1.
Chapter 15
AMERICAN ART
BEFORE
WORLD WAR II

2.
• The era of post-WWI Europe created anxiety, disillusion, hunger,
despair, and a readiness for change.
• The arts in the 30's were dominated by the Great Depression. The
government supported programs such as the Public Works of Art
Project and later the Federal Art Project.
• The artists employed by these projects chose themes based on
American culture and history. This decade marked the beginning of the
American regionalist style with Grant Wood's famous work, American
Gothic.
• Artists that adopted the regionalist style include John Steuart Curry,
Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Joe Jones. In United States, the
preoccupation with national identity generated a literature, and art
containing statements on the nature of American culture.

3.
• Romaine Brooks (1874–1970) lived
most of her life in Paris.
• There she was a leading figure in the
artistic counterculture of upper-class
American expatriates.
• Brooks challenged conventional
ideas of women fashion and behavior
norms. These, ideas are extended to
many of the portraits she painted in
the 1920s
• At t he time Brooks employed a
muted palette primarily of black,
white, and various subtle shades of
gray.
Romaine Brooks. Self-
Portrait. 1923. Oil on
canvas. 46-1⁄4 × 26-7⁄8”.
National Museum of
American Art, Washington,
D.C.
American Artist as Cosmopolitan:
Romaine Brooks

4.
Sloan, Predergast, and Bellows
John Sloan studied at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts and worked for 12
years as an illustrator on the Philadelphia
Inquirer and Philadelphia Press.
He was active in organizing the Society of
Independent Artists and was its president
from 1918. In 1930 Sloan was elected
president of the Art Students League of New
York City.
Sloan’s painting owes its distinction to a
natural interest in human beings, whose life
he portrayed with a directness often verging
on satire. He was equally gifted as an etcher.
John Sloan.
Hairdresser’s Window.
1907. Oil on canvas.
31-7⁄8 × 26”. Wadsworth
Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut
The Truth about America: The Eight
And Social Criticism

5.
Maurice Prendergast adapted the ideas
of light and color developed by the
impressionists and post-
impressionists, and made them
uniquely his own.
Prendergast used brilliant color and
thick surface, giving his canvases their
distinctive coarse texture.
George Bellows was a member of the
"Ashcan School“, whose name derived
from the group's gritty scenes of
everyday urban life.
He painted New York's darker
side using vigorous, rapid brushworks.
George Bellows. Cliff Dwellers.
1913. Oil on canvas.
39-1⁄2 × 41-1⁄2”. Los Angeles
County Museum of Art

6.
Two Photographers: Riis and Hine
During the Gilded Age photography was
used as a method of documentation.
Social reformers Jacob Riis and Lewis
Hine, used photography to document the
effects of industrialization and
urbanization on the working-class, and to
effect social change
Their work highlighted the need for social
and labor reform to the attention of policy
makers and the public.
Both men worked hard to improve the
lives of America's working-class citizens.
Jacob A. Riis. “Five Cents a
Spot”. Lodging House, Bayard
Street. c. 1889. Gelatin-silver
print. Museum of the City of
New York.

7.
Stieglitz and Steichen
George Eastman transformed
photography into an inexpensive
pastime. In 1884 Eastman patented the
first film in roll form.
Stieglitz’s The Steerage captured
steerage passengers who, having been
rejected by United States immigration
officials, were being sent back to
Europe.
Alfred Stieglitz is credited with
spearheading the rise of modern
photography in America in the early
years of the twentieth century.
Alfred Stieglitz The Steerage.
1907. Gelatin-silver print
4-5⁄16 × 3-5⁄8”. The Art Institute
of Chicago
A Rallying Place for Modernism:
291 Gallery and the Stieglitz Circle

8.
During the summer of 1908 Rodin
moved the plaster of his sculpture
of Balzac out of his studio for
Steichen to photograph it in
moonlight.
The exposures lasted about an
hour each. Steichen completed the
exposure of this photograph at 4:00
A.M. The moonlight emphasized
the silhouette against the nocturnal
landscape.
Stieglitz reproduced this image
along with nine of Rodin's
drawings in "Camera Work" in July
1911.
Edward Steichen. Balzac
The Silhouette—4 a.m. 1908
Gum bichromate print.
14-15⁄16 × 18-1⁄8”. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York.

