'Mark George Tobey' (
December 11,
1890 –
April 24,
1976) was an
American Abstract Expressionism Painter, born in
Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the others. Friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Along with
Guy Anderson,
Kenneth Callahan,
Morris Graves, and
William Cumming, Tobey was a founder of the
Northwest School.
[1]
Early years
Tobey was the youngest of four children born to George Tobey, a carpenter and house builder, and Emma Cleveland Tobey -- his mother was over 40 when Tobey was born. The Tobeys were devout
Congregationalists. Tobey's father carved animals of red stone and sometimes drew animals for the young Tobey to cut out with scissors. In
1893, his family settled in
Chicago.
[2] As a youth, Tobey studied art for a brief period at the
Art Institute of Chicago from
1906 to
1908, but like the others of the Northwest School, Tobey was mostly self-taught.
In
1911, he moved to
New York where he worked as a fashion illustrator for
McCall's magazine and made some money as a portraitist. His first one-man show was held at M. Knoedler & Co., New York, in
1917.
In the following years, Tobey delved into works of Arabian literature and teachings of East Asian philosophy with the consequence that he joined the
Baha’i Faith in
1918, which led him to explore the representation of the spiritual in art.
[3]
Career
Early years
Tobey's arrival in
Seattle in
1922 was partly an effort for a new start following his short marriage and divorce. When the ex-wife found's Tobey's address, she sent him a box of his clothes topped with a copy of
Rudyard Kipling's ‘’The Light That Failed’’.
[4]
In
1923, Tobey met
Teng Kuei, a Chinese painter and student at the
University of Washington, who introduced Tobey to Eastern penmanship, beginning Tobey’s exploration of Chinese calligraphy.
Tobey went to
Europe in
1925, beginning his lifelong travels. He settled in
Paris and met
Gertrude Stein.
[4] His travels took him to
Château dun, where he spent one winter, and to
Barcelona and
Greece. In
Constantinople,
Beirut and
Haifa, he studied Arab and Persian writing.
When Tobey returned to Seattle in
1927, he shared a studio in the ballroom of a house near the Cornish School with the teenaged artist
Robert Bruce Inverarity, who was 20 years Tobey's junior. From a high school project of Inverarity's, Tobey became sufficiently interested in three-dimensional form to carve some 100 pieces of soap sculpture.
In
1928, Tobey co-founded the
Free and Creative Art School in Seattle.
In
1929, Tobey was a juror for the
Northwest Annual Exhibition. That year, he had the show that marked a change in his life: a solo exhibition at
Romany Marie's Cafe Gallery in New York.
Alfred Barr. Jr., then a curator at the
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), saw the show and selected several pictures from it for inclusion in MoMA's Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans exhibition, which opened in
1930.
In
1931, Tobey sailed on the
Britannia to England, to teach at Dartington Hall, in
Devon. There, he was resident artist of the ‘’Elmhurst Progressive School.’’ In addition to teaching, he painted frescoes for the school. He became a close friend of noted potter
Bernard Leach, who was also on the faculty. Introduced by Tobey to Baha'i, Leach also became a convert. Tobey's travels during this period included
Mexico (1931), Europe, and
Palestine (1932).
In
1934, Tobey and Leach traveled together through France and Italy, then sailed from Naples to Hong Kong and Shanghai, where they parted company. Leach went on to Japan, while Tobey remained to visit Teng Kuei, his old friend from Seattle, before going on to Japan. Japanese authorities confiscated and destroyed an edition of 31 drawings on wet paper that Tobey had brought with him from England to be published in Japan. No explanation for their destruction has been recorded; possibly they considered his sketches of nude men pornographic. Only a few sets remain in existence. Tobey spent late June and early July in a Zen monastery outside Kyoto to study
Hai-Ku poetry and calligraphy before returning to Seattle that autumn. The significance of Tobey’s Baha’i Faith in relation to his art is something that Tobey himself acknowledged on many occasions, including in 1934 when he wrote:
::"The root of all religions, from the Baha’i point of view, is based on the theory that man will gradually come to understand the unity of the world and the oneness of mankind. It teaches that all the prophets are one - that science and religion are the two great powers which must be balanced if man is to become mature. I feel my work has been influenced by these beliefs. I've tried to decentralize and interpenetrate so that all parts of a painting are of related value... Mine are the Orient, the Occident, science, religion, cities, space, and writing a picture."
