1st Edition

Raymond Jonson and the Spiritual in Modernist and Abstract Painting

By Herbert R. Hartel, Jr. Copyright 2018
    236 Pages 40 Color & 36 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    236 Pages 40 Color & 36 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    236 Pages 40 Color & 36 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This is the most thorough and detailed monograph on the artwork of Raymond Jonson. He is one of many artists of the first half of the twentieth-century who demonstrate the richness and diversity of an under-appreciated period in the history of American art. Visualizing the spiritual was one of the fundamental goals of early abstract painting in the years before and during World War I. Artists turned to alternative spirituality, the occult, and mysticism, believing that the pure use of line, shape, color, light and texture could convey spiritual insight. Jonson was steadfastly dedicated to this goal for most of his career and he always believed that modernist and abstract styles were the most effective and compelling means of achieving it.

    Contents

    Acknowledgments

    List of Illustrations

    Introduction: Raymond Jonson and Twentieth Century American Art: Reconsidering the Canonical in American Art History and the Spiritual in American Modernist Painting

    Chapter One: "Art Is as Broad as Space": Jonson’s Early Years in the West and Chicago

    Chapter Two: "The Land of Sunshine and Color and Tragedy": New Mexico and Jonson’s Landscape Paintings and Compositions

    Chapter Three: "These Are the Second Attack on the Abstract": the Thematic, Conceptual Series Paintings of 1929-1936

    Chapter Four: "A More Intense Participation in the Life of the Spirit": Jonson’s First Totally Abstract Paintings, His Theories of Art and the Transcendental Painting Group

    Chapter Five: "Fast Arriving and Spontaneous Combustions of Color–space–line and Design": Absolute Painting, 1938-1950

    Chapter Six: "Causing the Surface to Come to Life": Jonson’s Late Career, 1950-1978

    References

    Index

    Biography

    Herbert R. Hartel, Jr.