Absence and Presence: Arthur Doves

Paintings From the Radio

by Jennifer Stettler Parsons, PhD student, University of Virginia
In 1937, Arthur Dove (1880-1946) mounted a comeback in the form of his annual exhibition at An
American Place, the New York gallery of his dealer and close friend, Alfred Stieglitz. Doves time in
Geneva, New York between 1933 and 1938 was rife with struggle and hardship, and his show the
previous year was not well received.
1
Critic Edward Alden Jewell had called the 1936 work not
indicative of his full artistic potentiality and inconsequential.
2
Even Doves wife, Helen (Reds) Torr,
thought the works looked small there.
3
(1936 diary, p. 54) The next year, Sherwood Anderson hailed
the 1937 works as exhibiting a new sureness of touch and a new maturity.
4
What had changed?
Among the twenty paintings and thirty-two watercolors in the 1937 display, Dove offered a range of
abstractions: landscapes, barn animals, farm structures, and trees. Most striking, however, were the suns
and the moons. Never before had Dove produced so many cosmological works in the course of a year: a
concentration of vibrating concentric circles in four sunrises, a Golden Sun, and two glowing moons
created a dazzling, enigmatic display. The majority of the works titles are brief and unremarkable, but
two of the paintings titles stand out in the catalogue, captured in quotation marks: The Moon Was
Laughing [at Me], and Me and the Moon (1937 exhibition catalog, Figures 1, 2). Both have been
identified as titles after popular songs played on the radio in the 1930s, and matched to supporting
evidence in diaries kept by Dove and Reds, where they call them the paintings From the Radio.
5
It was
not the first time Dove titled works after songs, but it was nearly ten years since he had done so.

Figure 1. Arthur Dove, The Moon Was Laughing at Me, 1937, Wax emulsion on canvas, 6 1/4 x 8 1/4
in., The Phillips Collection, Bequest of Elmira Bier, 1976.


Figure 2. Arthur Dove, Me and the Moon, 1937, Wax emulsion on canvas, 18 x 26 in., The Phillips
Collection, Washington, D.C.
While The Moon Was Laughing at Me (1937) and Me and the Moon (1937) (Phillips Collection,
Washington, D.C.) are recognized as occupying an important place in this culminating moment of Doves
career, as well as for their musical association, they have never been considered as anything more than an
abstracted night sky.
6
A careful analysis of primary sources, namely Doves personal diaries,
correspondence, and writings, housed at the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., reveals the
pair of paintings From the Radio to be a unique reflection of Doves lived experience during the past
year, when he was faced with an abrupt and prolonged separation from his wife. This essay will consider
the radio paintings in a new light in order to demonstrate their significance as analogues of Doves
sensitivity to the presence and absence of one of his most important sources of creative powerhis wife,
Reds. I will then situate Doves moon paintings in relation to his sunrise series to reveal that his
motivations for their creation were in line with the gendered norms of the male sun and the female moon.
Given the fact that Doves attention to these subjects falls directly in sequence with Reds departure and
return, this essay will argue that such a correspondence is anything but coincidental.

Figure 3. Helen Torr and Arthur Dove in Geneva, New York, ca. 1936. Courtesy of Arthur G. Dove
Estate. In Debra Bricker Balken, William C. Agee, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Arthur Dove: A
Retrospective. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, and The Phillips Collection.
(Andover, Massachusetts: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1997), 178.
During the time Dove created his paintings From the Radio in 1936, Dove and Reds were living on the
family farm in his hometown of Geneva, New York. (Figure 3) The couple moved there in 1933 after the
death of Doves mother to settle the family estate. Doves return to Geneva was one fraught with anxiety.
He wrote to Stieglitz, There is something terrible about Up State to me. I mean that part anyway. It is
like walking on the bottom underwater.
7
The next month he wrote again, The dread of going there is
almost an obsession.
8
Desperately poor in the early 1930s, the couple moved into a house with no
electricity and in need of many repairs. Separated from New York City by nearly 300 miles, isolated from
their friends and the art world, Dove and Reds, who was an artist in her own right, intensely relied on
each other for emotional support.
9

Dove worked according to a cycle set by the seasons, the weather, and to the world he observed around
him. Elizabeth Hutton Turner has established that Doves process and pattern of work was also contingent
on the schedule of his annual exhibition, presented by Stieglitz each spring. Following the show in March
and April, Dove typically gathered ideas in sketches and watercolors from spring through summer, and
then painted, finished, and framed the works in the fall and winter. As a result, Doves annual exhibition
reflected his production the preceding year. In 1936, however, Doves usual pattern was interrupted. That
August, Reds mother took a fall and seriously injured herself, breaking bones in her spine.
10
(1936 diary,
p 116). Reds left Geneva immediately to care for her mother in Hartford, Connecticut. While Dove
assumed she might be gone a matter of days or weeks, Reds was absent for two and a half months, the
longest the pair was ever separated.
11
They wrote each other every day. Doves letters to Reds describe
his loneliness and how terribly he missed her, even of how he saw her in his dreams.
12
The diary entries,
usually managed by Reds, were filled with Doves notes in her absence.
On 24 September 1936, after nearly a month of living without his wife, Dove imbued his diary entries
with new purpose. In addition to recording the temperature and weather conditions, Dove began making
drawings in his diary (1936 diary, p. 137). These sketches, with their shadings and mysterious markings,
appear to be evidence of the artist tracking the moon. The moon drawings continue each day with
notations of temperature and barometric pressure, until Reds returned home on 8 November 1936.
13
(1936
diary, p.155, 160). They mysteriously cease for two days on 15 and 16 November, but recommence on 17
November. (1936 diary, p.164-165) Dove continues to draw the moon every day until the end of the year.
The new 1937 diary contains no moon drawings.(1937 diary, p.2) The drawings do not directly
correspond to any established system of astronomical recording. The lunar notations, with their symbolic
shadows and arrows (which change and move in each drawing), might be said to represent an individual
system that Dove invented to document his observations in a personal and meaningful way.
In addition to observing the moon during Reds absence, Dove also began listening to the radio. Dove
wrote in a letter to Stieglitz:
Am still alone herefor a week longer probablyuntil Reds mother leaves hospital. Has to stay in that
damned plaster cast for 5-6 months longer. My brother is south, left his radio here. The moment I turned
it on, it played Beethoven, and Bach right after. Nothing since but trash and politics. They should extend
that 200 feet from the polls to the whole country for electioneering. Have given it up except at 6:30 A.M.
when you get the time and the weather. It cheapens silence so.
14

