Flood Tide
Arthur Wesley Dow was an artist, teacher and theoretician whose interest in the design principles of Eastern art helped pave the way for development of Modernism in the United States and was a touchstone for the Arts & Crafts movement. Dow is one of the most influential teachers and artists of the late 19th and 20th century. This print is larger than many of Dow’s compositions and is a perfect example of what is considered a revolutionary new view of art.
Exhibition Title: Collectors' Circle Exhibit
Label Date: 12/22/2015-02/14/2016
Type: Chat Label
Dow saw no distinction between fine and decorative arts and applied the same aesthetic principles to his paintings, prints, and photographs, as well as to his instruction in the design of crafts. Influenced by his study of Japanese woodblock prints, Dow believed that all art should be composed of abstracted shapes, line, and color, with a particular emphasis on the balance of dark and light (a concept he referred to using the Japanese word notan). Flood Tide exemplifies this approach in its simplification of the landscape into abstracted shapes, which are colored in light, medium, and dark tones that are carefully interspersed across the image. Due to his long-term teaching positions at art schools in New York and Massachusetts, and especially to his book Composition (1899, revised 1913, still in print today), Dow’s principles exerted a tremendous influence on artists nationwide and on the American Arts and Crafts movement.
Exhibition Title: Asheville Art Museum: An Introduction to the Collection
Label Date: 2021
Type: Catalogue Entry
Written by: Cindy Buckner
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