9.
Edward Steichen accepted the position of
chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity
Fair by Condé Nast.
The move upset Alfred Stieglitz and his
followers, who considered the commercial
enadeavour as damaging the cause of
photography as a fine art.
But Steichen revolutionized fashion
photography by replacing the soft light of
the Pictorialist with the clean, crisp
Modernist lines.
His approach redefined the image of the
fashionable woman as a direct, and
independent figure.
Edward Steichen. Gloria
Swanson. 1924.
Gelatin-silver print
16-1⁄16 × 13-1⁄2”
The Museum of Modern Art
New York

10.
Weber, Hartley, Marin,
and Dove
Max Weber
Max Weber was born in Russia and
at age ten emigrated with his family
to the United States, settling in New
York City.
Weber is considered one of
America's earliest modernists, and
his long career witnessed many
stylistic changes.
Through the 1920s his work paid
homage to such European artists as
Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo
Picasso, and Henri Rousseau as well
as to tribal African art.
Max Weber. Chinese Restaurant
1915. Oil on canvas. 40 × 48”
Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York

11.
Marsden Hartley
A core member of the group that revolved
around Alfred Stieglitz in New York City in
the early decades of the 1900s, Marsden
Hartley was at the center of the artistic and
cultural American Modernism.
A painter, poet, critic, and artistic rebel,
Hartley witnessed momentous changes
during the course of his lifetime. Hartley took
part in the vibrant and vital changes afoot in
the world.
He joined a generation of radicals who shook
off the weight of convention and tradition,
and although academically trained, he
valued innovation over tradition and worked
to develop an original artistic voice.
Marsden Hartley. Portrait of
a German Officer. 1914
Oil on canvas.
68 ¼” x 41 3/8”. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York.

12.
John Marin
A particularly vocal opponent of what he considered the "self-indulgence'
of pure abstraction, Marin tried to bring in each painting his love of the
visible world.
Marin distrusted illusionism and drew on the resources of his own form of
Cubism to explore his response to what he saw and experienced.
Marin always insisted that his paintings be both celebrations of the
visible world and flat, two-dimensional object
The rugged vigor that characterizes the work, achieved at times by
scrubbing and reworking the surface, belies the delicate beauty still
associated with the artist's watercolors of the previous decade.
Marin's paintings embody the artist's search for the equilibrium he
believed could be achieved between the forces of dynamism and those of
stability and order.

13.
Arthur G. Dove. Nature
Symbolized No. 2. c. 1911. Pastel
on paper. 17-7⁄8 × 21-1⁄2”. The Art
Institute of Chicago
Arthur G. Dove
Dove began his art career as an
illustrator for the New York Press.
In 1907 he went on a year-and-a-
half trip to Europe, spending
most of it in Paris.
There he met American
expatriates Weber, Maurer, and
Bruce.
Shortly after his return to
America he spent much of his
time camping in the wilderness.

14.
Arthur G. Dove. Goin’ Fishin’.
1925. Assemblage of bamboo,
denim shirtsleeve buttons, wood
and oil on wood panel.
19-1⁄2 × 24”. The Phillips
Collection Washington, D.C.
Dove was the first American
artist to paint a completely
abstract image. around 1910.
He did it perhaps a little before
Wassily Kandinsky's first
abstract compositions.
Dove believed he could arrive at
"essences" that would transmit
his sense of the spiritual in
nature, the deep concern of his
art.
The shapes in his paintings
symbolized different kinds of
force, and organic growth.

15.
O’Keefe
Georgia O’Keefe is one of the great
and most compelling American
artists of the 20th-century.
For almost a century, O'Keeffe's
interpretations of the American
landscape provided a counterpoint
to the chaotic images embraced by
the art world.
Her cityscapes and still lifes
emanated an energy that cemented
her position as a great American
painter in the eyes of the critics and
of the public.
Alfred Stieglitz. O’Keeffe Hands
and Thimble. 1919 printed 1947
by Lakeside Press, Chicago.
Photomechanical halftone)
reproduction. 7-3⁄4 × 6”. George
Eastman House, Rochester, NY

16.
During the 1920s, her large
canvasses of flowers became
synonymous with O’Keefe.
The close-up and tight cropping lead
to an abstraction that comes from a
close observation of nature rather
than from fantasy.
O’Keefe’s paintings are a personal
vision more than an object.
In 1946, when Steiglitz died, O'Keeffe
took up permanent residence in Taos,
New Mexico. There she created the
most compelling work of her artistic
life.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Music—
Pink and Blue, II. 1919
Oil on canvas. 35-1⁄2 × 29”
Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York

17.
O’Keefe’s biomorphic forms are more
metamorphic, suggesting growth and
regeneration.
O'Keeffe's work is at once both
representational and abstract.
She gives us a home-grown abstraction
that comes from a close observation of
nature rather than from fantasy.
But what she paints is a world that did
not exist before she painted it; in other
words, she paints a personal vision
more than a thing or object.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Cow’s
Skull with Calico Roses.
1931. Oil on canvas. 35-
7⁄8 × 24”. The Art Institute
of Chicago.

