Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887-1968)
Prohibition 1920
oil on canvas, 1920
1995 Museum Purchase funded by Sunrise Collectors Club
image: (h) 29 ½” x (w) 24 ½”
Introduction
Marguerite Thompson Zorach is recognized as one of the
most acclaimed American abstract artists of the early
twentieth century. She spent several years studying art in
Paris in her early twenties which had a significant impact on her work. In Prohibition 1920 the
trapezoid composition of two clothed men and a nude woman is reminiscent of Edouard
Manet's notorious nineteenth century painting, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass).
Marguerite Zorach painted Prohibition 1920 during the first year of the Prohibition Era (19201923) when alcohol was illegal and bars and "speakeasies" were underground establishments.
The Matisse-like female figure in the foreground appears bored by her surroundings while the
two males, one in uniform and the other in a suit, seem oblivious to her presence. The figures
are surrounded by rich, deep red colors. Zorach masterfully utilizes Cubist and Fauvist
elements in this painting.
The Artist
Marguerite Thompson Zorach was born Marguerite Thompson in 1887 in Santa Rosa,
California to upper middle-class parents. She excelled academically and upon graduation from
high school enrolled at Stanford. She left within a few weeks when she received an invitation to
accompany her aunt to Paris. At the age of twenty, she left California for Paris where she was
exposed to avant-garde work, and through her aunt’s longtime acquaintance Gertrude Stein,
met many of the forerunners of Cubism and European abstraction. She decided to study art and
spent two years visiting Europe’s great museums while attending art schools in Paris.
Zorach stayed in Paris for four years where her work was included in two exhibitions. She was
a colorist and modernist, excited by the new styles she saw around her. She greatly admired
Fauvism, a movement in which artists used colors for expressive purposes. As a student at La
Palette, a school that taught painting in the Fauvist style, she studied with John Duncan
Fergusson and Jacques-Emile Blanche, and also met the Lithuanian born sculptor William
Zorach, whom she married in 1912 on her return to America.
New York in the second decade of the twentieth century was an exciting place for young and
upcoming artists. She and William Zorach exhibited work in the landmark New York Armory
Show of 1913, and also in the 1915 Forum Exhibition. The Zorachs were artists of equal
stature who shaped and influenced each other's work, forming one of the most successful and
long lasting creative partnerships in American art history. By 1915, they had both begun to
experiment with Cubism, combining it with elements of Fauvist color and Expressionism. She
continued to participate in group shows at key New York galleries, receiving several medals and
honors for her work.
Zorach successfully combined her artistic career with family life and received great critical
acclaim for her vibrant embroideries, a medium she began to pursue after the birth of her
children. She received several commissions for her textile work, and generated sufficient
income to support the family. She also experimented with printmaking, but is primarily known
for her paintings in oil. After 1919 she returned to a more representational style, but retained
a degree of abstraction and a strong Cubist aesthetic in her work. In the early 1920’s she had
several solo exhibits in New York and her work from this period is considered by critics to be
her most successful.
The Zorachs spent summers in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts and winters in New
York City until 1923 when they purchased a farm in Maine on Georgetown Island. In the
1920’s she was first president of the Society of Woman Artists. Unfortunately, like many
artists’ wives, Marguerite’s work was considered secondary to her husband’s and her
contribution to modern American art was not fully recognized until two years after her death,
when some of her early canvases were rediscovered. She is considered one of the forerunners
of modernism in America, and has been referred to as the First Woman Artist of California.
Her work is held in permanent collections throughout the United States. Marguerite Zorach
died in Brooklyn in 1968.
Discussion
Many of the techniques that Zorach studied in Paris are evident in this work. There is clear
influence from the Fauves or “Wild Beasts,” named for their bold, vibrant, expressive use of
color and abstraction of form. In this case, the work is dominated by the primary colors of red,
yellow and blue that reduce skin tones to a pale marble hue. Cubist influences are apparent in
the way that she has divided the composition into various fragmented planes. This rhythmic
abstraction gives the painting a sense of motion, multiple perspectives and the element of time.
In addition, she employed the “cloisonnisme,” or “partition” technique used by PostImpressionist artists like Paul Gaugin, filling various planes within the composition with pure flat
color, giving the impression of stained glass. She believed that simplified forms and pure color
gave the work a more powerful and emotional quality.
Prohibition 1920 is a visually coherent image, but oddly incoherent in terms of content. Two
male figures appear almost unaware of the nude woman who lounges at their table, turned
toward the viewer. The disengagement between the nude female figure and the men is similar
to that seen in Edouard Manet’s controversial 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon
on the Grass). It is almost as if she is a decorative statue, not a real person, or as if it is
considered quite acceptable for a woman to sit unclothed with two men in suits. Perhaps
Zorach wanted to suggest that the men are so preoccupied with drinking that not even a nude
woman can distract them.
Within the painting Zorach has cleverly suggested intoxication through several compositional
devices and details. Through the use of distorted perspective, the table, supported by spindly
legs, leans precariously towards the viewer. Additionally the glass to the right of the painting
appears dangerously close to the edge of the table. The reclining woman’s arm is wrapped
around another glass, presumably her own, but her casual pose suggests that she may be about
to fall from her seat, taking the glass with her. The upper part of the image is more balanced,
by the approximate symmetry of the men and the abstracted yellow shapes behind them. The
three drinkers are surrounded by sumptuous red tones, suggesting that their prohibited
drinking den is also a house of ill repute. It is unclear whether the artist is taking a moral stand
against alcohol, or celebrating the deliciously illicit aura of the scene.
Style
While in Paris, Zorach was most strongly influenced by the movements of Fauvism, early Blaue
Reiter, and Cubism, all of which can be seen in this work. From around 1910 she developed a
style that utilized bold color and rhythm, experimenting with complementary colors, and using
color as an expressive element in her work. She strongly identified herself with PostImpressionism; the style favored by her tutors at La Palette, and vowed to bring modernist
ideas to America on her return in 1912. After the Armory Show, which was the first major
exhibition in America to show abstract work, she began to use a Cubist approach to line and
space.
By the time she painted Prohibition 1920, she had already returned to a more representational
style that incorporated many aspects of her early experiments in Cubism and Fauvism. This can
be recognized as her mature painting style that included a rich color palette, and faceted,
monumentalized forms. In 1962, several years before her death, Marguerite Zorach wrote,
I am not interested in style, or a certain way of painting, or a certain range of color or form. I
am interested in expression through art. . . I do not fit my work into a pattern, but accept the
impact of seeing and feeling, and seek to create through it pictures that capture vision and life.
Sources
May, S. Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts Antiques and the Arts Story
Archive, 2001 http://www.antiquesandthearts.com/CS0-12-24-2001-13-19-01.htm
Nicoll, J. To Be Modern: The Origins of Marguerite and William Zorach's Creative Partnership, 19111922 From catalogue: Harmonies and Contrasts: The Art of Marguerite and William
Zorach Portland Museum of Art exhibit of the same title: November 2001 - January 2002
Found on: http://www.exitfive.com/zorach/
The Part Played By Women: The Gender of Modernism at the Armory Show
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MUSEUM/Armory/gender.html
http://www.askart.com/biography.asp?ID=9465 (Zorach biography and bibliography on Ask
Art)
http://www.printdealers.com/artist_template.cfm?id=1683 (Zorach biography)