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Although his renown is as a great twentieth-century American poet, Ammons was also enthusiastic about his watercolor paintings. According to Elizabeth Mills, Professor of English at Davidson College, Ammons made over one thousand paintings, some of which were exhibited at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University, the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, the Morehead Gallery in Chapel Hill, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Gallery of Wake Forest University. [1] Ammons painted his watercolors at home using his wife’s sewing table as a work surface, the same place he also typed poems on an Underwood standard manual typewriter. He painted on a French-made rag paper, Arches Special MBM watercolor, 140-pound paper with a rough surface.
The abstract composition of Untitled, 1979, establishes a dynamic figure-ground relationship with an awkwardly looped, segmented form, rendered in washes of saturated blue, gray and brown against the natural white of the support. While the colors are suggestive of water, clouds, and earth, the compositional shape does not make specific references to the natural world. Following traditional rules of visual composition, the figure touches three but not all four sides of the composition, not in an elegant curvilinear swerve but rather disjointedly. The watercolor medium is quite expertly handled. The wet-on-wet technique using the deep blue pigment produces a feathery outline, and the warm gray wash contrasts nicely with the white of the page. The warm light brown color was applied with carefully controlled brushstrokes—not so wet as to puddle on the paper, but not so dry that brush strokes are obvious.
The literary critic Helen Vendler made a connection between Ammons’s implicit understanding and evocation of the natural world in his poems with the formal expression of his paintings. She noted, “For Ammons, the weather plays the role that color plays in painting (and we might recall that Ammons was an abstract painter in his spare time). Just as each collocation of colors has for both painter and spectator its own emotional weight, and each collocation of words, for both writer and reader, has its own atmosphere, so the weather—down to its minutest aspects—determines the ‘feel’ on our skin and our senses on any given day. Ammons (resembling in this Hopkins and Frost) was an expert weather-watcher; he could sense the humidity, the temperature, the wind-direction, the cloud-movements, the weight of snow on a branch, the strength of ice retaining twigs, the force of water as it splits rock.” [2]
In such endeavors as “Poetics” there is a clear analogy between his writing and his visual representations:
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility
how a thing will
unfold… [3]
Notes:
[1] Elizabeth Mills, “An Image for Longing,” Epoch 52, no. 3 (1984) (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University): 483–534.
[2] Helen Vendler, “Words and Music Celebrating A. R. Ammons,” (lecture, Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, April 19, 2001, organized by Wake Forest University Professor Edwin G. Wilson and Emily Herring Wilson, poet and author. Artist file, Richard J. Reynolds III and Marie Reynolds Library, Reynolda House Museum of American Art).
[3] Ammons, “Poetics,” Collected Poems 1951–1971 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972).
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement
Exhibition History2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006-12-31-2006)
DepartmentCollection of Barbara B. Millhouse
Untitled
Artist
A. R. Ammons
(1926 - 2001)
Date1979
MediumWatercolor on paper
DimensionsFrame: 30 1/4 × 23 7/8 in. (76.8 × 60.6 cm)
Image (visible): 23 1/2 × 17 5/8 in. (59.7 × 44.8 cm)
SignedAmmons '79
Credit LineCourtesy of Barbara B. Millhouse
CopyrightCopyright by the Estate of A. R. Ammons
Object numberIL2003.1.2
DescriptionIn June 1981, Archie Ammons conducted a two-week poetry workshop at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Each morning, the poet made a presentation, which was followed by group discussion and independent study for the fifteen participants. Evenings featured a variety of events open to the public, including guest poetry readings and a musical performance of Ammons’s poetry set to music composed by Kenneth Frazelle. A description of the workshop in the museum’s annual report that year mentioned that Ammons’s watercolors were exhibited at the museum and that he had been painting for four years. The temporary gallery was undoubtedly the 1936 guest house, now the entrance lobby of the museum. Although his renown is as a great twentieth-century American poet, Ammons was also enthusiastic about his watercolor paintings. According to Elizabeth Mills, Professor of English at Davidson College, Ammons made over one thousand paintings, some of which were exhibited at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University, the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, the Morehead Gallery in Chapel Hill, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Gallery of Wake Forest University. [1] Ammons painted his watercolors at home using his wife’s sewing table as a work surface, the same place he also typed poems on an Underwood standard manual typewriter. He painted on a French-made rag paper, Arches Special MBM watercolor, 140-pound paper with a rough surface.
The abstract composition of Untitled, 1979, establishes a dynamic figure-ground relationship with an awkwardly looped, segmented form, rendered in washes of saturated blue, gray and brown against the natural white of the support. While the colors are suggestive of water, clouds, and earth, the compositional shape does not make specific references to the natural world. Following traditional rules of visual composition, the figure touches three but not all four sides of the composition, not in an elegant curvilinear swerve but rather disjointedly. The watercolor medium is quite expertly handled. The wet-on-wet technique using the deep blue pigment produces a feathery outline, and the warm gray wash contrasts nicely with the white of the page. The warm light brown color was applied with carefully controlled brushstrokes—not so wet as to puddle on the paper, but not so dry that brush strokes are obvious.
The literary critic Helen Vendler made a connection between Ammons’s implicit understanding and evocation of the natural world in his poems with the formal expression of his paintings. She noted, “For Ammons, the weather plays the role that color plays in painting (and we might recall that Ammons was an abstract painter in his spare time). Just as each collocation of colors has for both painter and spectator its own emotional weight, and each collocation of words, for both writer and reader, has its own atmosphere, so the weather—down to its minutest aspects—determines the ‘feel’ on our skin and our senses on any given day. Ammons (resembling in this Hopkins and Frost) was an expert weather-watcher; he could sense the humidity, the temperature, the wind-direction, the cloud-movements, the weight of snow on a branch, the strength of ice retaining twigs, the force of water as it splits rock.” [2]
In such endeavors as “Poetics” there is a clear analogy between his writing and his visual representations:
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility
how a thing will
unfold… [3]
Notes:
[1] Elizabeth Mills, “An Image for Longing,” Epoch 52, no. 3 (1984) (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University): 483–534.
[2] Helen Vendler, “Words and Music Celebrating A. R. Ammons,” (lecture, Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, April 19, 2001, organized by Wake Forest University Professor Edwin G. Wilson and Emily Herring Wilson, poet and author. Artist file, Richard J. Reynolds III and Marie Reynolds Library, Reynolda House Museum of American Art).
[3] Ammons, “Poetics,” Collected Poems 1951–1971 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972).
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement
Exhibition History2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006-12-31-2006)
Status
Not on view