18.
Ansel Adams. Frozen Lakes and
Cliffs. The Sierra Nevada
Sequoia National Park
California. 1932. Gelatin-silver
print.
Straight Photography: Strand,
Cunningham, and Adams
Straight photography
• is a process- and time-based approach
• represents immediacy,
• focuses on producing images in a
sharp focus.
The term refers to photographs that are
not manipulated.
Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz
pioneered Straight photography in New
York.
Ansel Adams exploited the straight
photography to maximize the graphic
quality of the image.

19.
The Armory Show was the most
influential events in the history of
American art.
It took place at the New York's 69th
Regiment Armory on Lexington
Avenue between 25th and 26th
streets.
Approximately 1250 paintings,
sculptures, and decorative works by
over 300 European and American
artists were displayed.
Duchamp's Nude Descending the
Staircase established the avant-
garde’s duty to question the
boundaries of art as an institution
Postcard showing the Armory Show.
1913. The Museum of Modern Art
Archives, New York
Coming to America:
The Armory Show

20.
Synchronism
• refers to a style of painting practiced
in Paris in 1913 by two American
painters, Morgan Russell and Stanton
MacDonald- Wright.
• Is imilar to the French style of
Orphism
• was a form of abstract art, in which
colour was the focus.
The style of was adopted by the mid-
West painter Thomas Hart Benton
before he switched to Regionalism
during the 1920s. By the end of the
WWI, Realism would take hold in
America.
Sharpening the Focus on Color and
Form: Synchronism and Precisionism
Morgan Russell. Synchromy in
Orange: To Form, 1913-1914.
Oil on canvas. 135” x 121 1/2”.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, New York

21.
Precisionism
Throughout the 1910s, Charles Sheeler
forged professional relationships with
Alfred Stieglitz and the artist and gallery
owner Marius de Zayas.
He participated in important group
shows, including the Armory Show, 1913.
During this decade, he also began using
his own photographs as sources for
paintings.
Sheeler focused on New York’s modern
architecture. The dramatic viewpoints
and abstract compositions associated
him with the group of artists working
Precisionist style.
Charles Sheeler. Church
Street El. 1920. Oil on
canvas. 16 × 19-1⁄8”
Cleveland Museum of Art

22.
Sheeler’s Rolling Power is part of a series on industrial power
commissioned by Fortune magazine.
The painting depicts two drive wheels, a bogie wheel, and engine parts of
a Hudson-type New York Central locomotive designed by Henry Dreyfuss.
At the time it was the most efficient and powerful railroad engine
available. The only suggestion of movement is the steam at the right.
Charles Sheeler
Rolling Power
1939 Oil on canvas
15 × 30”. Smith
College Museum of
Art, Northampton,
MA.

23.
Around 1920 Demuth began to
explore the major theme of his
career: industrial America.
He worked in a Precisionist style,
which consisted of a careful
application of paint on the canvas
that hardly a brushstroke can be
seen.
Demuth's painting style has
something in common with
Hartley's numbers.
Charles Demuth. Rooftops and
Trees. 1918. Watercolor and
graphite on paper. 10 × 14”.
Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.

24.
The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928, is a
prediction of Pop art, based on an
Imagist poem, "The Great Figure," by
his friend William Carlos Williams.
Demuth's rendering has something in
common with Hartley's arrays of
banners, numbers, and emblems.
The Figure 5 in Gold represents the
one of the most important pieces of
American modernism.
Demuth painted it almost at the end of
his life.
Charles Demuth. The Figure 5
in Gold. 1928.
Oil on composition board
36 × 29-3⁄4”. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York

25.
The Harlem Renaissance in the beginning
• was a literary movement centered in Harlem
• grew out of the black migration and the emergence of Harlem as the
premier black metropolis in the United States.
• provided inspiration for poetry and local fiction.
The Harlem Renaissance later developed into a recognizes national
movement with connections to international developments in art and
culture.
Shuffle Along
• a musical play written by comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles,
and composers/singers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle
• the cast featured Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson
• introduced white New Yorkers to black music, theater, and entertainment
and helped generated the white fascination with Harlem and the African
American
• also brought jazz to Broadway.
The Harlem Renaissance

