August Birthday Artist Arthur Dove

Posted by Meg Nola Aug 15, 2008

Arthur Garfield Dove was born in upstate New York on August 2, 1880, and would become one of America’s first abstract painters. His works are full of beautiful color and intriguing shapes, and they focus on what Arthur himself referred to as the “extraction” or purest essence of an entity or scene. Dove was quite fond of nature and natural elements, and preferred living in rural areas or even on houseboats to urban backdrops. He also created fascinating collage pieces.

Although Dove was part of photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s group of favorite artists and exhibited at Stieglitz’s avant-garde Manhattan gallery, he still was a bit ahead of his time and throughout his 66 years tended to be underappreciated. Now, however, Dove’s paintings are in many major museums -- and his own spirit or extraction even recently inspired the band Portastatic's song I’m in Love (with Arthur Dove).

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. has an extensive survey of Dove’s work (“The Dove Unit“), including Golden Storm (click to view), Me and The Moon and Electric Peach Orchard. Founder Duncan Phillips acted as Dove’s patron for many years, helping him through some lean financial times. Phillips truly appreciated Dove‘s individualism and vision, which Phillips saw as similar to that of poet Walt Whitman or philosopher Henry David Thoreau, and which he described as a "cause for my rejoicing, as I look with alarm upon the growing standardization of art."

Ideas are the only property worth having.

(Arthur Dove, 1880-1946)