Step back in time with Grandma Moses

[Private collection; ©2001 Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York] The Quilting Bee, 1950, oil on pressed wood, 20 by 24 inches.

By MARY ANN MARGER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 7, 2001

Join a quilting bee, immerse yourself in details of farm like. This untrained artist diffuses shades of basic Americana through the perspective that a century of simple living provides.

ORLANDO -- In these worst of times, a show of works by Grandma Moses recalls the best of times, through the values, the simplicity and the childlike images of the nation's best-known self-taught artist. Charming and nostalgic, her rural landscapes are the essence of homespun Americana. If ever the good old days existed, it is here.

Gathered into a retrospective of 87 works, they remind us that Interstate 4 eastbound doesn't lead just to theme parks.

Some call Grandma Moses's work "outsider" or "naive," terms that conjure up her vivid, flat-space rural landscapes. She never learned the techniques taught in art school, such as how to translate what the eye sees into two dimensions, or to alter colors so that they recede or advance. She worked from the top down. Her figures cast no shadows.

Born Anna Mary Robertson, Grandma Moses (1860-1961) lived most of her life in upstate New York. The third of 10 children, she herself gave birth to 10 children, though five died in infancy. She outlived all the others as well.

She turned to painting at age 76 when her arthritis prevented her from doing needlework. For the next 25 years she rarely missed a day without painting, creating some 1,600 works in all.

In 1939 she exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in a show of "contemporary unknown artists." By the time the show closed, "unknown" no longer applied.

Grandma Moses, born Anna Mary Robertson, didn’t turn to art until 76, when arthritis made needlework too painful. But despite a late start, she became a prolific portrayer of the rural landscapes that surrounded her.

She painted from memory as if to record the pleasant times of long ago. When the changes and stresses of life show up in her work -- her life, after all, spanned the Civil War, two world wars and the invention of the car and plane -- they were often decorative elements. Soldiers gathered outside a checkerboard-painted house; she must have been fascinated by this structure that really did exist. A horse rears at a car in a work painted in 1944 to let new generations know how life used to be.

The Quilting Bee, 1950, recalls an all-but-forgotten activity. In a large room filled with as much detail as the quilted diamonds, she painted the odd composition of a rectangle (the quilting table) above another rectangle (a dinner table). Eight women work around the quilting frame in the background; other figures are involved with cooking, knitting and other household chores, yet there is a celebratory atmosphere in so many people getting together.

Moving Day, painted in 1951 and recalling a move by chartered railroad car in 1905, is filled with detail: every bar of the hens' cages, every board of the house, every stripe on the watermelons. We don't see the train or the piano that she says, in the text accompaniment, also was moved. "The price of the car was $60," she noted in her 1952 autobiography, My Life's History. "I think that was a pretty cheap trip."

The quote is one of many accompanying, but not elaborating on, specific paintings throughout the show.

Sometimes she relied on accounts of events before she was born. The Burning of Troy (N.Y.) in 1862 was based on a newspaper clipping; she was too young to have recalled the scene. The Battle of Bennington depicts a Revolutionary War battle in Vermont, with each small unit of soldiers in its distinct uniform occupying a delineated space. On a hilltop is a similar grouping of sheep, but Grandma Moses wasn't sophisticated enough to be using them as a political statement. Protruding from the land is an anachronism: the monument to the battle depicted. She was no stickler for accuracy.

That's where her charm lies, in the innocence of not knowing too much.

Hoosick Valley (From the Window) is the scene from her bedroom and may have been the rare work painted on location. Its lacy curtains fold delicately into the total picture. While most of the time she tried to remember nature's different shades of green, here she would have been able to paint as she observed.

Her style shows subtle changes over the years. Two needleworked landscapes, evenly stitched, begin the show. As she grew older, her colors were more blended and her images less abstract. Old Times, done in 1957, shows how much she learned about form and color, but not visual perspective.

In another sense, her perspective is a tonic for our times. Her last work, Rainbow (1961), is accompanied by these words: "I look back on my life like a good day's work. ... I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered."

Itinerary: "Grandma Moses in the 21st Century," at its third venue in Orlando, continues to the Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, Ala., Dec. 1 through Jan. 27; the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Feb. 23 through April 20; the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, May 11 through July 28; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Ore., Aug. 17 through Dec. 1, 2002.

GRANDMA MOSES IN THE 21st CENTURY

"Grandma Moses in the 21st Century," Orlando Museum of Art, 2416 N Mills Ave., Orlando Loch Haven Park. Through Nov. 11, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission: $6 adults; discounts for others. Audio guides, $2.

Information: (407) 896-4231; Web site www.omart.org.

Directions: From I-4, take Princeton Street exit 43 east to Mills Avenue. Turn left onto Mills and left again onto Rollins Street. Parking is on the left.

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