Jackson Pollock | Thornfield Hall

Query: Where would we live if we had a choice? Not Midwest City 1, nor, we regret to say, even Midwest City 2.

Midwest City 2 was the more attractive of the two, celebrated for old-fashioned virtues, like a viable downtown, safe urban neighborhoods, and an excellent transit system.

But things were changing in the early 21st century. A huge mall was built on the edge of the city. The Chinese Tea Room closed. The department stores closed. Java Joe’s closed, The Breakfast Place and Arnie’s Pizzeria closed. A special section in the newspaper was devoted to restaurant closings.

And that wasn’t the end: deer began to move into the city. When you see a herd of deer in the middle of the street you know something’s wrong with the ecology.

Sometimes, out of sheer idleness when I was new to the city, I went to the nearby art museum. What I loved most was Jackson Pollock’s 1943 painting, Mural, which was on loan from the University of Iowa.

Mural was commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim, and it hung in Peggy’s entrance hall in her townhouse in New York. She donated it to the university in 1951. It was installed in the university’s new museum in 1969.

The more I thought about it, the more impressed I was by Peggy Guggenheim’s intervention in his career, sponsorship of his work, and her influence on critics, curators, and gallery owners. Looking at Mural is dizzying but also oddly calming: the colors and patterns are perfectly intermeshed and one sees faces and animals, as well as other abstract figures. It is enormous: almost 20 feet in length and eight feet high.

Pollock, known for his abstract expressionism, later developed his “drip style,” splattering paint or pouring it directly from the can on the horizontal canvas.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT READING IN THE EARLY 2000s

When we first moved here I spent a lot of time – so much time – reading. I complained to my doctor during the annual checkup: “I’ve already read 100 books this year. Don’t you think that’s strange?” By strange, of course, I meant pathetic.

His reply: “The only strange thing is that you write it down.”

I laughed. Memo to Self: Give Dr. a book!

We are art tourists. We haunt art museums and read art exhibition catalogues. At The National Gallery, we are ecstatic but have fits of the vapors which we treat with inhalers, or rush outside to breathe fresh air if we can find the way out. It is difficult to experience the same rapture at small museums in the midwest. I calculate that we must travel 200-600 miles to see good art, and 600 or more to see great art.

This summer we are not traveling much, but recently visited two art museums in Iowa.

We are fond of Iowa City, though there has been so much “development” that I no longer recognize the skyline. There are hundreds of new condominiums built in a style I call Socialist Chic or Gulag Grit. And the stores are always changing: Iowa Book and Supply, once known as Iowa Book & Crook, no longer sells books, or even supplies, and technically should be renamed Iowa Sweatshirt. The Mill, a popular bar/restaurant, frequented by generations of Writers’ Workshop intelligentsia and carpenters with Ph.D.’s, has actually been demolished.

One thing I was confident of: there was a new art museum. The 1969 building where I used to sit raptly cross-legged in front of my favorite Jackson Pollock painting was pommeled and destroyed by a flood in 2008. A gorgeous new museum finally opened a few years ago. I approve the building, but the most exciting news is: The Jackson Pollock is back. This painting, called Mural, 1943, was Pollock’s largest painting. And it feels like my painting, because I communed with it when I was young. Peggy Guggenheim, who donated it to the university, used to have it in the foyer of her house in New York.

Cedar Rapids is a bigger town, and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is a world-class museum: I do not say this lightly. If you are a fan of regional art, you will go gaga. I was enthralled by Grant Wood’s paintings, and also became acquainted with another regional artist, Marvin Cone, who worked with and traveled abroad with Grant Wood in 1920.

Grant Wood (1891-1942) was born near Anamosa, Iowa, and raised in Cedar Rapids, where he lived off and on most of his life. He is best known for American Gothic, a painting I have never admired. His brilliant American Impressionist paintings, slightly surreal landscapes, poignant portraits, and WPA murals must be seen to evaluate his versatile talent.

Take a look at this rolling landscape with round trees. It looks a bit like pastry. It evokes the pastoral midwest of my childhood, before cell phone towers dotted fields and industrial farmers cut down all the trees. Everything is so very green. No interstate disrupts the peace. I’d love to live in the country – the country of the past.

In 1934 Wood began teaching at the University of Iowa and also worked as the Director of the Public Works of Art Projects in Iowa. I have seen the spectacular murals he designed in Ames at The Iowa State University Library. Wood designed them: other artists painted them. Here is a panel:

Panel of WPA mural designed by Grant Wood

Cone (1891-1965) was obviously influenced by Wood’s style, but his work is quieter and his colors paler. He is famous for his cloudscapes, which are bizarre and indecipherable to me. Still, it is fascinating to see the echoes of Wood’s influence on Cone, who is himself an excellent artist, and it is satisfying to see the art in Cedar Rapids where both Wood and Cone lived and worked.