Obembe Alaye (Nigerian, 1869-1939)
Wood with red ochre and white pigment, 71 x 5 x 10 3/4 inches
MSU purchase, funded by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum Endowment, 2000.3
Though this work is not signed, based upon its distinctive stylistic features, it has been attributed to Obembe Alaye master carver of Efon-Alaye. Efon-Alaye is in the Ekiti region, in northeast Yorubaland. The artist carved this veranda post as part of a larger architectural program symbolizing the prestige and power of the Yoruba kingdom. A central component to royal palaces, courtyards enclosed by figurative veranda posts were the setting in which the king conducted important matters of state.
Here we see the image of an equestrian warrior being supported by a female figure-a recurring theme in Yoruba art-serving as an allegory of the ideals of spiritual, economic and political power contingent on the harmonious relationship between male and female forces. The prowess of the warrior, essential to the establishment, defense and expansion of political power, rests upon a symbol of motherhood, which embodies the future promise of Yoruba communities.
Aaron Harry Gorson (American, 1872-1933)
Oil on board, 10 x 14 inches
MSU purchase, funded for the 50th Anniversary by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum, 2008.29
Aaron Harry Gorson was born in Koyno (Kaunas), Lithuania, a city with a thriving textile industry. In 1888 he immigrated to the United States to join an older brother in Philadelphia. Gorson soon found employment as a machine operator in a clothing factory, while at night attending classes at the Spring Garden Institute to pursue his dream of becoming a painter.
Gorson settled in Pittsburgh in 1903, and soon after began painting the city's steel mills. Industrial landscapes remained a favorite theme of the artist. Scenes of the Bessemer furnaces, seen here, convey the dark beauty of his subjects; the smoke, soot, and fumes that were characteristic of Pittsburgh's industrial landscape appealed to the artist and were often strong formal elements of his paintings. Here, the scene unfolds in layers: the railroad tracks, line of receding telephone poles, river, bridge and distant steel mill. They are enveloped in the grey, damp misty winter light. As a gritty, industrial image this painting shows a typical Midwest city in the first half of the 20th century.
Mathias Joseph Alten (American, born Germany, 1871-1938)
Oil on canvas, 12 x 15 inches
MSU purchase, funded by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum in honor of the Michigan Sesquicentennial, 86.5
Mathias Joseph Alten fully encapsulates the beauty of his subject, the Grand River near Grand Rapids Michigan, of which he was a resident. The buoyant optimism of the landscape, dominated by a sky filled with energetically painted clouds is blemished only by the recorded appearance of a small factory. Alten diminishes the industrial presence through its small scale and the puny output of its smokestack in relation to the clouds grandeur.