibition) “American Paintings and Sculpture Annual,” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois “Annual Exhibition,”National Academy, New York “Contemporary American Painting,” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 1949 Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota (solo exhibition) “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York “Pittsburgh, 1790-1949,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1950 Allen R. Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky (solo exhibition) U.S. Naval Reserve Training Center, Portsmouth, Ohio (solo exhibition)
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1951 Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York (solo exhibition) “50th Anniversity Exhibition,” Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio 1952 Art Club, St. Petersburg, Florida (solo exhibition) U.S. Naval Reserve Training Center, Portsmouth, Ohio (solo exhibition) “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York “Man at Work,” The Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado “American Watercolors, Drawings, and Prints,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York “New Jersey Artists,” The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey 1953 “Painting in the United States,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Annual Mid-Year Exhibition,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Modern Art from the U.S.,” Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland 1954 “25th Anniversary Exhibition,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1955 “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York “New Jersey Artists,” The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey “Annual Mid-Year Exhibition,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Modern Art from the U.S.,” Museo de Arte Moderna, Barcelona, Spain “Five Artists,” National Academy, New York 1956 “Annual Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York “Annual Exhibition,”National Academy, New York “Warehouse Exhibition,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York “Special Exhibition of Prints and Watercolors,” National Academy, New York “Fifty Paintings by Living American Artists of New Jersey,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 1957 Hendrik-Hobbelink-Kaastra Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida (solo exhibition) High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia (solo exhibition) 1958 “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York 1959 “Annual Exhibition,” National Academy, New York “Annual Mid-Year Exhibition,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “92nd Annual Exhibition,” American Watercolor Society, National Academy Galleries, New York “American Watercolor Society Annual,” National Academy, New York 1960 “Annual Exhibition,”National Academy, New York “American Watercolor Society Annual,” National Academy, New York WOLFS GALLERY |
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1961 D’Arcy Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) 1963 Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York (solo exhibition) “American Watercolor Society Annual,” National Academy, New York “American Scene Between the Wars,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1964 Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) Sharadin Art Gallery, Kutztown State College, Kutztown, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “American Scene Between the Wars,” Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania 1965 Rose Fried Gallery, New York (solo exhibition) Gallery 10, Newsweek, New York (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) Mickelson Gallery, Washington, D.C. (solo exhibition) Schumacher Gallery, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio (solo exhibition) “The Box Show,” Byron Gallery, New York “White on White,” De Cordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts “Radius 5,” Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania Henri Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1966 “Michener Foundation Collection,” Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania “Federal Art Patronage, 1933-43,” University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, Maryland “Selected Works by Contemporary New Jersey Artists,” The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey 1967 Ferry Gallery, Centenary College for Women, Hackettstown, New Jersey (solo exhibition) “Pageant of Ohio Painters,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio Henri Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1968 “New Jersey Artists,” The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey “Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage,” Art Institute of Chicago and Los Angeles County Museum of Art “The H. Marc Moyens Collection,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “The Dominant Woman,” Finch College Museum of Art, New York “Icon-Idea,” Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania “Black/White,” Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania “Art from New Jersey Annual,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey “Geometric Art: An Exhibition of Paintings and Construction by Fourteen Contemporary New Jersey Artists,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 1969 Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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1970 Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey (solo exhibition) University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “Art from New Jersey Annual,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 1971 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Comsky Gallery, Los Angeles, California (solo exhibition) “College Faculty Exhibition,” Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, New Jersey 1972 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) “The Non-Objective World, 1939-1955,” Annely Juda Fine Art, London, England and Galleria Milano, Milan, Italy “19th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,” Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania “The Non-Objective World,” Galerie Liatowitsch, Basel, Switzerland 1973 “Forty Years of American Landscape Painting,” Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York 1974 Bodley Gallery, New York (solo exhibition) Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (solo exhibition) Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey (solo exhibition) New Jersey State Museum, Trenton (first one-man retrospective exhibition of work of a living artist at New Jersey State Museum) Schumacher Gallery, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio (solo exhibition) “Contemporary Portraits by American Painters,” Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida 1975 Brunnier Gallery Museum, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (solo exhibition) Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma (solo exhibition) Trenton State College Art Gallery, Trenton, New Jersey (solo exhibition) “Dream World: Romantic Realism, 1930-1955,” Whitney Museum, Downtown Branch, New York “Selections from the American Print Collection,” Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland, California 1976 Carus Gallery, New York (solo exhibition) Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York in association with The Twenty-Four Collection, Miami, Florida (solo exhibition) Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma (solo exhibition) “This Land is Your Land: A Bicentennial Salute to the Fifty States,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 1977 “Spacescapes,” Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (retrospective exhibition) Michener Galleries, University of Texas Art Museum, Austin, Texas (retrospective exhibition) Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (retrospective exhibition) American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York Ranger Fund, National Academy of Design, New York WOLFS GALLERY |
