Neither Time Nor Space Can Separate Us

Thus wrote Robert Henri in describing the brotherhood of artists throughout time and throughout the world. This summer the North Shore Arts Association here in Gloucester will present a large and impressive exhibition titled Past & Present: Neither Time Nor Space Can Separate Us. The exhibit features over 60 works by more than 50 artists and sculptors who at one time were artist members. The names on the list are impressive indeed: John Manship, Katherine Lane Weems, Anna Hyatt Huntington, John Corbino, Henry Gasser (one of my favorite painters), Charles Grafly and so many more.

I am thinking about this because I have been working on the exhibition catalog and that is such a thrill. Getting to work with these beautiful works is so nurturing and such a treat. So far my favorite of all the works is John Whorf’s wonderful painting of Gloucester fishermen mending their nets (left) — a favorite theme of mine anyway. I remember the days when I first came here over 20 years ago when the Italian fishermen would be working on the docks, mending their nets and the Angelus bells would ring from Our Lady of Good Voyage Church and they would pray the Angelus aloud and together while they worked.

I don’t think they do that anymore — I don’t even know if Our Lady still rings the Angelus. But every time I look at Whorf’s painting I think of that.

Gloucester is changing — it’s the way of the world I guess. The fishing industry is in decline and there are fewer opportunities for artists to make paintings like this one.

And art is changing too. I have mixed feelings about that. I know art has to evolve in order to stay interesting and worthwhile but I don’t like a lot of what I see. There seems to be a big movement toward intensely self-referential work and most of it is boring. Artists have always been interested in the self. Look at how many self-portraits painters like Rembrandt and van Gogh made. And art comes out of the self and, when that is done well, it is the best art that there is because, in exploring the self, we invite others into that place, too. But there is a difference, I think, between the self as the catalyst for exploration and the self as subject of exploration. I’m getting a little tired of the latter.

So what did Henri mean by The Brotherhood that neither time nor space could separate? That’s the question I have to explore in the article I am writing about the exhibition. Partly, I think that it is that those who follow a particular path — whether it is painting or writing or whatever — need those who have preceded them both as inspiration and confirmation. There is much to be learned in looking at the way artists of the past have seen and interpreted a particular subject and, as painters absorb the lessons of the masters of the past, elements of those works become reinvented and reinterpreted in the new works by the new generations of artists.

I suppose it is a sort of artistic genetics. The cells, the DNA, that shapes the work of past masters gets passed on into the work of future artists and, thus, those past masters become the ancestors of contemporary work.

I don’t know if the same will be true of Gloucester. As Gloucester changes and there are no more men left to stand on the docks and pray while they mend their nets, what will replace them? Is there a brotherhood for them? Maybe that is why the brotherhood of artists is so important now. We are changing — that needs to be seen and reinterpreted for the brothers yet to come.

Thanks for reading.