Mid-career
In
1935, Tobey held his first solo exhibition at the
Seattle Art Museum. He yo-yoed from New York to Washington, D.C. to Alberta, Canada, back to England, and to Haifa to visit the principal shrine of Baha'i. Sometime in November or December, at Dartington Hall, working at night, listening to the horses breathe in the field outside his window, he painted a series of three paintings, ’’Broadway’’, ‘’Welcome Hero’’, and ‘’Broadway Norm’’, in the style that would come to be known as "white writing" (an interlacing of fine white lines).
Tobey expected to continue teaching in England in
1938, but the mounting tensions of war building in Europe kept him in the United States. Instead, he began to work on the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, under the supervision of Robert Inverarity, the young friend he met 11 years before.
In
June 1939, Tobey attended a Baha'i summer school and overstayed his allotted vacation time. Inverarity dropped him from the WPA project. Fortunately, paintings he had done on the project were included in a WPA exhibition that August, where they were seen by
Marian Willard, who operated an art gallery in New York.
The
Arts Club of Chicago held solo shows of Tobey’s work in
1940 and
1946. By
1942, Tobey's process of
abstractionism was accompanied by a new calligraphic experiment.
In
1944, Tobey’s show at the
Willard Gallery, New York brought him success, the catalogue prefaced by
Sidney Janis. In
1945, Tobey gave a solo exhibition at the
Portland Museum of Art,
Oregon.
Tobey studied the piano and the theory of music with
Lockrem Johnson, and, when Johnson was away, with
Wesley Wehr in
1949 introduced to Tobey by their pianist friend
Berthe Poncy Jacobson. Wehr was just an undergraduate at the time, but he accepted the opportunity to serve as a stand-in music composition tutor for Tobey and over time became friends with Tobey and Tobey’s circle of artists, becoming a painter himself, as well as a chronicler of the group.
1951 was a busy year. Tobey showed at the
Whitney Museum of New York; on the invitation of
Joseph Albers, Tobey spent three months as guest critic of graduate art-students’ work at
Yale University; and Tobey’s first retrospective was held at the palace of the
Legion of Honor in
San Francisco.
In
1952, the film “Tobey Mark: Artist†debuted in the Venice and Edinburgh film festivals. In
1955, Tobey traveled to Paris and presented a solo show at the
Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris; then traveled to
Basle and
Bern.
In
1956, Tobey returned to Seattle, was elected at the
National Institute of Arts and Letters, and received the
Guggenheim International Award.
In
1957, he began his
Sumi ink paintings.
He became the first American since
James McNeill Whistler to win the Painting Prize at the
Venice Biennale, an award he won in
1959.
Later years
The artist settled in Basel, Switzerland in
1960, and in September took part in
Vienna’s Congress of the International Association of the Visual Arts on the topic “The East - Occidentâ€.
In
1961, Tobey won first prize at the
Carnegie International,
Pittsburgh; and became the first American painter ever to exhibit at the
Louvre's Pavillon de Marsan in Paris.
Solo presentations of Tobey’s work were held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in
1962, and at the
Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam in
1966. In the same year, Tobey traveled to the Baha'i world center in
Haifa, then visited the
Prado in
Madrid.
In
1967, Tobey shows at the
Willard Gallery, New York.
In
1968, Tobey receives the distinction of "Commander, Arts and the Letters of the French Government". In the same year, he had a Retrospective show at the
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. In
1969, Tobey painted a mural fresco for the national
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C..
