Unless you are blind, you have seen a landscape. Even if you are blind, there are probably imagination-scapes in your mind. Either way, with your eyeballs or your mind’s eye, you see a landscape every day. It may be a panorama of the street from your doorstep, the suburban lushness of your morning commute or the meditative blissfulness of an endless horizon of whitecaps on the ocean at sunset… with some rocks… and a uh… lighthouse.
It’s true, in Maine there are probably more pieces of landscape art than actual vistas, but nowhere will you see a more handsome collection of them than at the USM Art Gallery in Gorham.
George Burk, a Professor of Art at USM, has been collecting art since 1956. His exhibit, “Broadening Horizons, Changing Viewpoints,” with 148 pieces, is the largest collection of art ever displayed at the gallery. The works in the show span more than nine centuries, from an engraving made in 1175 to a gelatin print from 2003.
The landscape pieces were culled from Professor Burk’s substantial art collection and selected by him and his son, Efram, based on technique, design, and historical context.
“The diversity of my collection comes from having an eclectic taste,” said Burk. “I find pieces for my collection from print dealers or from bins on the side of the road.”
An Albrecht D?rer etching is one such piece not found in a bin on the side of the road. Burk pointed out that this print, titled “Christ Taken Down from the Cross,” was pulled in 1815 from a wood block cut in 1511. In the D?rer, you can see two small white circles in the upper left portion of the print. This is from worms eating through the woodblock over the 300 years between editions. Burk seems to be very pleased with these wormholes, describing them as part of the fantastic history of the piece. “Nothing is permanent forever,” he said.
The show has been divided into categories such as “Biblical, Literary & Allegorical Sources,” which contains the D?rer, to “Modernist Inventions,” which has a collaborative work by Joan Mir? and friends featuring elves dancing fancifully through a forest beneath a small colorful flag.
The landscapes in the exhibit are often open to interpretation. Many of the pieces feature a subject in the foreground of a minimalist landscape. As we looked at a print of a woman in a tree, teasing a bear with a stick in the “Romantic & Poetic Musings” section, Burk said, “Although these landscapes may be peripheral, the artist still demonstrates an awareness of it. The landscape is an important notion.” The pieces in the “non-representational” landscape category are purely abstract. I really wish there were more green blobs floating around in our fair city.
There are delicate etchings, such as the piece titled, “Arizona Desert,” which features a few saguaro cactuses before a distant mountain range. Those who have never seen a saguaro in life may not be able to understand their nature, which is by turns playful and stoic. In this print, two hedonistic saguaros appear to be playfully humping each other.
The exhibit is interesting in many ways and it stimulates conversation. In the section titled, “Urban Facades,” there is a lithograph of a brick floating in some choppy waves with a city in the background. Another of my favorites is a lithograph of a storefront with brown paper over the windows.
Many of the pieces in the exhibit do not have signatures. Burk says, “I am not an autograph collector. An unsigned print is infinitely less expensive and it doesn’t make a difference to me. It is just not as scarce.” The scarcest pieces in the show are Inuit stone-cut prints from the 1960s. Burk said that his father bought a portfolio of Inuit prints in 1963 from these Alaskan people before they realized the value of Inuit Art in the market. The prints are of very limited editions of 25, and Burk owns prints from two different editions, numbered 3/25 and 1/25. “When the Montreal Museum of Art had an exhibit of Inuit art, there was an entire room devoted to early large stone cuts. I owned one of every print in that collection.”
Burk says that he will be collecting art until he is dead. He enjoys the search and often times finds that he has a very personal connection with a piece. When we looked at a landscape of Roman streets and churches he said, “I have painted right there. I’ve walked down that street with a cappuccino.” As we walked around the gallery and Professor Burk’s booming voice echoed joyfully among the collection, I could see him, etched into a 17th century landscape, carrying a cappuccino along Roman streets, looking for art in bins.
The exhibit, “Broadening Horizons, Changing Viewpoints: Landscapes from the Burk Collection,” hangs in the USM Art Gallery in Gorham from October 28 until December 12.
Efram Burk, an Art History Professor and curator of the exhibit will give a gallery talk on Thursday, November 4, at 6 p.m. at the gallery.
George Burk will hold a brown-bag discussion about the exhibit on Thursday, November 18 at 11:30 a.m.