Visual Arts

As the 19th century drew to a close, art in America began to reflect the changing face of our country's developing society. Urbanization and the industrial era produced a new focus on gritty realism as artists began to paint city life exactly as they saw it; others harkened back to the previous age, depicting idealized and nostalgic scenes. The early 20th century saw radical changes in the principles and ideas of visual art--in 1913, the Armory Show in New York City introduced the work of such progressive artists as Duchamp and Matisse, yielding novel, less realistic approaches to art and heralding the growth of modern art (also influenced by exposure to European society in the post-World War I years), while the Harlem Renaissance brought many African-American artists onto the scene. During the Depression, art suffered a serious setback due to lack of patronage, though New Deal-sponsored organizations such as the WPA were able to support a number of artists. However, the trend towards new and innovative forms of American art continued, eventually leading to the development of abstract expressionism, pop art and other forms of what we now consider modern art.

Genre Paintings/Nostalgia

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Snap the Whip 1872 Gift of Christian A. Zabriskie, 1950 (50.41) www.metmuseum.org

• Idyllic, rural/nature scenes that looked backwards from an age of increased industrialization
  

• Winslow Homer
  

  • born in Massachusetts, apprenticed to a lithographer and served as an artist-correspondent for Harper's Weekly during the Civil War
    

  • in the 1870s, produced nostalgic paintings chronicling the lives of rural Americans--examples include Milking Time and Snap the Whip
    

  • moved in the 1880s to large-scale seascapes and nature paintings after a stay in an English fishing village--also examples of a realistic style such as Eight Bells

Realism

George Bellows The Lone Tenement, 1909 Chester Dale Collection 1963.10.83 www.nga.gov	Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) Gross Clinic 1875-76 Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.94) www.metmuseum.org	Robert Henri Snow in New York, 1902 Chester Dale Collection 1954.4.3 www.nga.gov
	Lewis Hine. Drop-wire boys. Granite Mill #2. Noon. Location: Fall River, Massachusetts (1916) www.loc.gov

• Realist painters produced unflinching depictions of urban life
  

• Thomas Eakins
  

• “If America is to produce great painters...their first desire should be...to peer deeper into the heart of American life.”
  

• unsentimental, brutal realism--e.g. The Gross Clinic, an almost horrific, exactingly detailed painting of an operation
  

• dismissed from PA Academy of Arts when he allowed female students to draw from a live nude model
  

• The Ashcan School
  

  • group of realist painters including Robert Henri (founding member), George Bellows, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan--none were native New Yorkers
    

  • painted New York City in a realistic style, focusing on street scenes (looking at the city “from the ground up”)
    

  • e.g. Bellows’ 42 Kids and Stag at Sharkey’s (prizefighting); Sloan’s Election Night, a crowd scene painted with frankness and sympathy
    

• Photography
  

  • Jacob Riis - pioneered photojournalism, encouraged urban reform with vivid (though often artificially arranged) images of tenement life and poverty in works such as How the Other Half Lives
    

  • Lewis Hine - photographer and social reformer (worked for the National Child Labor Committee, 1911-16) who documented hardships of child labor and was successful in furthering reforms

The Expatriates - Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt

Mary Cassatt Mother and Child, c. 1905 Chester Dale Collection 1963.10.98 www.nga.gov	John Singer Sargent Miss Grace Woodhouse, 1890 Gift of Olga Roosevelt Graves 1962.6.1 www.nga.gov

• John Singer Sargent
  

  • born in Italy, never stayed in America longer than a year at a time
    

  • inspiration to other art students who went to Europe to study
    

  • popular portraitist--painted portraits of America’s elite such as Isabella Stewart Gardner (“Mrs. Jack,” a wealthy patron of the arts)
    

  • style essentially traditionalist (echoing Velazquez and other earlier portraitists) but incorporated elements of the realist and impressionist styles
    

  • some controversial paintings such as Madame X (derided for its depiction of a “professional beauty,” made-up, haughty and brazenly sensual)
    

• James Abbott McNeill Whistler
  

  • born in Massachusetts, moved to Russia at age nine, then studied art in France
    

  • painted such works as Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl and Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother
    

  • believed that paintings should not convey ideas, but exist for own sake
    

  • often gave his work--mainly landscapes and portraits--musical titles to emphasize parallels between art and music
    

  • “Art should be independent of all claptrap-- should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.”
    

