Word: demuth
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Last week, 15 years after the death of Charles Demuth, Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art got around to giving him a big exhibition. The 168 paintings and drawings on display proved the Lancaster, Pa. tobacconist's boy to have been among the nation's top moderns. In his lifetime Demuth was much admired by a small circle of artists, critics and collectors. But Demuth (rhymes with see tooth) never made much of a dent on the public...
...exhibition catalogue, Museum Director of Painting and Sculpture Andrew Ritchie collared Demuth with a string of adjectives: "Elegant, witty, frivolous, dandified, shy, gentle, kind, amusing." The painter was also lame, and long ill with the diabetes which killed him at 52. A bit of a bohemian in his excursions to Greenwich Village and Montparnasse, he never stayed away from Lancaster long. Bachelor Demuth was "sheltered as a child and as a man," wrote Ritchie, "by an extraordinarily robust mother...
...better part of Demuth's art was reticent, stiff and dainty as his mother's gros point. Inspired by the French moderns, he drew out his inspiration, as he once put it, "with a teaspoon, but I never spilled a drop...
When the sun was shining outdoors and Demuth turned his lapidary instinct on the poppies, cyclamen and zinnias in his mother's garden, or the fruits and vegetables for her kitchen, the results were sparkling. He had the knack of putting flowers into many-faceted, highly polished pictures without seeming to disarrange their leaves and petals. The driest of artists, he knew how to keep the bloom on a peach or the dew on a blossom. His talent had never been robust; the fact that his best works were evocations of things so elusive and so close to perfection...
...while the streets of Paris were barricaded by revolutionists, the young composer-organist got married. His actress-wife tried to liven him up a bit, teach him dancing, take him to the theater. But, writes Biographer Demuth, "Franck slept through all the performances, remarking that they were a waste of time otherwise." His tastes led more in the direction of the opera bouffe "and he delighted in Offenbach because he said that the operas made him laugh...