Jazzed about America: Modernism at the Tacoma Art Museum

It's hard to imagine — in our postmodern, multifaceted, multicultural world — a group of artists expressing THE American experience in their art. But, about a 100 years ago, as modern art was forging new artistic territory, American and European artists were passionately involved in creating a new, American-inspired art — a Great American Thing.

One of the artists involved in this exciting quest was Georgia O'Keeffe, who coined the phrase "The Great American Thing," an expression that has become the title of a big, new show at the Tacoma Art Museum. The museum's chief curator Patricia McDonnell, who organized the exhibition with Stanford University art historian Wanda M. Corn, calls the show "one of the most ambitious, if not the most ambitious" exhibition ever put on at the Tacoma Art Museum.

And there is a lot to be excited about. The show pulls together 130 works of art, created between 1915 and 1935 by such famous modern artists as O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, Stuart Davis and Alfred Stieglitz. Most of these works have never visited the Pacific Northwest before and it's a pleasure to see how these artists were inspired by modern America.

They were enthralled with the nation's relatively short history, its skyscrapers and landscapes, its thriving industries and mass-produced objects and its exciting jazz culture — these themes arise again and again in the works.

There are some disappointments, too, especially for modern-art buffs who might be wondering where some of the more famous works of American modernism are. Yet it's refreshing to see some lesser-known art.

Instead of iconic, textbook images, like Frank Stella's cityscapes, we get less-touted gems like Charles Demuth's "Buildings, Lancaster." Instead of Marcel Duchamp's infamous "Fountain," we get his "In Advance of the Broken Arm," another example of Duchamp's "readymades" — mass-produced objects, in this case a shovel, that Duchamp recontextualized as art objects.

Although many first-string pieces are missing, it's not for lack of trying. Corn points out that this time period of art "has gotten hot," and that museums are competing to borrow and exhibit the best-known works.

Furthermore, many museums have recently frozen their lending programs as they concentrate on their own projects. As Corn and McDonnell sought to borrow some of these major works, Corn realized that "no amount of cajoling or hand-holding was going to liberate them."

But many of the works on view are excellent examples of modernism in their own right. Viktor Schreckengost's "The Jazz Bowl" is a large, brilliant-blue ceramic bowl that is decorated to evoke a night out on the town. Musical notes, cocktail glasses and skyscrapers dance across the curved surfaces, creating a vivid impression of modern life in New York City. Max Weber's painting "New York" captures the dynamism of the city through its fragmented forms, vertical lines and swirling shapes.

Other artists were interested in capturing the flip side of this urban energy, finding a uniquely American experience in their responses to the land. As artist Marsden Hartley said, "It is our geography that makes us American." Georgia O'Keeffe's celebrated paintings of flowing natural forms take on new meanings when seen as expressions of the American spirit.

Taken as a whole, the works successfully communicate the show's premise: that this art arose out of a particular moment in time, when artists, American and European alike, were fascinated by American culture. And that focus is what makes this exhibition stand out.

Many other museum exhibitions have told the story of modern art in America — usually offering accounts of how Americans followed the avant-garde styles coming out of Europe. That approach may be accurate, but it's incomplete. "The Great American Thing" exhibition shows how artists used those recent, daring styles to communicate what they called "Americanness."

While art exhibitions often avoid including objects from popular culture to keep the focus on the "high art," the Tacoma show deliberately includes products and ephemera of the times that help communicate this Americanness. A safety razor, digital clock and typewriter (new-fangled things at the time), brochures for transatlantic ship voyages, and film and audio clips encourage us to see and hear what was so fascinating to these artists.

This curatorial approach is effective and engaging. Images, text, products and works of art accumulate to portray a dynamic time when artists were determined to explore and express the Great American Thing.