Artwork of the Week: February 3
Cacti and desert flowers burst across a vast expanse of sandy terrain. Deer prance, butterflies perch, and an eagle hovers against a midnight blue sky as an orange butte towers to the right. While the word “desert” might evoke images of barren colorless monotony, John Held Jr. counters that assumption with a palette of vibrant greens, blues, and pinks. In Nature at Night, these vivid colors, simplified forms, and exaggerated proportions—all hallmarks of Held’s style—come together to create a stylized, fantastical depiction of the American West. “It is hard to think of any other artist who understood, as well as Held did, the comic potentialities of color alone,” proclaimed biographer Carl J. Weinhardt.
Born in Salt Lake City, Held made his career in New York, where he was renowned for his colorful cartoons of Jazz Age flappers and Victorian-inspired woodblock prints of the reproduced in popular magazines like LIFEand Vanity Fair. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, shifted the demand for Held’s lively flappers and jazz musicians. He began authoring serious novels and short stories and illustrating children’s books. Likely painted during this time, this work not only pays tribute to Held’s origins in the American West, but also gives us a glimpse of the art Held preferred to create beyond the commercial realm.
The MOA is grateful to Glen Nelson for his generous insights. For further reading, see John Held, Marc Connelly, and Carl J. Weinhardt, The Most of John Held, Jr. (Brattleboro, Vermont: S. Greene Press, 1972) and Dorothy Tarrant and John Tarrant, “It Was the Jazz Age and John Held Jr. Drew It and Lived It,” Smithsonian 17, no. 6 (September 1986): 94-105.
