{"id":116581,"date":"2018-06-07T16:41:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T20:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=116581"},"modified":"2018-06-08T12:15:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T16:15:31","slug":"walls-ipcar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/06\/07\/walls-ipcar\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Moons<\/em>: Bates and Walls ’99 arrange a visit with Ipcar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Walls \u201999 was 8 years old when she first met Dahlov Ipcar, one of Maine’s best-known and most-loved artists. Ipcar, known for her children\u2019s books as well as her work in other media, came to Walls\u2019 classroom in Cape Elizabeth through an artist-in-residence program in Maine schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was assigned to work with us for a quarter and teach us how to write and illustrate children\u2019s books,\u201d says Walls, who is now an art dealer and curator, a cultural historian, and an advocate for the arts in education.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
Gallery Talk<\/h5>\n

Rachel Walls ’99, proprietor of Rachel Walls Fine Art in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, offers a gallery talk<\/a> on Blue Moons & Menageries <\/em>at the Bates Museum of Art on June 9.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

That early encounter blossomed into a friendship and professional relationship between Walls and Ipcar, who died in 2017 at age 99.<\/p>\n

Today, Walls is the sole representative of the late Ipcar\u2019s work \u2014 a position that led to her participation in creating the Bates College Museum of Art\u2019s summer 2018 exhibition, Dahlov Ipcar: Blue Moons & Menageries<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dahlov Ipcar chose Indrani Rahman, a famous classical Indian dancer and the grandmother of two Bates alums, as her model for the oil painting “Valley of Tishnar.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Opening June 8, Blue Moons & Menageries<\/em> comprises a stunning range of work by an artist known for her versatility across media. And it includes pieces seldom or never shown in public, including a painting from the 1960s for which the model was the first Miss India (for the Miss World pageant) and the grandmother of two Bates alumni.<\/p>\n

The daughter of prominent modernist artists Marguerite and William Zorach, Ipcar reached a wide audience through the many children\u2019s books she wrote and illustrated. She also maintained a steady studio practice, producing paintings, sculptures, and prints that are widely represented in public and private collections.<\/p>\n

Her work is known for its bold use of color, a dramatic and romantic flair, and its many representations of animals wild and domesticated. Her works “are rich, decorative and, yes, even a little homespun. They are playful, comfortable and homey,” art critic Daniel Kany wrote<\/a> in January for the Maine Sunday Telegram.<\/em><\/p>\n

“But they are also highly sophisticated responses to some of the leading intellectual art movements of Modernism, particularly Cubism and Surrealism.” In 1939, Ipcar was the first woman \u2014 and, at age 21, the youngest artist at that time \u2014 to be featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

For Rachel Walls ’99, an early encounter with the artist Dahlov Ipcar blossomed into a friendship and professional relationship. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Walls\u2019 parents collected work by Ipcar. \u201cI did get the opportunity to visit her at her farm\u201d in Georgetown, Maine, Walls says, \u201cand because my parents were fans of her work, I was aware of when she was going to be in public, and I attended those events.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair reconnected in a more profound way in 2011. Walls, recovering from a serious skiing accident that affected her reading and writing, turned to Ipcar\u2019s children\u2019s books as she recovered those skills. She brought some Ipcar first editions to a book signing, and the artist invited her to the farm for what turned into an ongoing series of visits.<\/p>\n

Ipcar was dealing with her own health setback, and the cruelest one for an artist: gradual loss of her vision because of macular degeneration. She enlisted Walls in an effort to organize information about the life and work of her mother, Marguerite Zorach, and especially to help re-establish Zorach\u2019s artistic credibility, as too often her work was viewed as secondary to that of husband William and even to Ipcar\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Blue Moon Square” (2007) is one of seven works in Dahlov Ipcar’s “Blue Moon” series on display at the Bates art museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ipcar, says Walls, \u201cwanted someone to really document what she felt were important aspects to the cultural significance of Marguerite Zorach in American history and art history.\u201d (Zorach was awarded an honorary degree by Bates in 1964 \u2014 and Ipcar had her own turn in 1991.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we completed that project,\u201d Walls continues, \u201dwe started doing the same thing with Dahlov, to make sure that her legacy was also preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Something that was very much a part of my training at Bates is that, outside math and science, there’s no one answer to anything,” says Walls, a double major in women’s studies and in American cultural studies.<\/p>\n

“It’s all about perspective. I learned how important it is to listen to other perspectives and contextualize how things may have been for somebody else, and how their own experiences left an imprint on how they view and experience life every day.”<\/p>\n

Blue Moons & Menageries<\/em> is full of great stories and surprising connections. The painting \u201cValley of Tishnar,\u201d for instance, has an arcane but fascinating link to Bates. Named for a place in the children’s fantasy book The Three Royal Monkeys<\/em>, this 1966 painting depicts a woman wandering in a jungle with leopards, tigers, zebras, and a peacock.<\/p>\n

If Ipcar\u2019s fantastic side often seems to draw the most attention, the artist made a serious study of educational, artistic, and psychological theory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ipcar\u2019s model for the piece was a famed Indian classical dancer named Indrani Rahman, daughter of an Indian father and American mother. Named Miss India in 1952, Rahman was also the grandmother of two Bates students: Habib Wicks \u201994 and Wardreath Wicks \u201999, Walls\u2019 classmate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, appearing in public for the first time ever are five panels from two murals that Ipcar created in the 1930s. A gift to relatives of Ipcar\u2019s husband, Adolph, who died in 2003, the murals illustrated two popular folk songs, \u201cFroggy Went a-Courtin\u2019\u201d and \u201cThe Walloping Window Blind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spanning some five decades of Ipcar\u2019s career, and making their public debut as a group in the Bates exhibition, the \u201cBlue Moon\u201d paintings of the exhibition\u2019s title afford a tidy summary of Ipcar\u2019s oeuvre. \u201cIf you were only to look at these seven paintings, it\u2019s a very nice overview of the range that she had, and some of the subjects that she used throughout those decades,\u201d Walls says. \u201cTo be able to show the majority of those paintings in one space together, is, I think, a major coup.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rachel Walls \u201999 speaks with museum visitor Jane Abrahamson on the eve of the Ipcar exhibition opening at the Bates College Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThere are large gaps in the years between some of the paintings,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd that\u2019s because the series was truly inspired by Dahlov\u2019s dreams\u201d \u2014 she would make a \u201cBlue Moon\u201d painting only in response to a dream whose imagery, what Walls describes as \u201cthese fanciful and imaginary creatures,\u201d seemed right.<\/p>\n

But if Ipcar\u2019s fantastic side often seems to draw the most attention, the artist, Walls points out, made a serious study of educational, artistic, and psychological theory pertinent to youth development, with the aim of learning \u201cto write literature that was appropriate for the illustrations that she was able to easily create for her books.\u201d (With that in mind, Walls has worked with the Bates museum to develop educational programming for Blue Moons & Menageries<\/em>, including a reading of Ipcar books coupled with an art-making session<\/a> on June 26.)<\/p>\n

Looking at her own writing and the inspiration she found, early and late, in those books, Walls sees herself as an example of what Ipcar aimed to achieve. \u201cThat\u2019s something I find very rewarding,\u201d she says. \u201cI very much valued her friendship, and her creative genius, and the principles and ideals that she tried to put forward in her children\u2019s books.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Hunters of the Moon” is a 1966 oil painting by Dahlov Ipcar.<\/p><\/div>\n

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