26.
Benton, Wood, and Hopper
Regionalism in American painting
developed at the beginning of the
Great Depression in 1929.
Exclusively Midwestern, Regionalism
portrayed American life as simple and
rural, in direct contrast to the urban-
based Realist paintings that had
dominated the American art scene
since the turn of the century.
Benton focused on images of ordinary
people. He used exaggerated
curvilinear shapes, and bold colors.
Thomas Hart Benton. City
Building from the mural series
America Today. 1930. Distemper
and egg tempera on gessoed
linen with oil glaze. 7’ 8” × 9’ 9”.
Collection the Equitable Life
Assurance Society of the United
States
Painting the American
Scene: Regionalists
and Social Realists

27.
Grant Wood adopted the style of precise
realism of 15th-century northern European
artists, and he supper-imposed it on his
native Iowa, which provided the artist with
his subject matter.
American Gothic depicts a farmer and his
spinster daughter posing before their house.
American Gothic is an image that epitomizes
the Puritan ethic and virtues that he believed
dignified the Midwestern character.
Wood was declared the founder of a new
school of art, called Regionalism, and he
was quick to embrace it.
Grant Wood. American Gothic
1930. Oil on beaverboard.
29-7⁄8 × 24-7⁄8”
The Art Institute of Chicago

28.
Edward Hopper, born in
Nyack, New York, in 1882,
He studied at the New York
School of Illustrating, and
later at the more prestigious
New York School of Art.
After his studies at the NY
School of Art, Edward Hopper
went to Europe to study in
Paris.
Hopper is an important
representative of American
realism. His work is
quintessentially American.
Edward Hopper Early Sunday Morning
1930 Oil on canvas 35 × 60”. Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York

29.
Lawrence for the most part
used poster paints to capture
the vivid street scenes of
Harlem, and he civil righ
He is best known for the sixty-
panel Migration series, tracing
the great migration of blacks
from the rural agricultural
south to the urban industrial
north.
The migration brought about
many conflicts:
• the battle between tradition
and progress,
• past and future,
• South and North.
Jacob Lawrence. The Migration series
Panel No. 1: During World War I there was a
great migration north by Southern
African Americans, 1940–41. Casein tempera
on hardboard. 12 × 18”. The Phillips
Collection, Washington, D.C.

30.
Bishop, Shahn, and Blume
Ben Shahn, born in 1898 in Kovno,
Lithuania, is best known for his works
of social realism.
He often explored polemic themes of
modern urban life, organized labor,
immigration and injustice.
Ben Shahn. The Passion of Sacco and
Vanzetti. 1931–32. Tempera on canvas. 7’
1⁄2” × 4’. Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York

31.
Dorothea Lange took this photograph in
1936, while employed by the U.S.
government’s Farm Security Administration
(FSA) program.
The program was created during the Great
Depression to raise awareness of and
provide aid to impoverished farmers.
Lange photographed Florence Owens
Thompson and her children, in Nipomo,
California.
Migrant Mother, was widely circulated to
magazines and newspapers and became
a symbol of the plight of migrant farm
workers during the Great Depression.
Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother, 1936
Gelatin-silver print. Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.
Documents of an Era: American
Photographers Between the Wars

32.
Born in 1898 in West Prussia, Alfred
Eisenstaedt escaped the Holocaust in
Europe and emigrated to the United
States.
Eisenstaedt was the first photographer
to consistently practice candid
photography.
Over the course of his career
Eisenstaedt photographed a wide range
of subjects which included :
• the first meeting between Hitler and
Mussolini,
• the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb,
• post depression America,
• portraits of John F Kennedy, Albert
Einstein, and Marilyn Monroe,
• photographs of ordinary people .
Alfred Eisenstaedt
The Kiss. (Times Square). 1945.
Life magazine.

