Mark Tobey   painter, U.S.A.

"The following is quoted from a paper by Mark which he read at his first drawing class at Dartington in 1930:

'What I am seeking in you, and endeavour- ing to help as much as I can, is the furthering towards the realm or identity of being; so that we may be better equipped

Mark Tobey was born in Wisconsin, U.S.A., and grew up in the countryside with a great love for nature. As a child he participated in Saturday art classes at the Institute of Art in Chicago for two years - the only formal art training he had. Then his father became ill, forcing Mark to work. Beginning in 1909 as a blueprint boy in a steel mill in Chicago, by 1911 he was working as fashion illustrator in New York, and later as a portrait painter in New York.

There he met the painter Juliet Thompson, who introduced him to the Bahá´í Faith which he joined in 1918. In the 1920's while becoming known for his caricatures of theatrical people, he was concerned with reacting against "the Renaissance sense of space and order" "to smash form to melt it in a more moving and dynamic way"
(William C. Sietz (then curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions at the MOMA), Mark Tobey, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1962, p. 45, cited in 'Mark Tobey 1890 - 1976' by Arthur L. Dahl, in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others, George Ronald, Oxford, U.K., 1984, p. 4.).

The Bahá´í teachings and his involvement with the Bahá´í community had a life-long impact on him. The Bahá´í principle of unity in diversity seems to underlie his work: his approach was to look for the new in the other. "Where is our Oneness so eagerly offered us by Baha'u'llah for our growth and advancement, if we neglect to meditate and to attempt to relate ourselves - not only through action

Although he is now renown for his 'white writing' paintings of the 1950's and 1960's, which established his international reputation and are found in museum collections, he was not intending to create a new style. He was not concerned with creating a style or being original. Each painting was the result of a process that had the freedom to go in a number of directions.

He was interested in independent investigation through the medium of paint. Each work is the result of his investigation of form and space. At the same time, the expression of spirit was intrinsic to his artistic approach.

"To me an artist is one who... portrays the spirit of man in whatever condition that spirit may be."
(Letter to Arthur and Joyce Dahl, 26 April 1957, cited in Arthur L. Dahl's essay, 'The Fragrance of Spirituality' in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others., p. 33.)

After a short unhappy marriage, he left New York in 1922 for the more spacious and relaxed atmosphere of Seattle. A friend was returning home to Seattle and offered to share train space and a bag of oranges. There he found work teaching at the Cornish School, where his methods concentrated on encouragement, love for art and developing the student's fantasy, rather than following structured procedures and principles. In those years, his interpretations of Cubism helped him to see form as the result of movement (inspired by watching the movements of a fly) rather than calculation. In 1923 he met the Chinese artist, Teng Kuei, who taught him the technique and philosophy of Chinese calligraphy.

"I have just had my first lesson in Chinese brush… The tree is no more a solid in the earth, breaking into lesser solids bathed in chiaroscuro. There is pressure and release. Each movement, like tracks in the snow, is recorded and loved for itself. The Great Dragon is breathing sky, thunder and shadow; wisdom and spirit vitalized."
(Mark Tobey, Reminiscence and Reverie, Magazine of Art, October 1951, cited in 'Mark Tobey 1890 - 1976' by Arthur L. Dahl, in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others, p. 5.)

there he associated with many artists, such as Aldous Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore, and the dancer Shankar. He formed a close friendship with the South African painter, Reginald Turvey and the English potter, Bernard Leach. On parting in the mid thirties, the three made a pact to meet up again at the 1963 International Bahá´í conference, which they kept.

In 1934 the Elmhursts sponsored Mark Tobey to travel with Bernard Leach to Hong Kong. From there he went to Shanghai to stay with his friend Teng, and finally spent a month in a Zen monastery in Kyoto, studying calligraphy, painting and poetry.

Back at Dartington Hall in 1935, he began work on painting a web of light lines against a dark background. His aim was to create an image of power above an overview of a village. He recognized that the lines were similiar to Chinese calligraphy. The orient and the occident merge in this painting, "Broadway Norm" (1936). After more paintings in this style, an artistic language of 'white writing' emerged. He was 44 years old.

Critics have written of the white lines as evocative of an inner light which moves and spreads in his paintings. Others speak of his ability to unite spirit and matter. It is worth noting that light is also a frequent metaphor for the spirit in the Bahá´í Writings. "But to generalize about Tobey is to betray him. There is no single Tobey form or pattern; there is instead, the expression of inexhaustible delight in exploration and discovery which finds its way through many paths and formulations."
(Joshua C. Taylor (Then director of the National Collection, Washington DC), Looking at Mark Tobey's Pictures, cited in 'Mark Tobey 1890 - 1976' by Arthur L. Dahl, in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others, p. 29.)
His lines were 'a path more than a boundary"
(ibid p. 28.).

With war imminent, he moved back to Seattle in 1938, where he taught and painted and gradually become better known. "Most of the characteristic 'white writing' works were painted in the 1940s, when he was in his fifties, or later. The works with Bahá´í themes and titles were mostly done in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Sumi paintings, very different from his other works, but in Tobey's judgement among his most significant contributions, were created in 1957, when he was 66. The experimentation with monotypes, which went on for more than a decade, began just before the Louvre exhibition in 1961."
(Arthur L. Dahl, 'Mark Tobey 1890 - 1976', in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others, p. 6.)

In 1961 the Paris Museum of Decorative Art, in the modern wing of the Louvre, exhibited 285 pieces of his work. Tobey was the first living non-French artist to receive such an honour. Numerous exhibitions followed in major European and American cities, climaxing in the 1974 "Tribute to Mark Tobey" exhibition in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Over half of the 70 works had been painted from the age of 67. So although plagued by illness in his later years, he continued to work productively until about three years before his death.

Throughout his life he was continually faced with the problem of how to divide his time and energy between his art and direct service to the Bahá´í Faith. While in Dartington he served on the National Spiritual Assembly and in Seattle, on the Local Spiritual Assembly. Later he served on the Basel Spiritual Assembly for sixteen years. He gave many talks, formally and informally on the Bahá´í Faith, as well as giving many Bahá´ís their first exposure to abstract art in his talks or writing. He published three articles in the U.S. Bahá´í magazine, World Order and although his financial circumstances were limited until he was nearly 70, he was generous once international recognition had improved the market for his paintings.
After 1955 almost every lecture, article, interview or catalogue mentions the Bahá´í teachings in some way. Mark Tobey rejected any claim that his work represented a climax or summit in art history, and resisted being categorized as belonging to any 'school' or the label "Bahá´í artist".
Tobey wrote in a letter in 1963, "You know the Guardian freed art before his death,… There is no offical Bahá´í Art, as this is not a new religion, but religion renewed"
(Arthur L. Dahl, 'Mark Tobey 1890 - 1976', in Mark Tobey / Art and Belief by Arthur L. Dahl and others, p.11.)

"Tobey had a strong and memorable personality, and made a legion of devoted friends… His humanity was particularly apparent in his close personal relationships, such as with his Swedish friend Pehr Hallsten. They were devoted to each other for more than twenty years,