Another major retrospective of the artist’s work took place at the National Collection of Fine Arts, a part of the
Smithsonian, in
Washington, D.C. in
1974.
Tobey would have liked to remarry, but he didn't. He lived for 25 years with
Pehr Hallsten, in Seattle and Basel. Hallsten died in Basel in 1965, while Tobey died there on
April 24,
1976.
[6]
Posthumous individual exhibitions
★ National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1984
★
Museum Folkwang, Essen, 1989
★
Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1990
★ Spain's prestigious
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofÃa, from 11 November 1997 to 12 January 1998. The exhibition brought together about 130 works from some 56 different collections, covering the years from 1924 to 1975.
Permanent collections
At least 5 of his works are in the permanent collections of the
Museum of Northwest Art.
[7] Tobey's work can be found in most major museums in the
U.S. and internationally, including the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, the
Tate Gallery in
London, the
Museum of Modern Art in
New York, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the
Whitney Museum of American Art.
Influence on other artists
★
Helmi Juvonen, another Northwest School artist, was obsessed with Tobey. She was diagnosed as a manic depressive, and suffered the delusion that she and Tobey were man and wife, a point of misinformation which she shared with almost anyone.
★ Tobey's romantic friend
Elizabeth Bayley Willis showed Tobey's painting ''Bars and Flails'' to
Jackson Pollock in 1944. Pollock studied the painting closely and then painted ''Blue Poles'', a painting that made history when the Australian government bought it for $2 million. Pollock's biographers write: "...[Tobey's] dense web of white strokes, as elegant as Oriental calligraphy, impressed Jackson so much that in a letter to
Louis Bunce he described Tobey, a West Coast artist, as an 'exception' to the rule that New York was 'the only real place in America where painting (in the real sense) can come thru'" (Jackson Pollock).
[8] Jackson Pollock went to all of Mark Tobey's Willard Gallery shows in New York. Here, Tobey presented small to medium sized canvases, approximately 33 by 45 inches. Jackson Pollock would see them and go home and blow them up to twelve by nine feet, pouring paint onto the canvas instead of brushing it on. Pollock was never really concerned with diffused light. But he was very interested in Tobey's idea of covering the entire canvas with marks up to and including its edges. This had never been done before in American art.
[9]
Style
Tobey is most famous for his creation of so-called "white writing" - an overlay of white or light-colored calligraphic symbols on an abstract field which is often itself composed of thousands of small and interwoven brush strokes. This method, in turn, gave rise to the type of "all-over" painting style made most famous by
Jackson Pollock, another American painter to whom Tobey is often compared.
[1]
Tobey’s work is also defined as creating a vibratory space with the multiple degrees of mobility obtained by the
Brownian movement of a light brush on a bottom with the dense tonalities. The series of “Broadway†realized at that time has a historical value of reference today. It precedes a new dimension of the pictorial vision, that of contemplation in the action.
His work is inspired by a personal belief system that suggests Oriental influences and reference to Tobey's involvement in the
Baha’i Faith. Four of Tobey's signed lithographs hang in the reception hall in the
Seat of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing institution of the Baha’i Faith.
Quotes
★ Looking at Willis's collection of ethnic textiles, Tobey said:
★ Speaking of the trip to China and Japan that preceded his breakthrough:
[2]
★ One of Tobey’s students in Seattle was
Windsor Utley, who maintained a friendship with Tobey throughout the 1950s. Tobey wrote to Utley:
[3]
★
★
★
[4]
Books
★ Tobey, M. (1949).
Mark Tobey. New York: Willard Gallery.
★ Tobey, M., & Thomas, E. B. (1959).
Mark Tobey: a retrospective exhibition from Northwest collections : Seattle Art Museum, September 11 through November 1, 1959 : catalog. Seattle: The Museum.
★ Restany, P., & Tobey, M. (1961).