33.
The populist engravings of Jose
Guadalupe Posada influenced an entire
generation of painters who were to
change the face of Mexican art forever.
Three artists would be at the forefront of
this change - David Alfaro Siqueiros,
Diego Rivera, and Jose Clemente
Orozco.
Though different in style and
temperament, all three artists believed,
as did many other artists of their time,
that art is for the education and
betterment of the people, not an abstract
concept.
Diego Rivera
Flower Day, 1925.
Oil on canvas. 58 × 47-1⁄2”
Los Angeles County
Museum of Art
Social Protest and Personal Pain:
Mexican Artists

34.
Diego Rivera. Detroit
Industry. 1932–33.
Fresco north wall. The
Detroit Institute of Arts
In spite of the close collaboration, the work of each artist was very
distinctive. Siqueiros was the most innovative of the three. Although he
started working in traditional fresco technique (watercolor washed onto
damp plaster), he soon abandoned it to experiment with pyroxlene, a
commercial enamel, and Duco, a transparent automobile paint.

35.
Siqueiros
• Siqueiros was the youngest three f Mexican
muralists, along with Diego Rivera and José
Clemente Orozco.
• He was also the most radical of the three in
technique, composition and political ideology.
• He dedicated his career to promoting change
through public art.
• He integrated avant-garde styles and
techniques with traditional iconography and
local histories.
• He, like Rivera, believed that technology was a
means to a better world.
David Alfaro Siqueiros
Echo of a Scream. 1937
Enamel on wood . 48 x 36“.
Museum of Modern Art,
New York

36.
Kahlo
Frida Kahlo uses the symbolism of
physical pain in an attempt to
understand emotional suffering.
The language of loss, and deathhad
been investigated by Albrecht
Dürer, Francisco Goya, and Edvard
Munch.
She repeated pain related motifs
throughout her career and created
the means to discuss aspects of
female identity.
Frida Kahlo
Self-Portrait with Thorn
Necklace, 1940. Oil on canvas
24 × 18-3⁄4”. University of
Texas, Austin

37.
Exhibitions and Contact with
Europe
Davis
Stuart Davis one of the great artists of
20th-century America, delved into
Modernism, and portrayed the country as
it was becoming more urban.
He brought Cubism, to New York City,
and modified it by including American
product logos, and using hard-edged
shapes and solid colors. His adaptation
of European Cubism into an American
idiom marked the modern art's move
from Paris to New York.
Stuart Davis. Report from
Rockport, 1940. Oil on canvas
24 × 30”. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
The Avant-Garde Advances:
Toward American Abstract Art

38.
Diller and Pereira
Irene Rice Pereira
• embraced the principles of the
Bauhaus.
• merged technology and the
transcendental
• was among the most avid Bauhaus
proponents in the United States.
Diller
• a pioneer of American modernism, he
devoted his career to the exploration of
geometric abstraction in painting,
drawing, collage, and sculpture.
Avery and Tack
• used color and abstracted forms to
convey a unique vision of the American
scene.
Milton Avery
Swimmers and Sunbathers,
1945. Oil on canvas. 28 × 48-1⁄8”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York

39.
Lachaise and Nedelman
Lachaise is best known for his large, stylized,
female nudes, especially the several versions of
Standing Woman (1912–27, 1932).
Lachaise depicted the female nudes as:
• vigorous,
• robust,
• massive
• in repose,
• serene
• and eternal
Gaston Lachaise,
Standing Woman,
1912–27, Bronze,
height 70”,
Albright-Knox Art
Gallery, Buffalo, NY
The Avant-Garde Advances:
Toward American Abstract Art

40.
Elie Nadelman was an American-Polish artist
whose work mreged the classical sculpture
and folk art.
His sculptures of women and animals
combined soft stylization with the industrial
aesthetic of bronze, stone, and hardwood.
Elie Nadelman. Man in the Open Air
c. 1915, Bronze, 54 1⁄2” high at base 11
3⁄4 × 21 1⁄2”. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York

41.
Alexander Calder became best
known as the inventor of the
'mobile' and the 'stabile' ("line
drawings in space"), and a pioneer
of kinetic art.
Calder redefined sculpture by
introducing the element of motion
first with motorized works, and later,
with hanging works called
"mobiles."
Calder was the first artist to use
wire to create three-dimensional line
"drawings" of people, animals, and
objects. These "linear sculptures"
introduced line into sculpture as an
element unto itself.
André Kertész. Alexander Calder with
his Circus (“Cirque Calder”), 1929.
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington,, D.C.

42.
Alexander Calder, Romulus
and Remus, 1928. Wire and
wood 30-1⁄2 × 124-1⁄2 × 26”
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York
Alexander Calder. Lobster Trap and Fish
Tail, 1939. Hanging mobile: painted steel
wire and sheet aluminum approximately
8’ 6” high × 9’ 6” diameter. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York