The View From Here:
Dorothy Hood’s Paintings at Ogden
Last month, Artemis II successfully completed a lunar fly-by. I felt conflicted about this: Should we Americans be flitting around in space when we are currently causing so much grief on Earth? On the other hand, sometimes it’s beneficial to see a thing—a planet or a painting—from a distance. As astronaut Reid Wiseman said at the Post-Mission Presentation, “It’s a special thing to be a human, and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.” I’ve had this exact thought, phrased almost identically, when I visit a museum. When I entered the fifth-floor gallery at the Ogden and saw Dorothy Hood’s large abstract oil paintings, the space mission was on my mind. The paintings are part of the current exhibition Vicinal Visions: Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer & Dorothy Hood.
The exhibition includes the work of three Southern Abstract Expressionist artists from the last century. Dusti Bongé, born in 1903, earned notoriety in New York while living in Mississippi. In 1956 Ida Kohlmeyer received her MFA from Newcomb College in New Orleans at the age of 40—then studied with the painter Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Dorothy Hood was born in 1918, raised in Houston, studied at Rhode Island School of Design, and spent time in New York. She lived in Mexico for many years before returning to Texas. It’s a strong show and Dorothy Hood’s paintings stand out. I’ve never seen paintings like them.
Pure Abstraction or non-objective art is the breakdown of something nameable—a thing or image—into color, form, or other nonpictorial, non-narrative elements. But sometimes the distinction between representation and abstraction is murky. At a glance, Dorothy Hood’s paintings seem non-objective. Then, they seem to reveal suggestions of landscape or topographies.
There are clues in the titles. Only one is Untitled, an approach popular with non-objective painters who steer the focus to the formal elements. Illuminated Earth suggests something terrestrial, but also something possibly ethereal.
Illuminated Earth is one of four large paintings by Hood. The title supports the impression that her paintings do suggest aerial views without directly depicting them, and with elements—forms, colors, or textures—contradicting the illusion. The wall label included this quote: “Through the missions in space, my consciousness has been further enlarged by another way that our land has been viewed. Looking at our piece of territory, as though from the Landsat views of the earth, divided into spaces, shapes and colors, I see a similarity to my own work, as though in painting I am viewing Texas from that distance…”
In her words we see the oscillation between the physical and the immaterial, space and consciousness on one end, the Earth, the territory on the other. To the casual observer, Abstract Expressionism may seem like an anything-goes kind of activity. But influential art critic and mansplainer of abstract painting Clement Greenberg pushed for the total annihilation of the illusion of depth. Many abstract painters in the 1950s and beyond followed his declarations that the subject of paintings ought to be the paint itself, that we should do away with illusion. Dorothy Hood did her own thing. Her paintings, while highly abstract, do not fetishize paint and do not obey Greenbergian or other “shoulds.” Hood was reportedly secretive about her techniques. By deploying illusion without straight representation, her paintings carve out a space for contemplating the dichotomy between matter and the absence of matter which she referred to as the Void. On the wall label for Morning Sea was a quote from the artist: “The Void is the end place of all correspondence in the mind, wherein function multiple mirrors and switchboards, revealers of their own inviolable truth on a level usually made inaccessible by dogma and delusion. In the end, within the Void, is true memory.”
Negative space in art has the visual function of setting something apart to elevate its importance. Astronaut Christina Koch (at the same post-Artemis II press conference) said, “Honestly, what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth, it was all the blackness around it.”
Standing in front of a large vertical abstract painting, we can become aware of the painting on the wall as something that rhymes with our own form. A body in space. A thing in a void. We are a form confronting a form. And for me, all the art-historical rhetoric aside, this is the power in Hood’s paintings.
There are some goofy things about the show, including the title. “Vicinal” is irritatingly academic and museumy. The text on the website states, “Vicinal Visions presents the works of Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer and Dorothy Hood… highlighting three visionary women who helped expand the boundaries of abstraction in the American South.” I’d prefer “three visionary artists,” and not make it about gender at this point. But these are small complaints. This exhibition is a nourishing experience even if abstract paintings are not your jam.
Abstraction of the mid to late 20th century was often performed with grand and obvious gestures resulting in paintings that don’t always encourage close scrutiny. Dorothy Hood’s paintings are impressive from across the room but also reward intimate study. Like astronauts looking at Earth glowing in the void of space, the experience of standing in a museum in front of a painting is a miracle, or at least a mystery of colliding dust and asteroids. Remembering that now and then keeps things in perspective.
Vicinal Visions: Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer & Dorothy Hood runs through July 19 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. For more info, check out ogdenmuseum.org.
Top photo by Emily Farranto: Dorothy Hood, Illuminated Earth (1970), oil on canvas