Yet, it seems Dove did listen to more than the time and the weather on the radio, he must have heard at
least two musical performances for which the paintings From the Radio are evidence.

Figure 4. View of label, verso of The Moon Was Laughing at Me. Photo by author.


Figure 5. View of label, verso of Me and the Moon. Photo by author.
Six days after Reds returned from Hartford, she noted in the diary on 15 November, In AM Arthur did
an alive small music thing.
15
(1936 diary, p.164) The creation of this alive small music thing
corresponds to the day Dove neglected to record the moon in his diary, suggesting that either the
company of his wife, or his engagement with the painting eradicated his need, or distracted him from the
ritual of observing and recording the moon that night. On 2 December, Dove wrote: Did small Moon is
Laughing at Me
16
(1936 diary, p 172). The entry for 24 January records, I [painted] Me and the
Moon.
17
(1937 diary, p. 14) On 14 February, Reds wrote, Arthur started the second painting on From
the Radio, song with moon in it.
18
(1937 diary, p. 24) The diary shows Dove worked on his painting
From the Radio (Me and the Moon)for the next four days and finished it on 17 February 1937.
19

(1937 diary, p.25-26) The titles The Moon Was Laughing at Me and Me and the Moon correspond to
the printed titles on the verso labels of both works, written in what appears to be Doves own hand. The
additional inscription Radio on the lower left corners of both labels further proves their association.
20

Dove also retained the quotations as part of the paintings official titles in an annual inventory written in
the back of a diary.
21
(1935-37 diary, p 57)
During his career, Dove painted approximately seventeen paintings related to music between 1913 and
1944. The pinnacle of this activity came in 1927 when he painted six canvases inspired by jazz music. He
exhibited them at Stieglitzs Intimate Gallery in December 1927 and January 1928 (1927 exhibition
catalog): George GershwinRhapsody in Blue, Part I (1927) (Figure 6); George GershwinRhapsody
in Blue, Part II (1927) (Figure 7); George GershwinIll Build a Stairway to Paradise (1927) (Figure
8); Orange Grove in CaliforniaIrving Berlin (1927) (Figure 9); Rhythm Rag (1927); and Improvision
(1927) (Figure 10).
22
Doves 1920s jazz paintings have been discussed in terms of the music-painting
analogy, abstraction, and his interest in synesthesia within the context of the growing importance of jazz
music and popular culture for American artists.
23
More recently, Harry Cooper and Rachael DeLue have
considered specifically Doves transcription to abstract painting the sounds he had heard on phonograph
records, and the intersection of his art with forms of early twentieth-century technology.
24
The paintings
From the Radio relate to Doves larger musical oeuvre, but are unique in their specificity: both
temporally, through the transitory experience of hearing a song on the radio; and, as I will show, in
subject matter, through their equivalence to a very specific subjective experience. Was it Reds absence
or presence that inspired the artist to identify with the moon? The objects themselves, with their
suggestive song titles, provide an interpretive key.

Figure 6. Arthur Dove, George GershwinRhapsody in Blue, Part I, 1927, Oil and metallic paint with
clock spring on aluminum support, 11! x 9!, Collection Andrew Crispo.


Figure 7. Arthur Dove, George GershwinRhapsody in Blue, Part II, 1927, Oil, metallic paint, and ink
on paper, 20" x 15" in., Michael Scharf G.I.T.


Figure 8. Arthur Dove, George GershwinIll Build a Stairway to Paradise, 1927, Ink, metallic paint,
and oil on paperboard, 20 x 15 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of the William H. Lane Foundation


Figure 9. Arthur Dove, Orange Grove in CaliforniaIrving Berlin, 1927, Oil on board, 20 1/16 x 15 in.,
Fundacin Coleccin Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.


