Traditionally, folding screens are associated with the artistic production of Asian countries, principally China and Japan. It is the case, in fact, that screens existed in the East from before the beginning of the first millennium. They were a Chinese invention, later adopted by the Japanese. In China, where structures were built with stationary walls that could support decoration, screens were primarily functional. In Japan, however, the houses lacked permanent walls, and three types of screens developed: a stationary single-panel screen at the entrance to a house (tsitsuae), a sliding-panel screen (fusuma), and the flexible, mobile folding screen (byobu). On the functional side, screens provided privacy and controlled the flow of air, space, and light. With more planar surfaces available than most furniture and decorative-arts objects, they presented themselves as a versatile instrument for pictorial and structural innovation. (Footnote: see below)

In the early years of the seventeenth century, trade grew between Asia and the West. Along with porcelains and certain furniture, screens counted among the favored imported wares, appreciated both for their practical and artistic purposes. By the 18th century, the fashion for screens became something of a mania. In France and Italy, particularly, Western artists began to introduce European motifs and styles into this ancient Eastern art form. The fashion for screens waned through the mid 19th century, but with the onset of the late 1870s avant-garde art movements and the renewed fascination with Asian art, screens were once again sought after, side by side with Japanese woodblock prints, as choice items.

Screens were particularly favored by the Nabis and by the proponents of the Arts-and-Crafts movement as prime objects for artistic production, since they epitomized the desired synthesis of the fine and popular arts in the form of household objects that would enhance the home. While screens continued to be imported from Asia during the later 19th century, Western artists also began to generate their own special version of this class of object. The sensibility of, for example, William Morris, James McNeill Whistler, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis to the decorative and symbolic potential of patterns, and of designs dominated by waves, fans, and flora, found a perfect outlet in the pictorial traditions, formats, framing, and utility provided by screens. The hinged, linked segments of screens emphasizing vertical arrangement and seen at raking angles to one another, held an appeal in the search for fresh pictorial formats that could vie with classical conventions. Tilted perspectives, rejection of vanishing points, and the intrusion of decoration and sequential imagery expanded artists’ options in the expression of concepts of time, space, and subject matter. For example, the hinged images could unfold section by section, yet, be simultaneously linked by a select continuous motif, such as a rambling garden fence, a walk, a passing cloud, or a repeated decorative motif. Furthermore, screens are self contained and dimensional in and of themselves. As such they stand like sculpture in the round in the space in which they are situated, posing a quite different relationship to a viewer than would a painting. The fascination with the screen as a pictorial and decorative format has continued to the present with offerings by such a diverse range of artists as Giacomo Balla, Thomas Hart Benton, Man Ray, Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Dine, and David Hockney.

The Cardinal Virtues (1996) screen in the Seavest Collection is the result of a commission given to three artistsÑDon Eddy, Joseph Raffael and Carolyn BradyÑwho are colleagues; they are all represented exclusively by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York City. As principal artists of that gallery, they have known each other for many years. While each has a distinct artistic vision and favors different media (acrylic versus watercolor), they nonetheless share a commitment to the importance of artistic expression as it functions for the good in the community of man. Before the artists were invited to participate in this commission in spring 1995, they had never collaborated on a joint project of this sort.

Although the twentieth century has offered architects new versatility through materials such as cast concrete and through advanced building technologies, highly original projects are often cost-prohibitive and never leave the drafting table. Instead, stock materials often drive design. By virtue of his adaptation of alternative materials and methodologies, Haas revives the kind of grand-scale architectural programs that we associate with other centuries, producing refreshing and rehabilitating solutions for existing facades and interiors of public and private structures of all kinds.

The artists were asked to give fresh interpretation (in their own pictorial language) to the long and venerable tradition of the representation of the three cardinal virtues - Faith, Hope, and Charity. The screen format of separate but permanently linked panels provided an ideal vehicle for the elaboration of the concept. An explanation of the symbolism that each artist developed pictorially was inscribed on the back of their individual panels and are given as follows:

Don Eddy
Faith

“Don Eddy’s image of three entwined poppies placed in the ruins of a house of Faith arises from his conceit that faith flowers in the ruins of current expectations, and it grows out of that which we find most dependable. The arches are suggestive of windows into the soul. The poppy is, itself, a symbol of consolation, and the three flowers represent the triad of virtues.”

Joseph Raffael
Hope

“Joseph Raffael’s panel depicts Hope as a luminous yellow lily which grows up out of the darkness of mud and mire towards the light of the sun, and blossoms. It reminds us of the possibility of beauty emerging out of life’s difficulties, and echoes the essence of hope, which is that expectation will find reward.”

Carolyn Brady
Charity

“Carolyn Brady presents a vision of Charity as female love unbound. She uses the flower, bedecked with a necklace of pearls, as a symbol of the matrix between the human and the spiritual worlds, just as charity suggests divine love expressed through the kindness of man. The image is reinforced by the presence of the many-seeded pomegranates, traditionally representative of generosity.”

The frame for the screen, and the accompanying decorative elements were inspired by and adapted from Art Nouveau designs. Art Nouveau was chosen for its stylistic motifs, favoring organic, serpentine lines that can be expressed, as for example, in the gentle flame like rhythms of the details and crowning finials of the mahogany frame. The energy of ascent of these motifs echoes the ascending diagonal of the central floral elements of each of the panels as we read them from left to right. The emphasis on ascent is meant to express the elevation of the spirit by Virtue. As is typical of screens, the backs of the panels offered a field for the presentation of information that reverberates the message of the principal images on the front.

It would be an oversight not to mention the fourth artist, Mary Dellin, who contributed her own considerable talents to this collaborative effort. Dellin designed the frame, and composed and executed free hand the decorative elements and calligraphy on the back of each of the Virtue panels. The central decorative element on the back of each panel represents the organic energy of a vine, that in its soft upward curving movement, echoes the flame-like rhythms of the contours of the frame and functions, as vines often do, as a symbol of rebirth. The letter style chosen for the titles and text of each of the Virtues was adapted from the miniscule face of the Carolingian alphabet, but modified in the direction of the organic Nouveau style through embellishment with tails and serifs that taper into curved or pointed leaf Ð like forms. The letters were inspired by a hand-drawn version of a Carolingian alphabet by Alphonse Mucha.

Footnote
For detailed information on the history and art of screens from the Asian prototypes through to their production in the hands of Western artists to the present, see Michael Komanechy, et. al., The Folding Image: Screens by Western Artists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1984.

©by Virginia Anne Bonito, revised "Get Real" Cardinal Virtues essay, May 3, 2000.

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	Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection Virginia Anne Bonito. Foreword by Michael Philip Mezzatesta, pp. 138, 68 colorplates, 2 b/w photographs Exhibition at DUMA April 4-July 6, 1997. Hard cover $40.00 Soft cover $25.00 To order contact: Duke University Museum of Art Click on Publications