This week, we’re highlighting two exhibits in Newport: “Sean Landers: Lost at Sea” at the Newport Art Museum, and “Newport 1775: Whose Side Are You On?” at the Newport Historical Society.
Sean Landers’ white whale: Making art that stands the test of time
“Sean Landers: Lost at Sea,” on now at the Newport Art Museum, features some of the nautical-themed work of painter Sean Landers. As you approach the gallery, you first pass through a hallway lined with etchings by Winslow Homer. The prints are from the museum’s permanent collection, but they were selected by Landers to accompany the paintings.
“When I first started to want to learn to paint water, I looked toward Winslow Homer to sort of teach me how to do it,” Landers said. “I looked at books of his paintings and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and looked at what they had there. And whenever I’d be visiting a New England art museum, I would sort of keep my eye out for a Homer.”
The etchings show various aspects of life on or around the ocean. They were published in Harper’s Weekly from the 1850s through the 70s. One etching is called “Dad’s Coming.” “This is a young child sitting on a rowboat and a mother holding presumably that child’s younger sibling,” said Newport Art Museum Exhibitions and Collections manager Jeff Foye. “This is a very common moment from life, but the composition is elegant. There’s a stability. The seas are calm, there’s an elegance.”
Once you walk past the etchings, you’ll enter the gallery and see a gigantic painting of a whale on the opposite wall. It’s 9 1/2 feet tall and 28 feet long. The whale is underwater, but near the surface with its tail stretched up just touching the surface. The whale is covered in a plaid pattern, worn down in some places, completely torn in others. Landers says the plaid is a reference to the work of surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
“For one year of his life, he made really atypical paintings,” Landers said. “They’re loose and crude. He was at that time kind of recognized all over the world as the leading surrealist, but Andre Breton and the crew in Paris didn’t accept him at the time. So he kind of wanted to ridicule them. And so he made these slap dash paintings, which I think are fantastic.”
One of those paintings, from 1948, is called “le Stropiat” and it depicts a man with three noses, each covered in plaid.
“So it’s easy to see the jump from plaid noses to a big plaid whale nose, but the plaid also began to signify for me a year of artistic freedom in an artist who was already, I think, very free, but he even went further,” Landers said. “And the plaid began to symbolize for me to keep it loose and free. And don’t be afraid to change and follow your heart, which is where always the best art is made for all artists.”
It’s a dark scene, underwater with only a little light getting through. It’s somber, but the plaid relieves some of that somberness, until you get a little closer and notice all of the harpoons stuck into the back half of the whale. Of course, the piece also draws inspiration from the Herman Melville novel “Moby-Dick.”
“What is my white whale? Well, it’s making art that I hope will survive time and go on without me,” Landers said. “I wanted to use the harpoons to symbolize every sort of painting I make as an effort to make a lasting work that will survive. And the question is, will it? In ‘Moby-Dick,’ the whale wins. And the boat goes down. I hope my fate’s better.”
The gallery has a few of Landers’ other paintings with maritime themes: there are a couple of lighthouses, whale skeletons washed up on the shore, and two underwater scenes on the ocean floor that each show a shipwreck in the distance. And in the foreground there’s a stone with an inscription: “ Is there any beating death? Is art humanity’s best answer to death? No art will truly last forever. So is all art just another broken harpoon in the back of an uncaring monster?”
“What’s great about this exhibition is that it has layers,” Jeff Foye said. “It can be just, I’m enjoying this painting of a lighthouse, which is something I already know that I like. I like lighthouses. These are terrific lighthouse paintings. I like whales. It’s a terrific whale painting. But there’s also issues of creativity. There’s issues of the artist’s personal psychology. There’s a lot of layers. Should you choose to spend some time and really engage with the paintings, they’re very rewarding.
“Sean Landers: Lost at Sea” is on display at the Newport Art Museum through the end of this year.
‘Newport 1775’ asks: Are you a Patriot or a Loyalist?
A few blocks away from the Newport Art Museum, the Newport Historical Society is showcasing “Newport 1775: Whose Side are you on?”
For most history classes in school, you probably learned about this period from the perspective of those who supported American independence from Britain. But there was a large number of colonists who were against independence: the Loyalists, who were loyal to England. This exhibit puts their stories right next to the stories of Patriots, those who believed in independence.
“Throughout the exhibition we are profiling the lives of six individuals through each of a kind of sub themes,” said Rebecca Bertrand, executive director of the Newport Historical Society. “So we are profiling Aaron Lopez, Cesar Babcock, Charles and Kitty Dudley, John Wanton, and Solomon Southwick because this exhibition really focuses on individuals’ lives and the choices that they made leading up to the American Revolution. And so some of them are Patriots, some of them are Loyalists.”
As you walk into the museum space, you’ll see a street scene with silhouettes of figures in the windows.
“And this whole vignette is meant to be walking down the street in Newport,” Bertrand said, past the homes of Patriots and Loyalists living next door to each other – families and communities who were divided by the conflict.
Part of the exhibit includes buttons you can push to hear different reactions to the war. One of the voiceovers says: “My son went off to join the militia this morning. I hope he comes back all right.”
The exhibit includes many touch screens for visitors to explore the stories of six Newporters who lived through this time. But one of the centerpieces of the exhibit is an enormous old printing press that was used at points by both Loyalists and Patriots.
“ If you think about the power of the media, the power that you guys have to shape minds and opinions, it’s the same thing in the 18th century,” Bertrand said. “The power of this piece is incredibly influential to shape minds and opinions. If you have the authority to be teaching people what is happening, not just in Newport but around all of the colonies, you have the ability to shape the times, to shape opinions. And I think, particularly, the Patriots were especially effective at this. And they used it essentially as a means of propaganda.”
You can even read some of the old newspapers for yourself to see how the conflict was portrayed to the public.
“There’s also an attempt that we’ve made to try to talk about the emotions that people are feeling during the revolution and to try to tie that to contemporary day, really challenging people to think about issues,” Bertrand said. “What you might risk your life for? Because if you think about the American Revolution, we think about it now like it’s a done deal. But that wasn’t decided. In the 18th century, they thought, you know, maybe the Patriots are rebels. And so we’re really trying to make visitors to this exhibition understand that it’s a really emotional choice. And by doing that, by kind of putting in some thoughts and feelings from other major world events, the Civil War, the Tulsa Race massacre, tied to the Revolutionary War, these kinds of emotions of war are something that is felt throughout the generations.”
At the end of the exhibit, you can pick which side you would have chosen in 1775 – but it’s not as easy of a decision as you might think.
You can see “Newport 1775: Whose Side Are You On?” at the Newport Historical Society now through December.
Thanks to our community engagement reporter Paul C. Kelly Campos for production support on this episode.