Figure 10. Arthur Dove, Improvision, Oil on building board, 15" x 14". Andrew Crispo Gallery, New
York.
Without the written evidence in the Doves diaries, it is unlikely a viewer would recognize the radio
paintings relationship as a pair. The size of Me and the Moon, at 18 x 26 inches is almost three times
larger than its minute counterpart, The Moon Was Laughing at Me, which measures only 6# by 8#
inches. The relative clarity and central composition of Doves second painting is counteracted by the first
paintings confusion of flat, puzzled forms of pastel yellows and pinks, against dark and muddied blues
and reds. The moons indistinct edges melt into a blue-green haze. Its placement in the top left corner of
the canvas is more conventional than its counterpart; it appears punctuated by forms reaching from below,
pulling it towards a foreground of nocturnal colors. By contrast, Dove centers Me and the Moon on the
glowing presence of the moon itself, framed on its north side by a single white looping line, and crossing
diagonal waves of blue, tan, and ochre. Examinations of the paintings namesakes provide meaningful
guidance towards understanding the ambiguity of these abstractions.
When Reds returned home to her husband, the first painting Dove created was The Moon Was Laughing
at Me. The title must be a variation of the song title, The Moon is Grinning at Me, recorded by the
Mills Blue Rhythm Band on 15 October 1936, during the span of Reds absence.
25
In an upbeat and
playful tone, the teasing lyrics narrate the story of the moon tricking the vocalist into falling in love with
a woman who breaks his heart:
The Moon is Grinning at Me , Mills Blue Rhythm Band, 1936
The moon is grinning at me for falling in love with you,
The stars are smiling at me for thinking that youd be true,
How they knew youd let me down, give me the well-known run around, They knew youd be unfair, still
they made me care,
They really played a joke on me.
The moon is grinning at me for giving my heart to you,
He knew youd break it in two, was that a nice thing to do?
I know Ill never trust the moon, not even in a night in June,
The moon is grinning at me for falling in love with you.
Dove must have enjoyed the song and decided to modify the title to better suit the story of his own
experience; the moon laughing at him over his heartache. In this context, the tiny painting represents a
kind of private joke.
By substituting laughter for grinning, in the title of this painting, Dove may have been referencing the
theories of Henri Bergson, whose book, Laughter, Dove most likely knew. Reds recorded in the diary in
the 1920s that Dove bought Bergson books.
26
(1925 diary, p. 44) Bergson describes the comic spirit
embodied in laughter as a living thing. His definition supports the hypothesis that Dove imagined the
moon as a living companion:
The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what
is strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful, charming and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will
never be laughable. You may laugh at an animal, but only because you have detected in it some human
attitude or expression.
27

Bergson goes on to assert that the comic needed company, or other intelligences, in order to function.
He writes,
You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others. Laughter appears to
stand in need of an echo. Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is
something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning
with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in the mountain. It can travel within as
wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the
laughter of a group.
28

If Dove followed Bergson, then he could not appreciate laughter during his separation from Reds. It was
her return which allowed him to experience the laughter of the moon and paint The Moon Was Laughing
at Me one week after she arrived home.
29
If laughter needed an echo, as Bergson claimed, Dove surely
found his echo in Reds.
The second painting From the Radio finds its namesake in the song Me and the Moon, composed by
Walter Hirsch and Lou Handman. Hal Kemp and his Orchestra recorded the song in July 1936, with
vocals by Maxine Grey.
30
The period between 1934 and 1937 was the height of the Hal Kemp Orchestras
commercial success and Me and the Moon was one of their billboard chart-toppers. In contrast to the
good-humored, mischievous quality of The Moon is Grinning at Me, Me and the Moon has a slower,
dreamier melody. A reading of the songs lyrics against the context of Reds absence is revealing:
Me and the Moon , Hal Kemp Orchestra, 1936
Me and the Moon are wondering where you can be
Me and the Moon are lonely for your company
Ive asked the Moon to find you
Somewhere behind a star
I want him to remind you
How dear to me you are
Me and the Moon are gazing through a hazy light
All too soon I lost you on a somber night
Im afraid of the dawn cause you and the Moon will both be gone
Theres Me and the Moon and pretty soon itll just be me.
The content of the lyrics paired with the chronology of recent events in Doves life strongly suggest that
the artist heard this song during the fall of 1936 while he was separated from his wife, causing him to
conjure up the idea for this painting.

Figure 11. Arthur Dove, Me and the Moon, undated. Pencil, 7 x 10 in. The Phillips Collection, Gift of
William E. OReilly in memory of Leland Bell and Lawrence Gowing, 1991


Figure 12. Photograph of Me and the Moon under infrared lighting. Courtesy Phillips Collection,
Conservation department.
Around 1930, Dove began making preparatory sketches regularly. Reds would say, Arthurs gone out
prowling.
31
He typically made small sketches, drawings, or watercolors while out and returned to the
studio to realize them on canvas.
32
While I have been unable to locate a sketch for The Moon Was
Laughing at Me, a drawing at the Phillips Collection pictures the preliminary idea for Me and the
Moon, which is virtually unchanged in the final product (Figure 11). Dove periodically went to the local
Agricultural Experiment Station to use its pantograph enlarger, which is perhaps how he enlarged the
drawing so precisely.
33
In addition to their formal relationship, the drawing contains the title Me and the
Moon, written in the bottom right-hand corner. Whether or not Dove first heard the song, or made the
drawing is not critical, since either way he willfully attributed the forms in the drawing to the song.
An examination of the painting with infrared light shows a correspondence between elements in the paint
surface matched in the ground layers, such as the looping line that frames the north side of the moon.
34

