Henry Varnum Poor, Resident Artist Lecture 1955

Henry Varnum Poor gives a lecture at Skowhegan and shows a series of slides focusing on a selection of 18th and 19th century artists, with a particular focus on the works of Paul Cezanne, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso. Poor draws on these artists, the Italian Renaissance, and the contemporary moment of art, showing the ways in which they were inspired in their practices. Poor uses their trajectories to explain to the participants that being an artist is never about being in a fixed moment, but always oscillating with the artists from the past, as well as the artists who will come after you. Poor further elaborates that it is important to understand these artists in order to make sense of the contemporary moment in painting, and to move the conversation of painting further along. Poor also explores the ways these artists were able to bend the genres they worked in, whether it was the fruit or landscape paintings of Renoir, the vivid colours of Toulouse-Lautrec, the psychological figurative works of Picasso, or the still lifes of Matisse.