Mark Tobey; pragmatism in calligraphy. Paris: Cimaise.
★ Tobey, M. (1964).
Tobey. New York: Abrams.
★ Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, & Tobey, M. (1975).
Mark Tobey in Victoria. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, no. 2. Victoria, B.C.: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
★ Tobey, M. (1981).
Northwest visionaries: Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, Leo Kenney. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art.
★ Yao, M.-C., & Tobey, M. (1983).
The influence of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy on Mark Tobey (1890-1976). Asian library series, no. 23. [San Francisco]: Chinese Materials Center.
★ Tobey, M., & Dahl, A. L. (1984).
Mark Tobey, art and belief. Oxford: G. Ronald.
★ Tobey, M. (1984).
Mark Tobey prints. San Francisco, Calif: The Association.
★ Tobey, M., Fryberger, B. G., Cummings, P., & Kays, J. S. (1990).
Mark Tobey, works on paper: from Northern California and Seattle collections, celebrating the centenary of the artist's birth, November 6-December 23, 1990, Stanford University Museum of Art. Stanford, CA: The Museum.
★ Tobey, M. (1998).
Closeness of distance: Khmer sculptures and Mark Tobey paintings. Milano: Emil Mirzakhanian.
Further reading
★ Contemporary Arts Museum, & Gonzalez, L. (1956).
Contemporary calligraphers: John Marin, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves.
★ Roberts, C. (1960).
Mark Tobey. New York: Grove Press.
★ Choay, F. (1961).
Mark Tobey. [Paris]: F. Hazan.
★ Seitz, W. C. (1962).
Mark Tobey. New York: Museum of Modern Art; distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.
★ Tacoma Art Museum. (1972).
Mark Tobey.
★ Cincinnati Art Museum. (1972).
Mark Tobey: a decade of printmaking.
★ Denker, D. H. (1973).
The analysis of calligraphic movement as discovered through a study of primary and secondary shape patterns as suggested in the styles of Mark Tobey and Jackson Pollock. Thesis {M.S.)--Central Missouri State University, 1973.
★ Rathbone, E. E. (1984).
Mark Tobey, city paintings. Washington: National Gallery of Art.
★ Clure, M. M. (1985).
Mark Tobey: Sumi paintings. Thesis (B.A.)--Whitman college, April, 1985.
★ Herzogenrath, W., & Kreul, A. (2002).
Sounds of the inner eye: John Cage, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves. Tacoma, Wash: Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art.
★ Conkelton, S., & Landau, L. (2003).
Northwest mythologies: the interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. Seattle, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma in association with University of Washington Press.
★ Marika Herskovic,
''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
See also
★
/ Mark Tobey, photos
★
/ Mark Tobey Abroad, film
References
1. http://www.museumofnwart.org/collection/nwartists_detail.html?id=28 retrieved 2007-07-08
2. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.jeanne-bucher.com/galerie/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D36%26Itemid%3D38&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522free%2Band%2Bcreative%2Bart%2Bschool%2522%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GFRC_enUS207US208 retrieved 2007-07-08
3. http://www.mark-tobey.com/ retrieved 2007-07-08
4. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5217 retrieved 2007-07-08
5. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5217 retrieved 2007-07-08
6. Wehr, W. (2000). ''The eighth lively art: conversations with painters, poets, musicians & the wicked witch of the west.'' Seattle: University of Washington Press, pg. 45-55.
7. Museum of Northwest Art
8.
9. Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art
External link
★
Encyclopedia Britannica, Mark Tobey]
★
One Country review: "Mine are the Orient, the Occident, science, religion, cities, space, and writing a picture."
★ [
Galerie Jeanne Bucher]
★
Guggenheim Museum, Mark Tobey]
★
Mark Tobey’s paintings in museums and public art galleries]
★
Review: "Mine are the Orient, the Occident, science, religion, cities, space, and writing a picture."]
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