(Figure 12) Infrared light also reveals an additional looping line with smaller, more numerous loops on
the lower, right side of the moon beneath surface layers of paint. Perhaps Dove considered adding more
detail to express the cadences of the musical instruments in the song, as he had in earlier music paintings,
like George GershwinRhapsody in Blue, Part II (1927), and Orange Grove in California by Irving
Berlin (1927), where the lines burst forth with jazz energy. He may have eliminated the extra looping
lines to evoke a quieter mood, and maintain a composition of relative simplicity in correspondence with
the songs tone.
Doves diary entries, containing moon drawings sketched during Reds absence, combined with the lyrics
of the paintings song title suggest the artist thought of his wife each night as he gazed at the moon.
Looking at the moon and imagining others engaged in a similar act is a well-known romantic means of
connection. Me and the Moon commemorates the loneliness Dove experienced during the time the idea
for the work formed. The balanced composition and muted, cool colors express calm, maybe sadness
perhaps a somber night, to quote the lyrics. The top right quarter of the painting, with brown waves of
color, may signal the earth to represent the coming dawna dreaded dawn, according to the song, since
the moon could no longer serve as a companion. Symbolically the moon may appear broken in half;
perhaps it signifies heartbreak. The frenetic lines of the 1927 jazz paintings have given way to the clarity
of just two meandering lines. The bright, chaotic variety of colors evoking the 1920s jazz bands have
been reduced to about four colors in calm, muted tones. The radio paintings formal differences from the
earlier music works match the emotion and intimate meaning they memorialize.
A second possible definition for radio emerges when considering Doves interest in science, theosophy,
and the occult. Dove did not conform to any single religion or school of thought, but culled his beliefs
from many sources and influences.
35
In the 1920s, the Doves became close friends with Stieglitzs niece,
Elizabeth Davidson, and her husband, Donald. The Davidsons practiced Vedanta, a school of Hinduism
concerned with teaching the individual to seek direct experience with his or her true nature to ultimately
identify with the Supreme Soul. It holds that each person is qualified to attain the highest illumination if
they are willing to put forth sincere and intense effort. The Davidsons brought Eastern thought into the
Doves lives, sending books, and visiting them often. Dove often mentioned the Davidsons astrological
predictions in the diaries and in letters to both Stieglitz and Reds.
Doves writings reflect the Davidsons influence and his own belief in telepathy. In an unpublished
manuscript from 1928-29, Dove mused over the publics need for modern invention, and its failure to
acknowledge the telepathic powers of Eastern medicine men throughout history (typewritten essays, p.
16-17):
Their most sensitive individuals [the Chinese] could do things a thousand years ago that our modern
world is all stirred up inventing instruments to do. We think it remarkable to be able to hear what is now
happening at a distance with ear phones clamped to our heads, and many of those fine old individuals in
the eastern countries thought nothing of doing the same thing in the present, past, or future.
36

Dove proposes there is no need for a new technological device when a person already possesses the tools
for communication within himself. He continued,
The human being is probably born with a far finer radio outfit than he ever invents for himself afterward.
More people who have this gift are appearing every dayThis so called sixth sense is very closely
connected with what is being done by the moderns in painting, literature, and music. They may not admit
it, but it is.
37

Doves son, William Dove, told Sherry Cohn in an interview, Father believed that he had certain
powers.
38

The written correspondence between Dove and Reds during their separation further documents Doves
belief that he could telepathically communicate across time and space. After the first night without his
wife, Dove wrote to her (correspondence, p. 11-12):
It was so lovely to dream of you last night am going to concentrate to-night.I will mail this on way to
Nebels for dinner. Wont stay long. I got work to do to-night concentration! Do not want to pull for you
so hard you will be unhappy but I miss you awful.
39

Three days later Dove dreamt of Reds again (correspondence, p. 14-15):
This morning answering the telephone in a dreamYou were there and I was hugging you. It seemed so
real and lovely. Wanted to spend the morning in bed to see if I could get you again.Feel as though I
were in a strange country and didnt know the language. I need you so.
The passage suggests Dove believed he could deliberately channel Reds through his dreams. He also
suggested that they were always connected: Love so much darling. How I would love to have you here.
Am going to chain us together when you done. We are anyway always.
40
Perhaps these ambiguous
dream states and telepathic attempts, or pulling, are what Dove abstracts into The Moon Was
Laughing at Me.
Knowing Doves belief in telepathy and cosmic radio connections, his paintings invite a more nuanced
definition of radionot only as an electronic audio device, but radio waves as celestial transmitters of
communication. The blue and brown stripes of color in Me and the Moon may be interpreted not only
as landscape elements, but as radio waves vibrating across expanses of earth. In another undated
manuscript Dove wrote, We want something white somewhere/ a crystal/ A transparent thing with which
we can seesee ourselvesthat crystal mirror is inIn some it is colored in some it has no color
working.
41
(handwritten essays, p. 5) The suggestion of a mirror from which to see oneself conjures the
idea of Me and the Moon as a kind of reflection, which might account for the moons unusual
compositional placement in the bottom half of the painting, as a reflection in water. Doves feeling that
the color white contained the power of communication enables a symbolism of the white lines that
meander across the canvas of Me and the Moon as a kind of radio wave, reaching out from Geneva to
connect with Reds so far away.
While this interpretation might seem excessively literal, it was, in fact, in Doves nature to be rather
flatfooted, and to relate to his works on an extremely personal level. Dove often wrote of his work in
terms of portraiture. In a letter updating Stieglitz on his progress in 1930, Dove wrote:
Just hit a high spot along with labor pains that may be All too human. Just feel that a small 4 x 5
drawing this afternoon may open up the way to self-portraiture in painting which after all is what painting
isIt is strange what we have to go through to find out that we are through.
42


Figure 13. Arthur Dove, Bessie of New York, 1932, Baltimore Museum of Art


Figure 14. Arthur Dove, Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry, 1924, Oil, folding wooden ruler, wood, and
printed paper pasted on canvas, 22 x 18 in., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Alfred Stieglitz
Collection, 1949 (29.70.36)


Figure 15. Arthur Dove, Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, 1925, Camera lens, photographic plate, clock and
watch springs, and steel wool on cardboard, 15 7/8 x 12 1/8 in., The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Purchase


Figure 16. Arthur Dove, Reds, c. 1926, watercolor, pencil, hair on paper, 9 1/4 x 8 3/4 in., Collection
unknown (Barbara Mathes Gallery, c. 1984).