• Mary Cassatt
  

  • born in Pennsylvania, traveled to Paris to study art
    

  • befriended French Impressionists such as Degas and Manet
    

  • also influenced by Japanese art
    

  • often painted strong, self-assured women or mothers and children--e.g. The Child’s Bath

The Dawn of Modern Art

Arthur Dove Moth Dance, 1929 Alfred Stieglitz Collection 1949.2.1 www.nga.gov	Edward Hopper Night in the Park, 1921 Rosenwald Collection 1963.11.119 www.nga.gov	Georgia O'Keeffe Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. V, 1930 Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe 1987.58.4 www.nga.gov	Ben Shahn Alphabet of Creation, 1957 Rosenwald Collection 1963.11.195 www.nga.gov

• The New York City Armory Show--February 17, 1913
  

  • first show on a large scale of “modern” European and American art
    

  • included controversial works such as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (Cubism) and Matisse’s Blue Nude
    

  • some paintings decried as unartistic, hotly debated--but the show still drew large crowds
    

  • contrast between innovative works and the realistic style heretofore popular, introduced new aesthetic principles and heralded the age of modern art
    

• Burgeoning movements of the 1920s and 1930s included Cubism, abstract art, and art deco
  

• Artists of the period
  

  • Joseph Stella - leading figure of American futurism, painted idealized images of New York cityscapes such as Spring, saw NYC and especially Brooklyn Bridge as the expression of the American spirit
    

  • Stuart Davis - early paintings influenced by Gauguin’s and Van Gogh’s expressive use of color, then developed a Cubist style, turning natural forms into sharp-edged geometric figures in such works as Percolator and Garage Lights
    

  • Edward Hopper - trained under Henri, painted in a realistic style expressing loneliness and desolation of city life but without the social statements of the Ashcan artists--works include Nighthawks
    

  • Grant Wood - influenced by old Flemish paintings, turned from Impressionism to meticulously detailed depictions of people such as in Depression-era American Gothic, combining insight into character with caricature
    

  • Arthur Dove - after a visit to Europe, began producing abstracts based on the forms and rhythms of nature and on sounds, later experimented with collages; almost a forerunner of abstract expressionism--e.g. Fog Horns, High Noon
    

  • Georgia O’Keefe - wife of Alfred Stieglitz, painted abstracted enlargements of flowers and plants--not true abstractions, based on natural appearances--later became more abstract, enlarging a single detail which made up the entire painting; works include Black Iris and the Pelvis Series
    

  • Ben Shahn - painter and graphic artist, employed as photographer during the Depression, later work expressed social criticism; completed several murals before turning to small-scale work and poster design
    

  • James Van der Zee - photographer

The Harlem Renaissance

• “Great Migration” of African Americans to northern cities during the 1920s leads to a concentration of talents and a flowering of African American culture
  

• Painters such as Aaron Douglas - work published in magazines such as The Crisis, in 1934 the WPA commissioned him to paint murals for a branch of the New York Public Library; style flat and hard-edged with repetitive design motifs, showing influence of African art forms--jazz musician visible in the murals is symbol of creativity, freedom of “New Negro” during Renaissance period

The Depression Era

Thomas Hart Benton Island Hay, 1945 Gift of John Nichols Estabrook and Dorothy Coogan Estabrook 1987.41.5 www.nga.gov	Walker Evans Church, Southeastern US (1936) www.loc.gov	Dorothea Lange Mother and three children in a California squatter camp (1936) www.loc.gov

• Art suffers a setback due to lack of patronage; Harlem Renaissance subsided
  

• New Deal legislation offered support to some of the artists of this period
  

• Thomas Hart Benton - Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored his work, painted several murals (e.g. City Scenes at New School for Social Research, NY) satirizing urban life and touting rural/small-town life in the Midwest and South; painted in style of social realism, melodramatic and almost like caricature
  

• Archibald Motley, Jr. - African American painter, also sponsored by WPA; portraits and genre paintings of Chicago’s urban “Black Belt,” depicting Harlem Renaissance ideas in works such as Blues
  

• Photography (sponsor: Farm Security Administration)
  

  • Dorothea Lange - photographed poverty and hardship of migrant workers who traveled to California in search of work, drew attention to their condition and captured the atmosphere and effects of the Depression
    

  • Walker Evans - captured images of Southeastern workers and architecture; in 1936 collaborated with author James Agee in an article on tenant farmers for Fortune magazine, eventually producing Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
    

  • Ben Shahn (also see above) - employed as WPA photographer, influencing his later work which showed social and political criticism

Study Question: How did the changing face of American society influence and be influenced by corresponding changes in American art?