Week #2 From Museum Collections II

Biloxi Cemetery, c. 1940, oil on canvas, 17” x 19”. Collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art.

As mentioned last week, herewith another work from a museum collection, this time from the Mississippi Museum of Art. It is a work from Dusti Bongé’s early period, when she spent a lot of time sketching and painting scenes in her hometown of Biloxi. This work was a gift from the Foundation to the Museum in 1999.

Although cemeteries have been depicted in art for centuries they tend to not be a very common subject matter in most landscape or cityscape paintings. Similarly, although there is a tradition of art photography around cemeteries here in the South, especially in those that feature the European-style above-ground mausoleums (often very photogenic), they too are much more rarely depicted by painters. But Dusti was one of those rare painters. 

In fact, Dusti is one of the few 20^th century American painters that depicted cemeteries. In addition, her works are unique even in this limited genre, insofar that her inspiration to paint them does not rely on the implied contemplative, melancholy quality of cemeteries, but rather on the geometrical and spatial layers they offer, and her vivid visual experience of them. Her cemeteries are not moody, introspective places of death, like Caspar David Friedrich's. They are loosely composed cubist arrangements of mausoleums, crosses, angels, and headstones, interspersed with trees and brushes, alternatively catching the light or casting shadows.

Dusti visited the Old French Cemetery in Biloxi on a regular basis during her early years as an artist. This was in no small part due to the fact that her beloved husband Arch was buried there. The cemetery was near her home, and of course was a place for memories. But in her case the cemetery was also yet another intriguing set of structures that offered fascinating views and juxtapositions of shapes.

Note: Did you know the first grave markers were actually boulders, which were thought to be a good solution to keep the dead from rising? Smart thinking.