|
|
|
REVIEWS
THIS BOUNTIFUL PLACE: ART ABOUT AGRICULTURE, THE PERMANENT COLLECTION
|
edited by Shelley Curtis
|
| Oregon State University and Oregon Historical Society, Corvallis and Portland, 2006. Illustrations, photographs, bibliography, index. 241 pages. $26.00 paper. |
| This Bountiful Place is a catalog containing full-color, full-page reproductions of the almost two hundred works of art that comprise the permanent collection of the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences. Beginning in 1983, the college began hosting an annual juried exhibition, Art About Agriculture, and the collection represents jurors' purchase awards made over the years up to 2006. The idea, as Gwil Evans, one of the exhibition's founders, recalls, was to "encourage Pacific Northwest artists to seek creative stimulation from whatever the artist perceived as related to agriculture, food, or natural resources" (p. 2). The result is a body of work that focuses primarily on nature's bounty (still lifes of fruits and vegetables), landscape (dry and freshly tilled or green and lushly verdant — more or less depending on which side of the mountains is represented), livestock (a lot of sheep and cattle), and homesteads (farmhouses, barns, and attendant outbuildings). |
1
|
|
In her foreword, the catalog's editor and directing curator of the Art About Agriculture collection, Shelley Curtis, claims that "given that each artwork was produced and accessioned into the collection since 1980, aesthetics from both Modernist and Postmodernist art periods intertwine throughout" (p. vii). But there is little that qualifies as postmodern here — perhaps Yolanda Valdés-Rementeria's 1994 Familias Campesinas, which has the virtue of introducing political dimension to the collection, or Charles True's Filbert Orchard at Sunrise, a digitally-manipulated panoramic photograph. Lois Allan, who has been writing about art in the Pacific Northwest for two decades, gets closer to the truth in her catalog essay: "Art About Agriculture does not intend to challenge its viewers, as so much avant-garde work does, but rather, its purpose is to celebrate the earth's bounty and the energy, commitment, and persistence of the many workers who bring from it our life-giving sustenance" (p. 17). |
2
|
|
Perhaps in order to up the ante, Allan begins her essay by placing the Art About Agriculture paintings in a broader historical perspective by drawing analogies among the celebration of food and wine in prehistoric art — such as the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, which "depict animals that were the source of human sustenance" — Greek art and its Dionysian worship of the grape, a still life drawing of peaches discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum below Mt. Vesuvius, seventeenth-century Dutch still life painting, Van Gogh's Potato Eaters and Sunflowers, and Millet's The Sower. But because this work is so well known to art history, its appeal is almost universal. To compare it to the art in This Bountiful Place— so local in its appeal — seems something of a stretch. That said, there is, as art critic Lucy Lippard once put it, a certain lure to the local. |
3
|
|
The local is more personal, more intimate. It seems to speak directly to us, without complication. In the fabric of contradictory and plural meaning that defines our contemporary world, the local offers us something of a safe haven. It is, after all, what we know — with a measure of certainty. This Bountiful Place offers up these local comforts and pleasures. Add to this the extraordinarily rich production values that the publishers have lavished on this book — its wonderful and true color is testimony, once again, that Lynx Group printing of Salem is a truly remarkable, if largely unsung, asset to Oregon culture — and you have, all in all, a beautiful book, a joy to leaf through, page by page, something akin to a visual harvest. |
4
|
|
|
| Henry Sayre
|
| Oregon State University – Cascades Campus |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|