Figure 17. Arthur Dove, Sunrise I, 1936, Wax emulsion on canvas, 25 x 35 in, National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C., Shein Collection.


Figure 18. Arthur Dove, Sunrise II, 1936, Wax emulsion on canvas, 25 x 35 in., Mr. and Mrs. Meredith J.
Long.


Figure 19. Arthur Dove, Sunrise III, 1936, Wax emulsion and oil on canvas, 25 x 35 in., Yale University
Art Gallery, Gift of Katherine S. Dreier to the Collection Socit Anonyme.
His choice of words suggests the intense energy Dove put into creating his works, almost as if he was
giving birth to them. During an earlier moment in his career, after an extended struggle to paint, Doves
creativity burst forth (soon after he met Reds for the first time). He wrote to Stieglitz, have five or six
drawings or paintings that are almost self-portraits in spite of their having been done from outside things.
They seem more real than anything yet. It is great to be at it again, feel more like a person than I have in
years.
43
Painting made Dove feel alive, and in turn, he felt intimately connected to objects he produced.
Once in 1933, Duncan Phillips suggested Dove cut off a portion of his painting Bessie of New York
(1932) (Figure 13). Dove was incensed and apparently had to rewrite his first letter, telling Phillips, I
suppose I just naturally dreaded thinking of a major operation on one of the paintings. They get to be like
people to me.
44

The anthropomorphic qualities with which Dove imbued his work raises the question of portraiture in the
paintings From the Radio. Many of Doves collages in the 1920s are abstract portraits of people close
to him. They include homages to his neighbor, Ralph Dusenberry (1924) (Figure 14), a Portrait of Alfred
Stieglitz (1925) (Figure 15), and his Grandmother (1925). Reds was also the subject of one of his collages
in 1926, commemorating her by including a lock of her red hair (Figure 16). The Moon Was Laughing
at Me and Me and the Moon, by the very nature of their titles and the narratives told in their lyrics
cannot be purely self-portraits, since they include the character of the moon. Based on the lyrics, I would
also negate the possibility of the moon symbolizing Reds. For example, in the lyrics for the first radio
painting, The moon is grinning at me for falling in love with you,the moon grins at Dove for falling in
love with Reds. In the second case: Me and the Moon are wondering where you can be, Me and the
Moon are lonely for your company,the moon joins Dove in yearning for Reds presence. True to earlier
examples then, and in line with Bergsons Laughter, Dove assigned a human quality to the moon, and
memorialized his connection to it in these works. Therefore, the paintings are not portraits in the
traditional sense, but analogues for his experience.
What about the relationship of the moon paintings From the Radio to the sunrises that shone so bright
in Doves 1937 show? In the days leading up to his mother-in-laws injury, Dove was making watercolor
studies for what would become his Sunrise series.
45
(1936 diary, p. 114). After Reds departed for
Hartford, Dove painted Sunrise I (Figure 17) from 29 August to 23 September (1936 diary, p. 124). The
first moon drawings in the diary begin the next day on 24 September. In the following months, while
alone, he painted Sunrise II (Figure 18), Sunrise III (Figure 19), Slaughter House, Outlet, and Pigs.
46

The Sunrise series has often been discussed in terms of pantheism and Doves transcendental worship of
nature. Turner and Sarah Greenough have discussed the phallic nature of the paintings as a narrative tale
of creation.
47
Frederick Wight called the series a descriptive sequence in impregnation.
48
Based on the
evidence presented here, the possibility of the paintings as representative of sexual frustration may also be
introduced. However, since the sun was on Doves mind before Reds left, her absence was not the sole
inspiration for his interest in taking up the subject. Another rare event punctuated Doves routine in 1936,
one that probably continued to weigh on his mind.
In April 1936, Dove and Reds took their first and only trip to New York City during the five years they
resided in Geneva. The two-week trip included visits to An American Place to see Doves annual show,
and to the Museum of Modern Art, where Alfred Barr had assembled an ambitious display in the
landmark exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.
49
Dove was not included in the show, but recorded in the
diary that it was a fine show of abstractions.
50
(1936 diary, p. 56) While Barr would include Dove in the
MoMAs exhibition, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism later that December, he appears to have
overlooked Doves early abstractions and neglected to credit his importance. Doves reputation had been
firmly established by the late 1920s as a leading member of the American avant-garde, but was he still
relevant? Turner notes that this omission, combined with Jewells scathing criticism would have given
Dove pause.
51
In light of this chronology, Dove may have taken up the Sunrises in order to reassert his
role as the man in painting, a role accentuated by Reds absence.
Debra Bricker Balken and Marcia Brennan have written about the male role assigned to Dove within the
Stieglitz circle.
52
As early as 1921, Paul Rosenfeld called Dove, along with John Marin, the male
counterparts to the feminized persona of Georgia OKeeffe.
53
In Rosenfelds Port of New York (1924), he
wrote, For Dove is very directly the man in painting, precisely as Georgia OKeeffe is the female;
neither type had been known in quite the degree of purity before.
54
Rosenfeld also equated Doves work
in reference to his body, writing that his creation of art had the power of making all of its bodily
functions sweet by relating the whole of life to that function.
55
Stieglitz, Sherwood Anderson, Waldo
Frank, and Edmund Wilson would all perpetuate Doves male role in painting throughout his career.
56

