Art1100 LVA 21_4 American Modernism online

Art 1100
Joan Jonas
“They Come to Us without a Word”
U.S. Pavilion,Venice Biennale, 2015

American Regionalism
Movement in American art that focused on local, representational
subject-matter.“Regionalism” was the dominant style in American art
during the 1930s and into the 1940s, often depicting scenes of the
rural Midwest,American folklore, or the hard times during the Great
Depression.
• Thomas Hart Benton,
• John Steuart Curry
• Grant Wood
—all Midwesterners—are artists most commonly associated with
Regionalism.However, the work of Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper
could also be considered ‘Regionalist’, as they painted during the
same period and drew on local sources for subject-matter, though in
their case the focus was on city life.

Thomas Hart Benton: July
Hay, egg tempera, methyl
cellulose and oil on
masonite, 965×679 mm,
1943 (The Metropolitan
Museum of Art

Grant Wood:American Gothic,
oil on beaver board, 1930 (The
Art Institute of Chicago);

Grant Wood’s celebrated masterpiece American Gothic (1930) marked
a complete stylistic break with his earlier output.The picture won a
bronze medal at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It is one of the
world’s best-known and most popular American paintings.The impetus
for the painting came while Wood was visiting the small town of Eldon
in his native Iowa.There he spotted a little wood farmhouse, with a
single oversized window in the Carpenter Gothic style.
“I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go
with this American Gothic house,” he said. He used his sister and his
dentist as models for a farmer and his daughter, dressing them as if
they were “tintypes from my old family album.” The image of the two
hardy Puritan pioneers resonated with the lives and family histories of
countless Americans.

Grant Wood:The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, oil on masonite, 762×1016 mm, 1931 (NewYork, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wood, Grant
Title Young Corn
Work Type Paintings (visual works)
Date 1931
Location United States
Style Period Regionalist (American Scene
20th Century
Description Oil on Masonite, 62x76 cm
Repository Cedar Rapids Art Association

Benton and art critic Thomas Craven were Regionalism’s most vocal
advocates, often comparing Regionalist murals and paintings favorably
against what they saw as élitist European abstraction, due to its relevance
to a wider audience and its rootedness in local sources and more
‘authentic’ subject-matter.
The debate between Regionalism’s use of representation and abstraction
did not end there, but rather heated up after World War II when art
historian H.W. Janson wrote ‘Benton andWood, Champions of Regionalism’,
an essay which likened the conservative Regionalist style and cultural
politics to Fascist art. A dismissal that became dogma for art critics,
collectors, and historians for more than a generation.

Curry, John Steuart
Title Tornado
Date 1929
Style Period Regionalist (American Scene)
20th Century
Description Oil on canvas, 117.5x153.7 cm.
Repository Muskegon Museum of Art

Curry, John Steuart
Title Hogs Killing Rattlesnake
Date 1930
Style Period Regionalist (American Scene)
20th Century
Description Oil on canvas, 76.5x97.5 cm.
Repository Art Institute of Chicago

Armory Show [International Exhibition of Modern Art].
Held in 1913 in the 69th Regiment Armory in NY.This first large-scale
show of modern art held in the USA resulted from the independent
campaign of a group of progressive artists formed in 1912 to oppose
the National Academy of Design and to broaden exhibition
opportunities for modern American artists.
Arthur Davies, artist and president of the group, and Walt Kuhn were
determined to present an international survey of Modern art.They
succeeded in borrowing significant Impressionist, Post-Impressionist,
Fauve, and Cubist works from leading European artists and dealers.
Although two thirds of the 1300 works included in the exhibition
were by American artists, the European selections attracted the
greatest attention and defined public perceptions of the show.
Popularizing Modernism in America.

International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show), installed at 69th Infantry Regiment Armory, NewYork City
installation view 1 [Room H (foreign section)]
Documentary photographs , 1913
Exhibited at the 69th Infantry Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street from February 15 through March 15, 1913

International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show), installed at Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois after it had traveled from
NYC.
installation view 1 [gallery 53]
Documentary photographs, 1913
Exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 24 through April 16, 1913; One of the galleries of the Armory Show as
installed at the Art Institute of Chicago in March 1913. On the left are three of the seven works by Pablo Picasso included in the
exhibition: "Landscape with Two Trees" (1907-1908, Philadelphia Museum of Art), "Madame Soler" (1903, Neue Pinakothek,
Munich), and "Woman with Mustard Pot" (1909-1910, Gemeentemuseum, the Hague).

