Analysis

While Waterfall is a pronoun piece in Roger’s collection and resides in the National Gallery, very little information was provided about the work in the gallery, nor online; not even a single image online for the work is available through the Gallery’s site nor the entirety of the web. However, with Brown creating the piece shortly after his Disaster Landscapes series I believe his intentions lie within describing a natural and societal disastrous issue. Being created in the 1970’s, industrial expansion and war becomes prevalent. I believe Brown is reminiscing on the American Indians lifestyle and how they lived in peace compared to how we lived as Americans in an industrial society. He looked to create works that were conceptually mesmerizing and with using solely just a waterfall and river flow, he does so by making the eye flow as the river does down the canvas. The

work creates a boring landscape and turns it into a beautiful, eye-catching piece that makes you wonder what the deeper meaning behind the work is. Using the dark silhouette figures to describe the Indians, mystery and curiosity is sparked for a piece that looks to be just solely recreating a simple landscape. I believe the main meaning behind this piece is to describe a landscape that is no longer apparent in our world today, Native American Indians are hardly capable of living in a tribal format, along river banks with competing tribes for example, due to the excess of migration of people into America. I believe Brown is trying to show the beauty of how these people used to live by creating this beautiful landscape based around the Indians village, to raise awareness to the public of how much damage we have done to these Native people. If viewing the piece through that context, I believe the work is successful, it is a very eye-catching piece that manages to open the viewers eyes to what we have done as a species, and manages to make the viewer look deeper into the piece itself to see the beauty of the colors and the clarity of the environment compared to the dark, grim pollution the hundreds of factories and mills that during this time would have been created when replacing these Indian villages to supply their Industrial advantages.

 Personally, I believe the work is created near perfectly, the waterfall creates a life to the river, just as the strong blue and brown colors create a life to the work as a whole. While it may take a lot of thought behind the context of the work, I believe Rogers initial goal was to create art of a beautiful landscape, and the deeper meaning behind the piece followed so the viewer was to get attached to the piece at first glance only to stick around to find out more about it after viewing deeply. Overall I believe the art work is one of the most amazing pieces I have ever seen in person and would recommend for anyone going to the National Gallery to sit and take a look into the piece for several minutes rather than a brief glance.

Context

Roger Brown was born on December, 10, 1941 in Opelika, Alabama, bringing forth southern influences through his family and surrounding peers. Brown was raised in a very religious family, who attended multiple services a week, and a regularly attended bible-school. Brown, at a very young age showed interesting artistic style, being described as a very creative child, by his parents who highly encouraged Browns artistic ability in his youth. His religious aspect brought about influences of folk art, as well he developed an interest in Art Deco, and comic strips as well as having a ease of development toward freehand drawing.  After rejecting his initial college goals to become

a preacher at Lipscomb University, he decided to pursue his art career instead, heading away from the South to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Browns years here had a huge influence on where he was to take his art career, obtaining influences of Pop Art, Surrealism and pre-Renaissance Italian art. Brown eventually developed in a group of artists, to create the Chicago Imagists. This group had heavy influences in Pop art, Commercial and Advertising art, and comics that were all figurative, narrative and surrealistic. This style completely went against the norms in the art field during the 1960’s period, which held as a mainly influenced Modernist abstract and conceptual style. Brown in his works often weighed in commentaries politically, and religiously and became known for it internationally where his work peeked around the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, installing popular culture influences of which he developed while in the Chicago Imagists. The Imagists never formed an actual art group, never adopted the name or even had a direct shared ideology, instead represented themselves solely through working independent of that of the norms of the time period. His first strong works came about through a set of “Disaster Landscapes”  shown at an exhibition dedicated to the Imagists by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. These pieces showed not your average environments, natural landscapes suffering cataclysmic, disaster events. Notable works from this exhibition include Tropical Storm, Midnight Tremor, and Ablaze and Ajar all developed in ’72. His paintings showed a very cartoonish, pop-art style and these works exhibit nearly the same style Waterfall (1974) describing it’s landscapes with very geometric circular hills,

strict curves of the river banks, and strong triangles of the villager tents. His works remind me of the

Visiting artist David Brame’s cartoonish style, showing unrealistic proportions and comic-styled figures and landscapes. The work Brame created in the Salisbury Downtown Gallery, showing futuristic comic-influenced characters and environment gives me a direct association to Brown’s work. At the Gallery exhibition, Brame used only two colors that contrasted heavily with one another (Pink and Black), Brown does almost the same with Waterfall, where the brown and blue hue majority allows the viewer to understand what’s most important and allows the viewer to develop the strongest interest in where the strongest color resides, such as the river in Browns work and the pink rain/oil in Brames futuristic robot work.