In an oft quoted letter to Stieglitz in December 1930, Dove critiqued Samuel Kootzs reading of
OKeeffes work in his recently released book, Modern American Painters (1930). In his analysis, Kootz
asserted that OKeeffes early work showed a womanly preoccupation with sex, an uneasy selection of
phallic symbols in her flowers, which, while being a woman and only secondarily an artist, the
assertion of her sex impeded her talent.
57
In an offense to her capability, Kootz declared that it was not
OKeeffes painting which aroused the public, but the subject of femininity itself. Dove admired the book
as a whole but questioned Kootzs criticism of OKeeffes supposed inclusion of sex subjects in her work
because she was a woman. Dove responded in a letter to Stieglitz,
In the first part of the book he justly criticizes the sexless thinking of the men painters of this country and
then proceeds to demand less sex of the woman OKeeffe A persons way of painting fits his
feeling.The bursting of a phallic symbol into white light may be the thing we all need. Otherwise it
would not bother them so.
58

Doves Sunrise series is, in effect, a response to Kootzs denigration of OKeeffes work. His blatantly
phallic works answer his own proposal for freedom of sexual subjects, as the persons painting fit his
feeling. Doves isolation and separation from his wife, paired with his deep-seated role as the man in
painting fueled Doves production of the powerful, autonomous Sunrises during his days alone.
Returning to the 1937 exhibition at An American Place, William Einstein wrote of Dove in the catalogue,
Dove, speaking a modern language, tells ageless truths about naturetrees, hills, day with the sun, night
with the moon.All work of qualitypaintings, music, or craft-mechanical or otherwiseexists in a world
of truththe truth to be readbut it takes some effort to attain a certain spirit.
59