Alfred Stieglitz, Self-Portrait,
1907, platinum print.
National Gallery of Art,
Washington,Alfred Stieglitz
Collection
The chief proponent of European
Modern art in the United States was
the photographer Alfred Stieglitz
(1864–1946).
Organized exhibitions of major
Modern artists at a tiny gallery at 291
Fifth Avenue in NY, known simply as
“291” founded with photographer
Edward J. Steichen
As a photographer himself, he sought
to establish the legitimacy of
photography as a ﬁne art with these
exhibitions.

Originally called the Little
Galleries of the Photo-Secession, it
was founded to promote
photography as an independent
art form. In their ﬁrst exhibition,
Stieglitz and Steichen featured
the work of the PHOTO-
SECESSION group. However,
their concentration on
photography was brief, and they
soon broadened the scope of
the gallery to include exhibitions
of avant-garde painting,
sculpture, and graphic arts.
Alfred Stieglitz: From the Back Window, 291, platinum print,
251x202 mm, 1915 (NewYork, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949

Alfred Stieglitz, 291--Picasso-Braque Exhibition, 1915, platinum print.
National Gallery of Art,Washington,Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Stieglitz and 291 gallery.

Photographed by Alfred
Stieglitz, at 291 Gallery, NY,
in front of Marsden Hartley’s
painting The Warriors.
The Stieglitz photograph,
reproduced here, was
featured in the Dada journal,
The Blind Man, 2 May 1917.

Stieglitz,Alfred
Brancusi Exhibition at Gallery 291, March to April, 1914
Platinum print, 19.3x24.4 cm.
Museum of Modern Art (NewYork, N.Y.)

Equally important to the popularization of European artists was
Stieglitz’s promotion, through the gallery, of contemporary
American artists. He staged the ﬁrst exhibitions for Pamela
Coleman Smith (1907), John Marin (1909),Alfred H. Maurer
(1909),Arthur B. Carles,Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, and
Max Weber (1910),Abraham Walkowitz (1912), Oscar Bluemner
(1915), Elie Nadelman (1915), Georgia O’Keeffe (1916), and
Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1917).

O'Keeffe, Georgia
Pink No. 2, 1919
Oil on canvas,
88.9x73.98 cm.
Whitney Museum of
American Art

Hartley, Marsden,
1877-1943.
Painting no. 5,
1914-1915.
39 1/2 x 31 3/4 inches.
Whitney Museum of
American Art.

Harlem Renaissance: A group of talented African-
American artists and thinkers produced a sizable body of
prominent works. The “Great Migration,” from the South
brought numerous African Americans to Harlem in
Northern Manhattan.
•W.E.B. Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folks (1903)
"twoness", a divided awareness of one's identity.
• Founding of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
•The “Back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey
•The explosion of the arts particularly Jazz music,
painting, dramatic revues and literature.

Harlem Renaissance
The nationwide “New Negro”
movement called for greater social
and political activism among African
Americans.
The movement’s intellectual leader
was Alain Locke (1886–1954), a critic
and philosophy professor who urged
artists and writers to explore themes
of African American life and culture
and to look beyond caricature and
stereotyping in their works. The New Negro Editor:Alain
Locke, ed. Date: 1925 Medium:
Bound book with printed
illustrations Lender: National
Portrait Gallery

Creation, 1935
Aaron Douglas
(1899-1979)
Harlem Renaissance
Locke argued that
black artists should
seek their artistic roots
in the traditional arts of
Africa rather than in
mainstream American
or European art.

Building More Stately
Mansions, 1944
Aaron Douglas
(1899-1979)
Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas was the
Harlem Renaissance artist
whose work best
exempliﬁed the 'New
Negro' philosophy. He
painted murals for public
buildings and produced
illustrations and cover
designs for many black
publications including The
Crisis and Opportunity.

The earliest African American painter consciously to
incorporate African imagery in his work was Aaron Douglas, a
prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance and later. Other
significant artists who contributed to the movement included
MetaVaux Fuller, Palmer Hayden, who painted satirical images
of life in Harlem,William E. Scott (1884–1964), and Malvin Gray
Johnson (1896–1934).The most important African American
photographer of that period was JamesVan Der Zee, who
photographed people and scenes in Harlem for more than 50
years and also served as the official photographer for the Pan-
Africanist Marcus Garvey during his frequent parades and rallies
in Harlem.
Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas ASPECTS OF NEGRO LIFE: FROM SLAVERY THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION
1934. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NewYork Public Library.

"...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not
white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them deep
through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope,
through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our
people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected.Then let's
sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's create
something transcendentally material, mystically objective. Earthy.
Spiritually earthy. Dynamic.”
 