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1978 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Muhlenberg College Center for the Arts, Allentown, Pennsylvania (retrospective exhibition) “Geometric Abstraction and Related Works,” The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey “Art Deco: Architecture and Artifacts,” Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts 1979 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Inaugural Exhibition, Southern Ohio Museum & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, Ohio (solo exhibition) “The Public Patron,” University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, Maryland 1980 Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, New Jersey (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “The Cleveland Museum of Art Collects Cleveland Art at the Frank J. Lausche State Office Building,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Buildings: Architecture in American Modernism,” Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York 1981 Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) “Social Art in America 1930-1945,” in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Galleries, ACA Galleries, New York “Twenty Contemporary American Masters,” Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida “Realism and Abstraction: Counterpoints in American Drawing, 1900-1940,” Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York “Small Towns and Villages: An Exhibition of Paintings and Photographs, 1950-1982,” Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, New Jersey “American Art of the 1930s and 1940s,” Mitchell Museum, Mt. Vernon, Illinois “Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters, 1800-1945,” Westmoreland County Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania “The Neglected Generation of American Realist Painters, 1930-1948,” Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas 1982 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) “Collector’s Choice,” Princeton Gallery of Fine Art, Princeton, New Jersey 1983 Kenneth C. Beck Center for the Cultural Arts, Lakewood, Ohio (solo exhibition) Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida (solo exhibition) 1984 “Clarence Carter: The Portsmouth Collection,” Southern Ohio Museum & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, Ohio Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey (solo exhibition) “Highlights, Featuring Four Artists,” Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York “American 20th-Century Art,” Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York “Mathematics in Art, Geometry in 20th-Century Painting and Sculpture,” Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey “American Art of the 1930s and 1940s,” Princeton Gallery of Fine Art, Princeton, New Jersey “The Dance,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey “New Jersey’s Curator’s Choice,” Robeson Center Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey
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1985 “Realist Antecedents,” Artist’s Choice Museum, New York “1918-1945: Between Two World Wars,” Carnegie-Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “Young America: Children and Art,” Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, Sandwich, Massachusetts New York Fine Print Fair, New York 1986 Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York (solo exhibition) Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) “The Animal Kingdom,” Associate American Artists, New York “American Paintings and Sculpture,” Allentown Art Museum, Trexler Gallery, Allentown, Pennsylvania “The Machine Age in America 1918-1941,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York “Fireworks, American Artists Celebrate the Eighth Art,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio “Art on Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina New York Fine Print Fair, New York 1987 New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey (solo exhibition) “The Machine Age in America 1918-1941,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania “The Amiercan Print, 1890-1950,” The Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas 1988 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, Ltd., New York (solo exhibition) Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida (solo exhibition) Lehigh University Art Galleries, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) Payne Gallery, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (solo exhibition) “Painting in America: Mural Art in the New Deal Era,” Midtown Galleries, in association with Janet Marquesee Fine Arts, New York 1989 Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York (solo exhibition) 1996 “Clarence Carter and the American Scene”, Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania 2005-2006 “Objects of Desire: Treasures from Private Collections”, Michener Art Museum, New Hope, Pennsylvania 2007 “Artists of the Commonwealth: Realism and Its Response in Pennsylvania Painting 1900-1950”, Michener Art Museum, New Hope, Pennsylvania 2009-2010 “An Evolving Legacy: Twenty Years of Collecting at the James A. Michener Art Museum”, Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania 2018-2019 “Cult of the Machine”, De Young Museum, San Francisco, California; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas 2020 “Clarence Holbrook Carter: Metamorphosis of an American Surrealist”, WOLFS, Cleveland, Ohio (solo exhibition) WOLFS GALLERY |
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The entirety of this exhibition and catalog would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of: The Carter Family The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center Professor Henry Adams Dr. Marianne Berardi Epstein Design Partners, Inc. Master Printing Barb Merritt Cerulean Conservation, LLC Art Etc. WOLFS staff: Megan Arner and Lauren Lovings-Gomez
To all those, anonymous and otherwise, who have selflessly contributed to this worthy endeavor -- thank you.
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