Perhaps one of the great successes of Doves work is its ability to be at once universal and highly
individual. While the viewer may find ageless truths in Doves paintings, the works simultaneously
document ephemeral, intensely personal episodesa truth to be read perhaps only in Doves personal
diaries. Isolated in Geneva, his most cherished support, Reds, had suddenly vanished, leaving him alone
to spend days with the sun and nights with the moon. Reds absence contributed to the sexual frustration
so evident within the sunrise paintings. Her absence also inspired Dove to look to the moon, but it was
her presence which enabled him to paint it.
It appears that The Moon Was Laughing at Me and Me and the Moon are Doves only paintings
From the Radio.
60
If he intended to produce others, his plans were cut short by Stieglitzs short notice
that he was ready to hang Doves annual exhibition
61
(1937 diary, p. 24). Dove received Stieglitzs letter
on 13 February 1937 and the next day, on 14 February, Dove took up Me and the Moon. He was
obviously anxious to have it included in his upcoming show, as a mate to his first and already completed
radio painting. It must be coincidence that Dove created the painting on Valentines Day, but it supports
the notion that the radio paintings are commemorations of Doves experience without his beloved wife by
his side, when he looked to the sky for comfort and companionship.
Notes
1 ! This essay was written as a result of a graduate seminar held jointly at the University of Virginia and
the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., taught by Professor Elizabeth Hutton Turner. I am extremely
grateful to my professors and colleagues at the University of Virginia, and to the staff at the Phillips for
their assistance during my research and writing, especially to Matthew Affron, Patti Favero, Karen
Schneider, Roberta K. Tarbell, and most of all, Professor Turner, for her invaluable guidance.
This essay relies heavily on Elizabeth Hutton Turners scholarship of Doves Geneva years. See Elizabeth
Hutton Turner, Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938, in Debra Bricker Balken, William C. Agee, and
Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Arthur Dove: A Retrospective. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips
Academy, and The Phillips Collection.(Andover, Massachusetts: Addison Gallery of American Art,
1997), 95-113.
2 ! Edward Alden Jewell, The Realm of Art: Comment on Current Shows, New York Times, 26 April,
1936, sec. 9, 7.
3 ! Entry 14 April, 1936. Arthur and Helen Torr Dove Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution [hereafter Dove Papers], Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
4 ! Sherwood Anderson to Dove, 12 April, 1937. The Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia OKeeffe Archives,
manuscript 85, series 1, box 2, Yale Collection of American Literature. Quoted in Elizabeth Hutton
Turner, Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938, in Debra Bricker Balken, William C. Agee, and Elizabeth
Hutton Turner, Arthur Dove: A Retrospective. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, and
The Phillips Collection.(Andover, Massachusetts: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1997), 107.
5 ! Diary entries mention paintings From the Radio in entries 14-17, February 1937, Dove Papers,
Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9). Ann Lee Morgan identified The
Moon Was Laughing at Me as named after a popular song in her catalogue raisonn, but does not
recognize the work as one of a pair with Me and the Moon. Donna M. Cassidy was the first to discover
the radio paintings as a pair and connect them with the diary entries and popular songs heard on the radio.
Donna M. Cassidy, Jazz Paintings and National Identity: The Abstract Art of Arthur Dove and Stuart
Davis, in Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940.
(Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1997), 92, 172. And Donna M. Cassidy, The Painted Music
of America in the works of Arthur G. Dove, John Marin, and Joseph Stella: An Aspect of Cultural
Nationalism. PhD Diss. (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Press, 1988), 141-142. See also Ann Lee Morgan. Arthur
Dove: Life and Work. With a Catalogue Raisonn. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 233.
6 ! Duncan Phillips acquired the works separately, and it is doubtful he knew or cared about their
identities as a musical pair. Phillips assistant, Elmira Bier recommended he purchase Me and the
Moon from Doves 1937 exhibition after seeing the show in March. Phillips was distracted by
negotiations with Stieglitz to purchase Doves collage Goin Fishin (1925), which he did for $2,000, the
highest price Dove had received for any work. Consequently, Stieglitz took Me and the Moon as a
replacement for his own collection. Two months after this acquisition, Phillips wrote to Dove expressing
his regret in missing Me and the Moon, calling it a masterpiecewhich was purchased before I had a
chance to get it. It is a glorious picture. (Phillips to Dove, 26 May 1937, Phillips Collection Archives.)
Sometime after he acquired it, Phillips changed the paintings title from Me and the Moon, to Rise of
the Full Moon, thereby erasing its musical identity. While this was not unusual for the collector, who
frequently altered the titles of his acquisitions, it shows a certain disregard for the works association with
a song. For Phillips Collection title changes, see Sasha M. Newman, Arthur Dove and Duncan Phillips:
Artist and Patron. (Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection, in association with George Braziller, Inc.,
New York), 54. Phillips later deaccessioned The Moon Was Laughing at Me in 1943 whereby he gifted
it to Elmira Bier. It returned to the museums collection through Biers bequest in 1976.
7 ! Dove to Stieglitz, 18 May 1933, Ann Lee Morgan, ed. Dear Stieglitz, Dear Dove. (Newark:
University of Delaware, 1988), 271.
8 ! Dove to Stieglitz, June 1933, Morgan 1988, 276.
9 ! For more on Dove and Reds relationship before and after their time in Geneva, see Anne Cohen
DePietro, Arthur Dove and Helen Torr: The Huntington Years. The Heckscher Museum. Huntington,
New York, 1989.
10 ! Entries 13 August 1936, 14 August 1936, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-
1945. (Box 2, Folder 9). The handwriting changes noticeably from Reds to Doves hand when Reds
takes leave.
11 ! According to the diaries and letters between Dove and Stieglitz, Reds left Geneva on 14 August
1936 and returned 8 November 1937. See Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945.
(Box 2, Folder 9) and Morgan 1988, 357-364.
12 ! Dove Papers, Series 2: Correspondence. Family Correspondence. Arthur Dove to Helen Torr Dove,
1933-1934, 1936. (Box 1, Folders 32-36).
13 ! In entry 31 October 1936, Dove writes Reds to be home Sunday night, which would be 8
November. The entry on 8 November contains no mention of Reds, but her handwriting reappears in the
diaries 10 November. As far as I have seen, the moon drawings are unique to these entries. I have not
found any drawings or notations comparable to these in Doves diaries between 1925 and 1945.
14 ! Dove to Stieglitz, 24 October 1936. Morgan, 362-363.
15 ! Entry 15 November 1936, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writing: Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
16 ! Entry 2 December 1936, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
17 ! Entry 24 January 1937, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
18 ! Entries 14-17 February 1937. Reds eventually could not recall the title for Me and the Moon
when she made her entry on February 14th, only that it was a song with a moon in it. Dove Papers, Series