Description

The piece I selected as most visually appealing to me was contained in the downstairs of the East Wing in the Dwan Gallery. The piece hung alone on a small sector of wall upon entering a new doorway, and stood out to me immediately. Titled, “Waterfall” painted in oil on canvas by American artist Roger Brown in 1974. The piece stood in the Corcoran Collection until its recent shut down, which then permitted the piece to be moved to the National Gallery. “Waterfall” is a piece based around the flow of a waterfall creating a river traveling through a village or countryside of some sort.

Objectively speaking the piece stands extremely unique compared to a lot of the other works in the gallery. The strong brown color of the landscape creates a strict, strong contrast comparing to the vibrant soothing tone of the sky-blue water. As the river flows, the diagonally curving lines of the river banks creates motion through the piece dragging your eyes vertically downward, investing you’re the processes of how your mind works rather than just a visual aspect. Alongside visually flowing, the work contains several small villager tents with a select few containing dark silhouettes of figurative villagers, spaced out intentionally, appearing to zig-zag down the page dragging your eyes downwards once more. The tints of the varied colors other than the brown environment and blue river such as the white hues on the rocks and the bushes in the work all have a bit of influence of the blue river into them. The whites seem to have a very slight blueish tint and the bushes are focused more on a turquoise color rather than green as normally portrayed in most artworks.

This work brought about a number of personal associations when looking in depth upon it. The first, is the direct representation of a Native American village. Many times these villages would be placed on a river for ease of access to resources so the village could function smoothly and keep themselves alive as a tribe. As well, the rolling hills remind me heavily of the Midwest grazing plains of North America, bringing out the emphasis of the brown color. Near the top of the work, perspective of either sunset or sunrise evolves, creating a direct association of why the figures are solely silhouettes rather than detailed characters. As the village life is portrayed by these figures, the flow of the river gives its own life to the piece creating an association within each factor. Brown gives a strong influence emotionally in this work and becomes easy to notice. At initial glance I developed an immediate attraction to the work developing a form of emotional content. The strong color contrast provides a very enthusiastic, joyous intent, rather than a negative tone of blue and brown the two bright shades work in a positive way with one another. My initial viewing provided me with the conception that the sun is rising in the work, giving me a very optimistic feeling because I look at every day as a new fresh day, through an optimistic approach. However, viewing the sun as setting creates a sense of fear and negativity, worrying about the figures working in the mysteries of night. As I look closer into the work, the dark figures create curiosity, being very mysterious in their simple, yet, strong silhouette aspect.  

Impressions

After a near 45-minute drive from my home in Stevensville, Maryland, a few friends and I were finally to the National Mall in Washington D.C., home of some of the most beautiful museums around the world. The sun was shining, and the air was a crisp, but not too chilly temperature; it was a great day to be out and around our nation’s capital.  Instead of riding the bus with the rest of the class, I drove separately, and it was a slight mistake due to one reason; parking. It took me nearly 20 minutes alone to find parking, and ended up paying nearly $30. That was just about the only negative aspect about the trip however. After finding parking, I made my way down to the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. A charity walk was just beginning as I was crossing the street to the Gallery, and all the walkers and runners had just began moving in large quantity. Entering the Gallery, I was amazed at the interesting style of architecture the building contained; very odd but very functional. The interior of the building was beautiful, white marble floors made the colors of the large streaming banners and works standout intensely. After meeting with the rest of the group and Professor Rodgers, I made my way through the East Wing. Starting with the Dwan Gallery, examining some of the most influential works from coast to coast in the years of 1951-1971. The gallery presented works by abstract expressionists, neo-Dadaists, pop artists, and nouveaux realists of the time. Next I visited the u

pstairs Photography Reinvented exhibition, which then led me to up the to the tower, where American artist, Barbara Kruger’s works were on display in very large format. After visiting these three exhibitions the allotted time was up, while I could have stayed and ventured around more, I was starving and it was definitely time to get some lunch.  After exploring around a little bit, we stopped at a not-your-average pizza place named &Pizza, which made #3 on the list of best pizza places in the D.C. area. It was very good, and fairly cheap, however it was a very long walk from the Gallery so we had to rush a little to get back to the National Gallery Sculpture Garden to meet with the rest of the group. Being a little late from our trek, I missed the group so I went around the Garden myself to take a look at the unique set of sculptures the Gallery has gathered. They were all so unique, yet so influential, standing as environmental replica’s, and bright outstanding cartoonish looking pieces almost like they were a part of a Dr. Seuss book. It was time to move on to the HirshHorn Museum, another very interesting architectural building. Upon entering I went directly upstairs to the exhibitions where I found myself slightly confused by the circular motion of the exhibitions. I would enter rooms and re-enter accidently until I finally figured out where I was going. However after figuring out the layout of the exhibition I realized how amazing it

really was, bringing out interest that I’ve never shown before. The exhibition contained a wide variety of outstanding media and some of the most interesting works of art I’ve ever seen in my life. All around I benefitted heavily from the trip, not only just enjoying my visit to the city, but opening my eyes to artwork I never would’ve imagined enjoying visually. Seeing works in print/original form, rather than on a computer screen makes a world of a difference.