KAREN WILKIN
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to the strangely flattened, ambiguously sexed heads of the thirties. One
of the latest and most compelling pictures in the show, (painted about a
year before the painter committed suicide, in 1932 at age sixty-four) and
certainly the oddest, was a conflation of human and feline neads that
dissolved, as you watched, like a modernist Cheshire cat, into pure
painting incidents, held together as much by the contrast between angu–
lar and curving gestures as by obvious pictorial logic; only the emphat–
ically painted mouth, with its bold pink tongue, and one assertive eye
anchored the free-wheeling strokes.
Although Maurer worked in many modes, he is perhaps best known
as the first American to "get" Fauvism-not surprisingly, since he
encountered Fauvist painting directly during a long sojourn in Paris,
where he was part of Gertrude Stein's circle, before World War
I.
Reflect–
ing the importance of this part of Maurer's evolution,
Aestheticism to
Modernism
was rich in the fresh, angular landscapes that he produced
from about 1907 through the 1920S, as he tested the possibilities of full–
throttle color as a way of evoking space and light. Good as many of these
pictures are, fewer examples might have made the point, given the
gallery'S space constraints, although the selection did, for the most part,
enlarge your sense of the painter'S capabilities. The same cannot be said
of the show's multiple flower paintings. While they demonstrated Mau–
rer's considerable gifts as a colorist and his vigorous touch, their sheer
numbers diminished the impact of the best individual works. Yet despite
the crowding and the repetitiveness, the show reinforced Epstein's the–
sis that Maurer's evolution was consistent, no matter how often he
changed subject or shifted emphasis or altered his approach. His enthu–
siasm for experiment, like his debt to Matisse (who was only a year his
senior), to Braque, and ultimately, to Cezanne, were made clear, but in
the end, Maurer's individuality and his strengths were reaffirmed: his
ability to construct forthright, confrontational images that look like no
one else's, to draw with syncopated energy, and to orchestrate radiant,
full-spectrum hues and murky half-tones with equally expressive effect.
Even though Maurer's reputation rests with his modernist pictures
(and by having advised Barnes on acquisitions for a while), the show
placed special emphasis on his early efforts. These relatively dark, natu–
ralistic paintings, which won Maurer considerable praise and attention
before he plunged
h~adlong
into the modernist maelstrom, seem equally
indebted to Whistler at his most robust and to the Manet of the Wash–
ington
Bal
a
!'Opera-a
sort of souped-up Ashcan-School-cum-Post–
Impressionist view of modern life. Epstein believes that the roots of the
most radical aspects of Maurer's mature work are to be found in the bold
