FAIRFIELD PORTER: THE BEGINNING OF THE FIELDS by Joan K. Yanni

FAIRFIELD PORTER: THE BEGINNING OF THE FIELDS

by Joan K. Yanni

Fairfield Porter’s The Beginning of the Fields (86.132), is one of many landscapes in MAG's permanent collection which can be used in conjunction with the current exhibition. It is an interesting work, and a somewhat puzzling one.

The painting is obviously a landscape: a clear, open scene with sky, trees, a house, street signs and a road.  Yet the road begins and ends suddenly—where does it go?  The amazing sky is peach, thickly painted in some areas, thinner in others, but always dominating the canvas. Looking carefully, we can see that the sky was painted after the trees; the peach brush strokes outline the green shapes. And, unlike landscapes painted by members of the Hudson River School, the scene is abstract rather than detailed, and the branches of the large tree on the right jut into the painting rather than frame it.

The road and puddle are salmon colored—just dark enough in color to separate them from the sky. And the pale blue paint becomes radiant as it outlines the sun (or daytime moon) and the street signs, affirming Josef Albers' theory that color seems to change in relation to the hue and intensity of the color adjacent to it. Despite its cheerful colors, the painting has a sense of loneliness and ambiguity.

Fairfield Porter was born in Winnetka, Illinois, in 1907. Never in need of money, he was the son of architect James Porter, and a graduate of Harvard, where he majored in fine arts. After graduation he studied painting and mural art at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton. But the style that eventually evolved in his work was largely self- taught through looking and experimentation. He has said that his intent in painting was "getting it down," copying what he saw in nature rather than adding details to create a more desirable composition.

Porter traveled extensively, especially in Europe, between 1927 and 1932, admiring and learning from the Old Masters.  He particularly liked Velazquez because the Spanish master painted reality, things as they really were.  Porter was also influenced by an exhibit of the works of Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard held in 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Their sense of color and organization of space influenced his work throughout the ‘40s.

In 1949 Porter and his family relocated to Southampton, Long Island, and his paintings from then on were of his Southampton surroundings or the coast of Maine, where he and his family vacationed.

His subjects reflect his comfortable world of sturdy houses, cozy interiors and healthy family.  He painted those things that surrounded him—his house, studio, his wife and his children. He once noted that there is enough material in everyday life to keep a painter busy forever.

In 1951 and during the rest of the '50s his reputation was made as a critic rather then a painter. As associate editor for ARTnews and frequent contributor to other periodicals, he was a widely published and well-respected art critic. In 1959 he wrote a biography of Thomas Eakins. His writing, which required thinking about and analyzing art, may have prompted him to paint with a new imagination and clarity, but it did not change his interest in realism. Gradually, however, his subjects became less important than the paint itself.

It is remarkable that Porter's style did not change, considering the ever-moving art world in which he worked. In the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was the dominant theme in American painting, expressed by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.  Within a decade, Andy Warhol and other Pop artists, with their emphasis on popular imagery and mass production, captured the spotlight. Op Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism—none of these movements lured Porter, and his independent means permitted him to paint in any way he wished.

He was a friend of de Kooning—and it has been noted that neither man ever gave up painting the figure—though the figures of de Kooning were far different from those of Porter!  Proof of his awareness of the art around him can be seen in the few things he took from Abstract Expressionism: a shallow pictorial space with flat color areas, as in The Beginning of the Fields, and objects which, on close inspection, become strokes and dabs of paint. His double portrait of Andy Warhol and Ted Carey also shows that he knew other artists of his day.

Porter remains something of a paradox in the art scene. He is both a realist and an abstractionist. He uses his family and familiar landscapes to experiment with paint, for paint was his passion. He lived through countless movements in art but remained a representational artist. When he died in 1975, his works were given to the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, an area that he loved.

Source: Curatorial files, reviews of the exhibit Fairfield Porter: An American Painter.