How Agnes Pelton’s Transcendentalist Desert Scenes Alleviate The Ennui Of Quarantine

Immerse yourself in the hyper-stylized plant life, a captivating star, a splendiferous white swan regaled in a gilded head piece and neck band, a crimson serpentine force slithering across the beguiling landscape. 

Exploring Agnes Pelton’s Ahmi in Egypt (1931) under quarantine is apropos and reassuring, as she spent most of her career depicting scenes from her own meditative stillness.

A wide world of influence permeates Ahmi in Egypt, an engaging marriage of ancient times and Deco delight. The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun’s nearly intact tomb, in excavations funded by Lord Carnarvon, unearthed a new wave of fascination for Egypt. At the same time, Art Deco thundered into building design, furniture, jewelry, fashion, cars, theaters, and nearly every luxury and creature comfort.

The visionary symbolist painter distanced herself from any major art community. Her work is absent of the influence of Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, Conceptualism, Muralism, and Dadaism, all pulsating as she created her own spiritual reality.

“Even before the coronavirus, Agnes Pelton’s work spoke to a need people have for meaning beyond the material,” said Whitney Museum of American Art Curator Barbara Haskell, who oversaw the installation of Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist in New York, along with Sarah Humphreville, senior curatorial assistant. “Today, in a world in which tragedy and uncertainty are forcing a reevaluation of  values, Pelton’s visual assertions of the possibility of transcendent experience and unity with a divine consciousness are more welcome than ever before.”

The first exhibition in more than 24 years to celebrate the long under-recognized American painter opened last month at the Whitney. Some 45 works painted between 1917 and 1960 became available only online when the terrifying spread of COVID-19 brought the physical global art world to a screeching halt. 

Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist traveled from the Phoenix Art Museum, where it was curated by The Selig Family Chief Curator Gilbert Vicario.

“Agnes Pelton’s reemergence in our cultural landscape offers an opportunity to contemplate the complexities embedded in the relationship between abstraction and spirituality,” said Vicario. “Although Agnes was not a recluse and maintained a small group of friends that formed her inner circle, self-isolation and deep meditation were central to her practice, as they allowed her to tap into a creative well that helped her navigate childhood trauma and interpersonal relationships.”

Isolating herself from the mainstream art world, Pelton (1881–1961) lived and worked in relative obscurity. This exhibition gives rise to the enduring enchantment of her gleaming, abstract transcendental master works.

“The imagery that Pelton created reflects her spiritual connection particularly to the desert landscape, which she dramatically frames with earth and sky. Her unique compositions invite deep looking, which in turn can help us, the viewer, reestablish a sense of meditative calm and optimism to help us navigate these uncertain times,” said Vicario. “They can also inspire us to discover new ways to remain intellectually engaged.”

Born to American parents in Stuttgart, Germany, Pelton and her family briefly lived in Basel, Switzerland, before resettling in the United States in 1888.

From 1921 to 1932, she secluded herself in what was then the sleepy hamlet of Water Mill on the South Fork of Long Island. Now a resort haven replete with pristine beaches and stupendous mansions drawing oofy vacationers such as Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Lauer, Senator Frank Lautenberg, and Steven Schwartzman, the focal point of Water Mill during Pelton’s time there was a watermill and a windmill. She moved on to Cathedral City, situated between Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, California. The first housing subdivision was built in 1925, but “Cat City” wasn’t incorporated until 1981.

The lack of critical and peer distraction awakened Pelton’s own perception of how to bring to life the world around her, the world within her. 

“The vibration of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthralled me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright spirit.” _ Agnes Pelton on the California desert.