If a Tree Falls in a Painting...
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Freud may have been right in saying “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” but I know of at least two landscape paintings in which a tree really isn’t just a tree.
First, the chopped down trees in the foreground of Thomas Cole’s 1845 painting The Hunter’s Return serve as a warning that the expansion of civilization leads to the loss of nature’s untouched beauty. The presence of the trees also suggests that settlers should make every attempt to find and maintain a careful balance in dealing with nature. To reinforce this point, Cole even signs his name in one of the logs.
Second, in Marsden Hartley’s 1923 painting, New Mexico Recollection No. 13, currently on view in the special exhibition, Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism, the severed trees hint at the artist’s own feelings of grief and sadness. The cleanly felled tree on the left is cut from the ground at its base and is marked with the initial “K,” which is likely a reference to Hartley’s close friend, Karl von Freyburg, a German officer, who had died in battle in 1914. The tree on the right, though cut at midpoint, shows signs of life and could represent Hartley himself portraying his grief over the loss of von Freyburg.
“Symbolism,” Hartley wrote in 1921, “can never quite be evaded in any work of art because every form and movement that we make symbolizes a condition in ourselves.”
Do you agree?
Comments
Hector. She could have written lover. She wrote close friend. Big deal. That’s not homophobia. You want homophobia, listen to rightwing talk radio or go to church. K was a close friend, and anyway, the point of the post is metaphoric meaning, painting to trees to the heart. Let’s save the big guns and bad names for real targets, Ok? Regina
Yes. Big deal. The love that dare not speak its name = homophobia. Fear. It’s powerful.
Hector, yes, you are right! Regina, no you are wrong! It is a big deal. Changing anything, and certainly changing people’s opinions and feelings about gays/lover/partner/homophobia must start with even the smallest step, such as acknowledging and recognizing that k. von freyburg was MH’s lover and not just his close friend.
Rick
K may be named a dead tree at the bottom of the painting, but it looks to me as though the human figure Hartley brushed into the cloud suggests that K is now in heaven. No?
This is a fascinating development! My interest in exploring the idea of symbolism in visual images has turned in to a discussion of hidden meanings or intentions in my choice of words. On a personal note, I refer to my husband as my Buddee–so calling one’s lover a close friend isn’t too far off for me. My choice of words was somewhat telling of my own views indeed.
Please continue the conversation.
Wonderful painting and glimpse into its many surfaces. I’m afraid I agree that the delicate “close friend” seems more appropriate for the twenties than now. Perhaps if homophobia weren’t so alive and well we could all be good buddies with our lovers. Thanks to the comments, now I know they were “more than friends” which changes the painting yet again for me.
I agree, David. And the plain suggestion of “bodies” lying atop one another in the landscape merge sexual intercourse with war-time death.
“K” is likely a reference to Hartley’s “close friend,” Karl von Freyburg?
No. “K” is likely a reference to Hartley’s lover, Karl von Freyburg, who had to be memorialized symbolically because of the intense homophobia of the period.
Homophobia that is apparently alive and well in Fort Worth even today, alas.
— Hector, July 17, 2008, 6:29 p.m.