3: Writings. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
19 ! Entry 15 February 1937, Took down the frame for From the Radio; 16 February 1937, Arthur
working on From the Radio.; 17 February 1937, Arthur finished From the Radio. The next day
Dove Reds recorded, Arthur worked on Silo. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries, 1927-1945.
(Box 2, Folder 9).
20 ! The word Radio is clearly written on the label for The Moon Was Laughing at Me. The label for
Me and the Moon has been torn, but by comparing them one can make out the top of the word Radio.
The handwriting on these labels appears to match Doves script in his diaries and writings.
21 ! Back of 1935 diary, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 8).
22 ! Arthur G. Dove Paintings, 1927. The Intimate Gallery: Room 303. December 12January 11 1927-
28. The Anderson Galleries Building, 489 Park Avenue, New York, n.p. Improvision may or may not be
intentionally misspelled, in homage to Kandinskys Improvisations. See Cassidy, Arthur Doves Music
Paintings,19, 55. Rhythm Rag is lost and no image exists.
23 ! See Judith Zilczer, Synaesthesia and Popular Culture: Arthur Dove, George Gershwin, and the
Rhapsody in Blue, Art Journal 44 No. 4 (Winter 1984): 361-366; Cassidy, The Painting Music;
Donna M. Cassidy, Arthur Doves Music Paintings of the Jazz Age, American Art Journal 20 No. 1
(1988): 4-23.; Cassidy, Jazz Paintings; Judith Zilczer, Music for the Eyes: Abstract Painting and Light
Art, in Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. (Thames and Hudson), 25-82.
24 ! See Harry Cooper, Arthur Dove Paints a Record, Source Notes in the History of Art 44 No. 2
(Winter 2005): 70-77.; Rachael Z. DeLue, Arthur Dove, painting, and phonography, History and
Technology 27 No. 1 (March 2011): 113-121.
25 ! CD Insert, Mills Blue Rhythm Band 1936-1937, The Chronological Classics, Classics Records,
1993.
26 ! An excerpt from Laughter called On the Object of Art, was published in Camera Work (which
Dove subscribed to) No. 37, January 1912. Cohn cites that Reds also recorded in the diary that Dove
bought books by Bergson in December 1925. See entries 15 December 1925 and 19 December 1925,
which reads bought more Bergson books. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1924-1926.
(Box 1, Folder 53). Cohn, 51.
27 ! Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. (MacMillan Company, 1913), 3.
28 ! Ibid., 5.
29 ! It is worth noting that Dove also altered the song title from the present to past tense, substituting is
for was, further indicating the painting as representative of a memory.
30 ! CD insert, The Best of Hal Kemp and His Orchestra. Collectors Choice Music, Sony Music Special
Products, Sony Musical Entertainment Inc., 2000.
31 ! Quoted but not cited in Sherrye Cohn. Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI
Research Press, 1985), 1.
32 ! I have been unable to locate watercolor sketches for The Moon Was Laughing at Me, or Me and
the Moon. One may assume that if there were any Dove would have included them in the 1937
exhibition, as he did for most of the other works on display. See Melanie Kirschner, Arthur Dove:
Watercolors and Pastels. (New York: George Braziller Publishers, 1998), 36-44.
33 ! Turner, Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938, 102.
34 ! My thanks to Patti Favero and the conservation department at the Phillips Collection for this
information.
35 ! For a detailed discussion, see Cohns chapters, Science: Abstractions Rationale and Theosophy:
A Spiritual Focus, 19-80.
36 ! Unpublished manuscript, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Writings by Arthur Dove. Typewritten
Essays, 1928-1929. (Box 3, Folder 3).
37 ! Ibid.
38 ! Cohn, 56. Cohn cites her interview with William Dove, 14 October 1980.
39 ! Dove to Reds, 15 August 1936. Dove Papers, Series 2: Correspondence. Family Correspondence.
Arthur Dove to Helen Torr Dove, 1933-1934, 1936. (Box 1, Folder 32).
40 ! Dove to Reds, 28 August 1936, Dove Papers, Series 2: Correspondence. Family Correspondence.
Arthur Dove to Helen Torr Dove, 1933-1934, 1936. (Box 1, Folder 33).
41 ! Undated manuscript, Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Writings by Arthur Dove. Handwritten
Essays, undated. (Box 2, Folder 17).
42 ! Dove to Stieglitz, 11 July 1930. Morgan 1988, 194.
43 ! Dove to Stieglitz, probably August 1921. Morgan 1988, 75.
44 ! Dove to Duncan Phillips, probably 16-18 May 1933, in Elizabeth Hutton Turner, In the American
Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia OKeeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz: The Stieglitz
Circle at the Phillips Collection. (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1995), 149, 151.
45 ! Reds recorded in the diary: 9 August 1936 Arthur did a beautiful sunrise-sunspots-watercolor; 10
August 1936 Arthur did another lovely sunrise-2 sunspots-water; 11 August 1936 Arthur did a sun;
12 August 1936Arthur did another swell sun. Reds mother fell on 13 August and Reds departed on 14
August 1936. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9).
46 ! See diary entries from 29 August 1936 to 8 November 1936. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings.
Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder 9). Dove doesnt paint Sunrise IV until 1937.
47 ! See Turner, Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938, 106-107. And Sarah Greenoughs catalogue entry
for Doves Sunrise I, in Charles Brock and Nancy Anderson, American Modernism: The Shein
Collection. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2010), 56-59.
48 ! Frederick S. Wight, Arthur G. Dove. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), 68.
49 ! While Barr focused mostly on European abstraction, he did include Man Ray and Alexander Calder.
50 ! Entry 17 April 1936. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box 2, Folder
9).
51 ! Turner, Going Home: Geneva, 1933-1938, 105.
52 ! See Debra Bricker Balkens essay Continuities and Digressions in the Work of Arthur Dove from
1907 to 1933, in Arthur Dove: A Retrospective, 17-35. And Marcia Brennans chapter Arthur Dove and
Georgia OKeeffe: Corporeal Transparency and Strategies of Inclusion, in her book Painting Gender,
Constructing Theory: The Alfred Stieglitz Circle and American formalist Aesthetics. (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2001), 96-135.
53 ! See Paul Rosenfeld, American Painting, Dial 71 (December 1921), 666.
54 ! Paul Rosenfeld, Port of New York. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966), 170.
55 ! Ibid, 169.
56 ! Balken, Continuities and Digressions in the Work of Arthur Dove from 1907 to 1933, 27.
57 ! Samuel M. Kootz, Modern American Painters. (Norwood, Mass.: Plimpton Press, Brewer & Warren
Inc., 1930), 49.
58 ! Dove to Stieglitz, 4 December 1930. Morgan 1988, 201-202.
59 ! William Einstein, Arthur G. Dove, In Arthur G. Dove New Oils and Water Colors. Exh. Cat. An
American Place, New York. Introduction by William Einstein. March 23-April 16, 1937, n.p.
60 ! The radio paintings were not, however, Doves last paintings after music. In 1938 he painted Swing
Music (Louis Armstrong) and later Primitive Music (1944), discussed by Zilczer, Music for the Eyes,
62-67. In her article, Rachael DeLue footnotes that she will address the pair I have described From the
Radio, along with Swing Music (Louis Armstrong) in terms of their relation to the record pictures and
consider as well the role of other communication and sound technologies in her forthcoming book,
Arthur Dove and the Art of Translation, DeLue, Arthur Dove, painting, and phonography, 120.
61 ! Reds wrote in the diary, Letter from Stieglitz saying Arthur is to be nexthis show to be hung by
March 18. Entry 13 February, 1937. Dove Papers, Series 3: Writings. Diaries. Diaries, 1927-1945. (Box
2, Folder 9).