Shades of gray

Edwin Dickinson, a painter of many opposites, is being featured in a major retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The show firmly establishes him as a significant modern painter, whose influence on the New York artists of abstract expressionism can be seen in works he labored on for years and those he completed in less than a day.

"Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities" comprises some 94 pieces by this largely unknown artist who was nonetheless acclaimed as a "painter’s painter," and whose career spanned the turn of the century through his death in 1978. Dickinson’s work is associated mostly with Cape Cod, western and central New York, and classical imaginative ruins where form and environment merged in mysterious shades of black, white and gray.

Like his friend and contemporary Willem de Kooning, Dickinson often painted and scraped, repainted, rescraped and then did it all over again just to get it right. However, he also worked in an open-air technique called premier coups, meaning spontaneously executed paintings finished in a matter of hours.

Many of Dickinson’s more intricate paintings show complex perspective and layering of subjects, much like the cinematic technique of "stacking" characters to get many encased in a small area. Indeed, Dickinson was an avid moviegoer and a great fan of the black-and-white silent films whose luminescence of pearly grays must have pleased him.

Most of Dickinson’s major works were large-scale symbolical paintings whose nature was obscure and whose precise meanings are never quite revealed to the viewer. Students of Dickinson have divined much meaning from the art drawn directly from events in his life; however, without a detailed biography, the works are forced to stand on their own. As such, they are evocative and mysterious, somewhat brooding, but saved by a humanity that is clear despite the anguish often depicted.

This can be seen most clearly in almost a dozen self-portraits included in the show. Clearly, Dickinson did not spare himself an honest view and the emotions shown are deeply felt. These "realistic" self-portraits match well with the drawing Dickinson did almost everywhere he went, and in his later years he traveled frequently to Europe and Greece. The drawings are the work of an extraordinary draftsman demonstrating vividly that his other creations were as equally deliberate.

Some knowledge of Dickinson’s history is helpful in appreciating his work. He was born the son of a Presbyterian minister in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1891. He was the youngest of three boys and a girl. Throughout his life, Dickinson remained close and emotionally involved with his family, despite the untimely death of his mother and the suicide of his next-oldest brother, Burgess. He failed in two attempts to pass the math examinations for the United States Naval Academy and subsequently served as a sailor during World War I.

One of Dickinson’s most notable paintings, Ruins at Daphne, was completed over a 10-year period. It is one of his mystic works, with dreamlike views of a juxtaposition of imaginary Greek ruins. It is emotional and intense, but in the end, vague as if Dickinson was pouring himself into the art but unwilling to make it easy for the viewer.

To take a look at the kind of artist who would spend so much time on a work and yet withhold his own feelings from view, one needs only to look at the splendid collection of self-portraits. The 1954 self-portrait shows an intensity, a resolve and a self-reliance that surely must be an authentic recreation of the man.

The Academy also has staged two other complementary shows to support the main Dickinson exhibition. One is "Imaginative Affinities: Echoes of Edwin Dickinson in Contemporary American Painting." This show was curated by Scott Neal, and is comprised of such artists as George Nick, Lennart Anderson, James McGarrell and Sidney Goodman. The exhibit shows how the influence of Dickinson spreads and changes. All of the work comes from the Academy’s permanent collection.

The second show, "Dickinson to Amenoff: American Artists on Cape Cod," was also assembled mostly from the Academy’s permanent collection, with some loans from private collections. This show, curated by Bill Scott, "explores the fascination artists such as Dickinson has with Cape Cod." It features Gregory Amenoff, Milton Avery, Robert DeNiro Sr., Red Grooms, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko.

Edwin Dickinson: Dreams and Realities
Through Jan. 12 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry streets
215-972-7600
Museum admission: $5 adults, $4 seniors and students, $3 ages 5-18, free for children under 5. Sundays are free 3-5 p.m.