Waimea is a sprawling country town in the north of the Big Island, about an hour's drive from the touristy commercial center of Kailua-Kona. It is in the agricultural belt--lots of small farms, cattle, horses, sheep and cowboys. Somehow we managed to visit it three times on various voyages of discovery just because the road system makes you go there!
Photo courtesy Regee
We ended up in Waimea a second time after a gorgeous scenic drive along a winding mountain road from the Pololu Lookout. I had read about the Isaacs Art Center in our Lonely Planet guide book and decided to seek it out. It is housed in an old school building which was going to be demolished but ended up being moved to a new location and given a new lease on life as the Isaacs Art Center and Gallery. When you step inside, you are just stunned by the huge collection of artworks in a series of rooms (old classrooms?) filled with Hawaiian art, furniture, sculptures, jewelry, china, wood carvings and other treasures.
Madge Tennent (1889-1972)
The Isaacs Arts Center houses one of the largest collections of paintings by Madge Tennent. Now, if you haven't heard of Madge Tennent, join the club. I had never heard of her but seeing her amazing paintings of Hawaiian women and other works for the first time made me feel that she should be famous throughout the world. And in a fairer, more rational, non-patriarchal world she would have achieved world fame and greater recognition in her own lifetime.
Even though she personally promoted her art in America and Europe and had exhibitions in a number of galleries in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London and Paris, full international recognition of her huge body of work seems to be limited. Some of her paintings are in the permanent collections of several national museums--The Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC and in the British Museum in London. I have not read enough about her (I believe there is a biography written by her son), but I suspect that the fact that she was a woman, living and working in Hawai'i, and focusing more or less exclusively on Hawaiian subjects (mostly women), all contributed to limited interest elsewhere.
However, she is decidedly famous in Hawai'i and acclaimed as someone who gave impetus to a resurgence in Hawaiian art. Nobody looking at her work today could fail to recognize her as a great figure in the world of art. A number of museums and galleries in Hawai'i have large collections of her works but the Isaacs Art Center was named caretaker of the Tennent Foundation in 2005, a singular honor for Waimea.
Reclining Girl (1929)
She was born in Dulwich, England, but her parents later moved to South Africa. She was recognized as a child prodigy and her parents took her to Paris, where she trained at the conservative Academie Julian. She would later say that her greatest influences were Renoir, Picasso and Gaugin. She later lived and worked in South Africa, New Zealand (she married a New Zealander, Hugh Tennent) and British Samoa before they settled finally in Hawaii in 1923.
Madge remained there until her death in 1972. Her interest in Polynesians had begun in British Samoa but in Hawaii she dedicated herself to capturing the spirit of its islands through portraiture and other art forms. She was a classically trained artist but in Hawaii developed her own unique style, far far away from her early works in Paris and in New Zealand (below).
Portrait (New Zealand) c. 1918
Comparisons are sometimes made with Gaugin in Tahiti. She acknowledged Gaugin as an inspiration but Madge's life journey, motivations and artistic trajectory were very different. She admired the sheer size, the heft, the roundness, the strength, and undefinable spirit of the native women and, through them, the spirit of all women--the explosive need to be themselves, to be true to their own natures, not moulded or defined by anyone else. Just to be.
Hawaiian Singer (early 1930s)
The very first painting I saw at the Isaacs Art Center was of the Hawaiian Singer (above). I was blown away. One woman is playing the ukelele, the other two women are maybe singing or humming along or just flowing with the music. That sisterhood, that trinity was beautifully captured because Madge understood it perfectly. She came from a radically different background and culture. There was much formality in her upbringing and her classical Academie training in Paris. And yet here, she seems to have thrown everything away and envisioned something far more vibrant and real. You can see huge palette knife indentations on the canvas, the forms are massive and yet they are rendered with such grace and delicacy.
Hawaiians Hanging Holoku (1934)
Madge once said: "The Hawaiians are really to me the most beautiful people in the world, no doubt about it, the Hawaiian is a piece of living sculpture."
According to "Madge Tennent's Creed," published in the Isaacs Center's exhibition booklet, here are some some of the things Madge tried to achieve in her painting. "To make heavy forms lyric, to organize and paint big subjects as one would conduct a symphony, to build up color shapes in a three-dimensional painting....and to paint each picture in its most suitable rhythm...used to give a sense of perpetual vibration or motion."
Hawaiian Girl (1935)
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Olympia of Hawaii (with apologies to Manet) 1927
Local Color (c. 1934)
Hawaiian Figurative
Quite apart for her monumental paintings, she drew, sketched and sculpted. Many of her drawings are more delicate and seem to return to her classical training.
Three Filipino Ladies
I loved this painting in particular because of its subject matter--three Filipino ladies! Even the Filipinas are given a little more heft than they may possess--but the same swirl of color, the same vibrance and the same sense of communion, even in repose, are present as in all her group paintings.
These words of John Charlot explain the power and meaning of Madge Tennent's paintings:
"Singing or dancing, or merely existing are at once invigorating and refreshing. The subjects seem at ease with themselves and their passions. Some secret, perhaps experience, renders them unafraid. Hawaiian beauty, as Madge Tennent teaches us, is the combination of imposing mass with grace, of power with finesse, of form with flow."
Lei Sellers (c.1939)
1937 one-woman exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery:
"One can see that it would be the easiest thing in the world for Mrs. Tennent to draw and paint with literal accuracy, and leave it at that. She has the equipment of an exceptionally gifted artist, and to prove it she includes one or two heads done with an academic, though masterly touch, which gives one no more than the physical features of her sitters. But luckily she feels the art has other things to do than hold mirrors up to nature. It is plain that Honolulu has set her imagination on fire, and her later paintings are symbolic, rather than representational. Vivid prismatic colors, and a gargantuan sense of form, are the dominant features of her later style. Not so much massive as fantastically round, clad in voluminous draperies of almost painfully intense color, give one a sense of tropical exuberance not confined to paint […] her art could be described as an experiment in amplitude."
And who would have thought that all these wonderful treasures could be found in rural Waimea?
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