104. Abraham Walkowitz Isadora Duncan Drawings


Abraham Walkowitz Isadora Duncan Drawings
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In 1927, Isadora Duncan echoed the lines of Walt Whitman in her essay I See
America Dancing, writing, " When I read this poem of Whitman's I Hear America
Singing I, too, had a Vision: the Vision of America dancing a dance that would be
the worthy expression of the song Walt heard when heard America singing. " [4]
Duncan was the quintessence of modernism, shedding the rigid shackles of the
balletic form and exploring movement through a combination of classical sculpture
and her own inner sources. She described this search: " I spent long days and
nights in the studio seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of
the human spirit through the body's movement. " [5] For Duncan, dance was a
distinctly personal expression of beauty through movement, and she maintained
that the ability to produce such movement was inherently contained within the
body.

Abraham Walkowitz was one of many artists captivated by this new form of
movement. The Duncan drawings can be interpreted as representations of
Walkowitz's loftiest goals. Composing thousands of these drawings would prove to
be one of the most effective outlets for his artistic agenda due to the
similarities between the artistic ideals and preferred aesthetic shared by
Walkowitz and Duncan. He was also able to draw from the same subject repeatedly
and extract a different experience with each observation. Sculptors most readily
recognized this trait in Duncan; there was a particular quality of her dance
which appeared readily artistic, yet not static. Dance critic Walter Terry
described it in 1963 as, " Although her dance inarguably sprang from her inner
sources and resources of motor power and emotional drive, the overt aspects of
her dance were clearly colored by Greek art and the sculptor's concept of the
body in arrested gesture promising further action. These influences may be seen
clearly in photographs of her and in the art works she inspired. " [6]

In each drawing, a new observation is recorded from the same subject. In the
Foreword to A Demonstration of Objective, Abstract, and Non-Objective Art,
Walkowitz wrote in 1913, " I do not avoid objectivity nor seek subjectivity, but
try to find an equivalent for whatever is the effect of my relation to a thing,
or to a part of a thing, or to an afterthought of it. I am seeking to attune my
art to what I feel to be the keynote of an experience. " [7] The relaxed fluidity
of his action drawings represent Duncan as subject, but ultimately reconceive the
unbound movement of her dance and translates the ideas into line and shape,
ending with a completely new composition.

His interest in recording the "keynote" of experience rather than producing an
objective representation of a subject is central to the composition of the Duncan
drawings. The fluidity of the lines function simultaneously as recognizable
shapes of the human body, but also trace the pathways of the dancer's movements.
Duncan herself wrote in 1920, "... there are those who convert the body into a
luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul. " [8] Placed
into a different context, this passage could function as a description of
Walkowitz's art; it is in fact taken from her essay The Philosopher's Stone of
Dancing wherein she discusses techniques to most effectively express the purest
form of movement.

Walkowitz's dedication to Duncan as a subject extended well past her untimely
death in 1927. His body of work is a testament to Duncan's art and their shared
convictions toward modernism and the liberty to express oneself in a personal,
spiritual fashion, breaking links with the past which demanded technical
standards and formal convention. In 1958, Walkowitz told Lerner, " She Duncan had
no laws. She did not dance according to the rules. She created. Her body was
music. It was a body electric, like Walt Whitman. His body electrics. One of our
greatest men, America's greatest, is Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass is to me the
Bible. " [9]

Significance in Art History

While never attaining the same level of fame as his contemporaries, the
significance of Walkowitz ' work has been re-visited by art historians in recent
years, with exhibitions cropping up at institutions such as The Neuberger Museum
of Art, The Zabriskie Gallery, and other university galleries. Most notable were
his early abstract cityscapes and the collection of over 5,000 drawings of
Isadora Duncan which he produced over the course of his life.

Notes
^ Lerner, Abram, and Bartlett Cowdrey. " Oral History Interview With Abraham
Walkowitz. " 8 Dec. And 22 Dec. 1958. Smithsonian Archives of American Art,
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/walkow58.htm
^ Alfred Werner, " Abraham Walkowitz Rediscovered, " American Artist (August
1979): 54-59, 82-83.
^ Oscar Bluemner, " Walkowitz, " 1933, reprinted in A Demonstration of Objective,
Abstract, and Non-Objective Art, 4.
^ Sheldon Cheney, The Art of the Dance: Isadora Duncan, (New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1969), 47.
^ Isadora Duncan, My Life (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1927), 75.
^ Walter Terry, Isadora Duncan: Her Life, Her Art, Her Legacy (New York: Dodd,
Mead and Company, 1963), 115.
^ Abraham Walkowitz, " Foreword, " 1913, reprinted in A Demonstration of
Objective, Abstract, and Non-Objective Art, 2.
^ Sheldon Cheney, The Art of the Dance: Isadora Duncan, (New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1969), 47.
^ "Oral History Interview."

Bibliography

A Demonstration of Objective, Abstract and Non-Objective Art. Girard, Kansas:
Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1945.
Isadora Duncan in Her Dances. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1945.

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