Transcript American Art 1920-1940

American Art
1930-1940
The United States Faces
World Crisis
The only thing we have to fear, is
fear itself.
--FDR’s first inaugural address, 1933
The Roaring 20s
• Women gain right to
vote (1920)
• Prohibition (1920)
• Lenin’s death (1924)
• Lindbergh flies across
Atlantic (1927)
• Stock Market Crash
(1929)
The Great Depression
Crisis and Response
• 1932- steel plants
operating at 12 %
capacity
• Writers saw book sales
plummet 50 %
• Musicians had a 70 %
unemployment rate
• 375,000 OK residents
fled the Dust Bowl
• FDR’s NEW DEAL
programs
New Deal and Art
• Works Progress
Administration set up
Federal Project #1
(1935)
• Four cultural projects:
art, music, theatre,
writing
• Artists placed in 8
divisions including
murals, photographs,
posters
Artists at Work
• 40,000 artists
employed
• 3,350 public murals
• 41 % of WPA artists
were women
• 33 % of WPA artists
were from working
class backgrounds
Paint America, but with your eyes
open. Do not glorify Main Street.
Paint it as it is— mean, dirty,
avaricious.
---Moses Soyer, 1935
Social Realism
What is Social Realism?
• In American art, also
called, “American
Scene” or “WPA Art”
• Artists motivated by
social causes and
issues facing
Americans during
the Depression
Social Realism
• Want art that is
widely understood,
accessible.
• Based on everyday
life, challenges,
“telling it like it is”
philosophy.
• Documented what
Depression was
doing to people.
Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)
• Born in Paris to
American artists
• 1920 moved to New
York studied with
Kenneth H. Miller
• Primarily an illustrator
before turning to
painting full time
• Taught at the Art
Students League up to
his death
Chatham Square
Reginald Marsh
• Marsh liked to portray
people in crowds- what
makes city life unique
• Saw self as a “reporter”
but not a social/moral
commentator
• After talking to Benton,
started to use egg
tempera, used here.
• Central figure collaged
on (from another
painting)
Philip Evergood (1901-1973)
• Educated in
England despite NY
birth
• 1923- Art Students
League in NYC,
studied with George
Luks, back to
Europe
• Settled in NYC in
1931
Evergood, the social protest
painter
• Known for
unpleasant subjects
• Bringing to light
injustice in world
• Integrated black
people and white
people into his
works
Raphael Soyer (1899-1987)
• Twin brother to Moses
Soyer, oldest of 6
children
• Soyers and brother
Isaac all studied art at
Cooper Union & Nat’l
Academy of Design
• Raphael taught at Art
Students League
(1930s-40s)
Soyer in the Studio
• Never mixed his
politics with his
painting
• Wanted to show
subjects as humans,
not propaganda
pieces
Transients, 1936
Transients, 1936
I asked a group of [homeless men] to
come to my studio to pose for a
painting, which I eventually called
Transients…It was amazing. They were
all sitting there and I thought to myself
that I have created my own mission
house.
More about the Painting
• Man in front leans toward the viewer
wanting to ask for help, jacket doesn’t fit
him
• Man to the right is sleeping, holding
crutches; man behind him yawning is
Soyer
• Walter Broe makes direct eye contact
with viewer, hold his Stetson in his hand
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)
• One of the 3 great
Regionalist painters
of the era
• Showing USA in
positive terms
• Influenced by
European avantgarde art
• Was a teacher
More on Benton
• Wished to portray
rural Americans doing
what he thought of as
typically American
activities
• Tended to make
inflammatory,
sometimes
contradictory,
statements
Romance, 1931-32
Benton Working on Murals
Size and Scope
Stuart Davis (1892-1964)
• Had testy relationship
with TH Benton
• Was part of the NY art
scene and was involved
in leftist politics
• Organized the Artists’
Congress of 1936
Davis the Activist
• Had been active in
promoting NY artists
as important as
American Scene
(Regionalists)
• First Amer Artists’
Congress spoke out
against fascism,
war, and racism.
I think that is the reason why
dictatorships fear artists. They fear
them because they fear free
criticism. They rightly believe that if
the forces represented by the artist
are allowed to exercise their will, they
will disrupt the Fascist regime.
--- Lewis Mumford, noted urban historian and outspoken
critic of Totalitarianism
Lawn and Sky, 1931
Gloucester Harbor
Lawn and Sky
Arthur Dove (1880-1946)
• Early US modernist
• Worked as a
commercial illustrator
and often struggled
financially but was
friends with Stieglitz
Went to Europe in
1907-09, discovered
Fauves, other avantgarde movements
Good Breeze, 1931
Dove
• Similar to Kandinsky but used nature as an
inspiration, especially sounds and sensations
• According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary
of Art and Artists, “in 1910 [he] painted the
first abstract pictures in American art.”
• First one-man show Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery in
1912
• By 1940s, experimenting with geometric
abstraction.
• Fought to win artists royalty rights for
reproduction of their work
The Zorachs
• William Zorach (1887-1966)
• Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1887-1968)
• William born in Lithuania and is primarily
remembered as a sculptor
• Marguerite was one of the US’s leading
modernist painters right before and
immediately after the Armory Show
• Both exhibited in the Armory Show
Rites of Spring, 1909
What is American Art?
• The time and period
where American
artists were defining
what is American
art.
• Opens door for
Abstract
Expressionism, Pop
Bibliography
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Virgil Baker, From Realism to Reality in Recent American Painting, 1959.
David Bjelajac, American Art: A cultural History, 2000.
Milton Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression,
1955.
Annette Carlozzi and Kelly Baum, eds. Blanton Museum of Art: American Art
since 1900, 2006.
Ian Chilvers, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, 1996.
Wes Craven, American Art: History and Culture, 1994.
Erika Doss, Twentieth Century American Art, 2002.
Nancy Frazier, The Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History, 2001.
Patricia Hills, Social Concerns and Urban Realism: American Painting of the
1930s, 1983.
R. Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains, eds. Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer,
and Intellectual, 1989.
Karen Wilkin, Stuart Davis in Gloucester, 1999.