TRANSCRIPT: When I first saw this artist’s work I remember thinking what is this and what’s it doing in a museum? At the same time I was drawn in by its vibrant palette, faux-naif style and story-like composition. Hailed as quote, “one of the most innovative and important artists of the 20th century,” by biographer Barbara Bloemink, I realized I needed to know more.
American painter, stage designer, poet and Salon host Florine Stettheimer was born into great wealth in 1871, the 4th of five children, in Rochester NY. When she was 7, her father abandoned the family, but her mother’s ample inheritance allowed the Stetties as she, her two sisters and mother were referred to, to live a lavish lifestyle both in the states and overseas. Early on Florine showed artistic ability and from ages 10-15 received private art instruction in Germany as well as a rigorous academic education. During museum and gallery visits she studied the old masters and, long before they were exhibited in the US, saw the work of Cézanne, Manet, van Gogh and importantly, Matisse whose flattened, raised perpective would influence her mature style.
In 1892 back in the states Florine, now 21, continued her studies at the Art Students League which followed a European-style curriculum. After four years, Stettheimer knew how to draw, of that there was no doubt, but the chasm between her early and mature work begs explanation.
A turning point came in 1912 when Stettheimer was 41. With the family once again overseas she attended a performance of “Afternoon of a Faun” staged by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Considered the first modern ballet it caused quite a stir. Inspired by Greek vase painting, dancers adopted stylized postures as if characters in a frieze. Stage lighting further emphasized the illusion of two-dimensionality. High and low culture mixed. Divisions between art, music, dance and design dissolved. Delighted and liberated Stettheimer was inspired to design her own never-produced play and later would go on to create the costumes and sets for Gertrude Stein’s avant-garde opera, Four Saints and Three Act—groundbreaking in form, content and for its all-black cast in 1934.
By 1914, the threat of war sent the family back to the states, this time for good at which point Stettheimer turned away from social realism and abstraction, the two art movements that would dominate the period between the wars. Influenced by the Ballets Russes, progressive ideas from Paris and Berlin, haute couture fashion and commercial illustration Stettheimer created a style uniquely her own. To quote art critic Max Pearl, “Because [her work] isn’t easily lumped in with the era’s major movements, it was written off as lovely but ultimately unclassifiable and therefore a blip in art history.”
With money came access and Stettheimer friends were a who’s who of Jazz Age New York. For 20 years starting in 1915 the family hosted elaborate Paris-style Salons. Gatherings that drew some of New York’s most brilliant creatives including Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Stieglitz, sculptor Gaston LaChaise, playwright Eugene O’Neill and pioneer of the Dada movement Marcel Duchamp many of whom who later showed up in her paintings.
The Stettheimer sisters were feminists to the bone who declared men impossible but worthy of flirtation. They wore pants, smoked cigarettes, disdained marriage believing it constricted freedom and interfered with creativity.
In 1916 Stettheimer had her first and last solo show at the Knoedler Gallery. Her work did not sell but given her wealth it didn’t need to. Throughout her life she exhibited in more than 46 group shows including the first Whitney Biennial. Time and again, she purposely overpriced her work preferring to keep it in her home in meticulously curated settings.
To understand the importance of Stettheimer’s style one must go beyond its apparent whimsy and consider the public and private social context of the period. While the Jewish Stettheimers enjoyed unusual privilege, they lived in a time of rampant anti-semitism so this artist had the experience of being both on the inside and out. This duality made her a keen observer of taboo subjects such as race, sexual orientation, gender and religion topics she openly and subversively rendered in her art. Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin goes on to say, quote, “Stettheimer may represent an extreme case of a familiar story in avant-garde culture: its oftentimes antagonistic relationship with the status quo that in many ways is afforded by proximity to socio-economic privilege.”
Prior to her death in 1944 Stettheimer asked that all her work be destroyed, a request her sister and executor Ettie thankfully ignored and instead bequeathed Stettheimer’s work to friends and museums including the MoMA, The Whitney, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston with the majority going to Columbia University. Stettheimer’s Cathedrals paintings, a series of four monumental works offering a composite vision of New York’s economic, social and cultural institutions reside at The Met.
I’d like to close with a poem by Stettheimer titled, Occasionally. “Occasionally, a human being saw my light. Rushed in. Got singed. Got scared. Rushed out. Called fire. Or it happened that he tried to subdue it. Or it happened that he tried to extinguish it. Never did a friend enjoy it the way it was so I learned to turn it low. Turn it out. When I meet a stranger, out of courtesy, I turn on a soft pink light which is found modest, even charming. It is protection against wear and tears. And when I am rid of the always-to-be-stranger I turn on my light and become myself.”
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