Exhibit to feature former Northwest faculty member, local artists_
Northwest Missouri State University[노스웨스트미주리주립대학교,미국대학장학금]
Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts will present an exhibition of paintings produced by Maryville residents Rose Ventling Rose and George Rose.
The exhibit, “Combined Visions: The Paintings of George Rose and Rose Ventling Rose” opens with a lecture and reception at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, at the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building on the Northwest campus. The exhibit will remain open in the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery through Friday, Feb. 17.
Professor of art Armin Mühsam, who succeeded George Rose as a painting instructor at Northwest, notes the work of both of painters represents a strain of American painting that is indebted to High Modernism, combining the lessons of the French “century of magnificence,” which spans the years roughly from 1840 to 1940, and the American “half-century of domination,” roughly spanning the years 1940 to 1990.
“The Roses are indebted to the French painter Paul Cézanne, who postulated that the painter’s study of nature should result not in an imitation of reality, but in the creation of a pictorial reality that is parallel to nature,” Mühsam said. “Closer to home and to the present, the Roses’ work represents a type of American painting that refused to yield to the dogmas of postwar abstraction and conceptualization and instead emphasized the necessity to find inspiration in the direct observation and reference to nature. The fact that this ‘camp’ of artists has ‘lost’ the battle of ideas does not mean, however, that their efforts have been futile. On the contrary, their insistence on maintaining Modernism’s core tenets is vindicated by the authenticity of their artistic output.”
This exhibit is curated by one of Mühsam’s students, Chance Allen, a senior art major from Maryville, who grew up without knowing his hometown also was the home of these two remarkable painters.
“Mr. Allen is himself a figurative painter who subscribes to the aesthetic exemplified by the Roses’ work – finding inspiration in the seemingly mundane and commonplace shapes and colors of one’s surroundings, and translating these experiences into paintings that become almost universal pronouncements on what it means to be alive in the respective art practitioner’s present,” Mühsam said.
The couple has resided in Maryville since 1984, when George Rose accepted a painting professorship at Northwest. He taught for 16 years, mentoring a generation of art majors through his teaching and by maintaining a prolific personal studio practice before retiring in 2000.
George Rose often could be seen in Maryville or in the countryside surrounding the community, working on his landscapes “en plein air.” He persisted after his retirement, switching brushes for paint sticks and the landscape for the self-portrait. At age 80, he continues to produce artwork.
Ventling Rose is a dedicated painter herself, focusing on the still life genre that is more conducive to the domestic arrangements the couple have settled upon.
“If Mr. Rose’s tenacity in the face of recent adversarial health is cause for admiration, Ms. Ventling Rose’s persistence in the face of daily household and spousal caretaking obligations – combined with precious little public recognition – is no less impressive,” Mühsam said. “Ms. Ventling Rose exemplifies the saying among serious artists that art is a marathon rather than a sprint. Her compositions might seem repetitive to the casual viewer but to anyone who cares to spend time with them it becomes apparent that the recurrent pictorial elements are varied with a subtlety and skill that reveal an acute painterly intelligence.”