- Aaron Douglas 
Harlem Renaissance

Douglas, Aaron
Scottsboro Boys c.1935
Harlem Renaissance
Pastel on paper, 41x37.1 cm.
Repository National Portrait Gallery
Harlem Renaissance

Harlem’s wealthy middle-class African- American community produced
some of the nation’s most talented artists of the 1920s and 1930s,
such as the jazz musician Duke Ellington, the novelist Jean Toomer, and
the poet Langston Hughes and writer Ralph Ellison (author of The
Invisible Man).
Harlem Renaissance
The Cotton Club,
Harlem, NewYork
City, c. 1930.

Van Der Zee, James, Untitled [couple dressed in fur by a car]1932
Harlem Renaissance ,B&w photograph
Harlem Renaissance

Van der Zee, James, 1886-
Untitled, NewYork City
Photograph
Harlem Renaissance

Archibald J. Motley Jr. (1891–1981), Blues, 1929. Oil on canvas, 36 × 42 in. (91.4 × 106.7 cm).
Harlem Renaissance

Archibald J. Motley Jr. (b. 1891–1981), Self-
Portrait (Myself at Work), 1933. Oil on canvas,
57.125 × 45.25 in.
Harlem Renaissance
Motley consciously
dedicated himself to the
depiction of African
Americans.Through his
portraits and genre
scenes, Motley created a
visual legacy that
extended the Harlem
Renaissance beyond the
boundaries of NewYork

Archibald J. Motley Jr., Brown
Girl After the Bath, 1931. Oil
on canvas, 48 1/4 × 36 in.
(122.6 × 91.4 cm). Columbus
Museum of Art, Ohio;

The Stock Market crash of 1929 brought the golden era of the
Harlem Renaissance to an end and plunged the USA into the Great
Depression of the 1930s.The Depression paralysed the nation’s
economy, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal
Art Project (1935–43), a division of the Works Progress
Administration, which provided employment for many African
American artists.
The most important national commission received by an African
American artist during the 1930s went to the sculptor Augusta
Savage, who created a large sculpture,The Harp (later called Lift
EveryVoice and Sing; painted plaster, h. 4.87 m) for the Negro
Pavilion of the NewYork World’s Fair of 1939.
Harlem Renaissance

“The Harp” depicted
twelve stylized Black
singers of graduated
heights that symbolized
the strings of the harp.
The sounding board
was formed by the hand
and arm of God, and a
kneeling man holding
music represented the
foot pedal.
Savage,Augusta, 1892-1962
Lift EveryVoice and Sing, 1939
plaster h. 16 ft

Augusta Savage in her studio working on a section of the sculpture "The Harp", created
for the NewYork World's Fair (1939)1937 B&w photograph
Sculpture based on "Lift EveryVoice and Sing" by James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson
Harlem Renaissance

SAVAGE Augusta Christine, attributed to
(1892--1962)., artist
Bust.Young black man. Marble.
Height: 58.4 cm. (23 in.).
Harlem Renaissance

During and immediately after World War II, there arose to
prominence a new school of African American artists, many of whom
were the so-called ‘children of the Harlem Renaissance’. Such artists
as Selma Burke, Charles White, and William H. Johnson, who had
attracted attention before the war, continued their achievements.
Other prominent African American artists of this time were Jacob
Lawrence, who painted highly colorful images of black life and history
(e.g. the 60 gouache panels of the Migration of the Negro
Northwards, 1941); Elmer Simms Campbell, who contributed
illustrations for such periodicals as Esquire, the painters Romare
Bearden, Eldzier Cortor, Frederick Flemister, and Horace Pippin,
whose paintings included depictions of ﬁgures from the history of
black emancipation.
‘children of the Harlem Renaissance’

Jacob Lawrence, (American,
1917-2000) The railroad stations in
the South were crowded with people
leaving for the North, 1940-41
Jacob Lawrence's landmark 1941 painting series of 60
images about the mass movement of African Americans
from the rural South to the urban North known as the
Great Migration. Each image was a portion of the story and
had a caption to go with it.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) Migration of the Negro: No. 3, 1940-1
In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry.

Lawrence, Jacob, (1917-2000) Migration of the Negro: No. 5, 1940-1

Lawrence, Jacob,
(1917-2000) Migration
of the Negro: No. 7,
1940-1

Lawrence, Jacob,
(1917-2000) Migration of
the Negro: No. 41, 1940-1
“The South that was
interested in keeping cheap
labor was making it very
difﬁcult for labor agents
recruiting Southern labor
for Northern ﬁrms. In
many instances, they were
put in jail and were forced
to operate incognito.”

Lawrence, Jacob,
(1917-2000) Migration of
the Negro: No. 55, 1940-1
“In the North the Negro
had freedom to vote.”

Jacob Lawrence, (American, 1917-2000) And the migrants kept coming, 1940-41

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/
onewayticket/panel/1/intro
To see the full series of paintings go to…

Romare Bearden,The Payment of Judas, 1945-46

Romare Bearden,
Conjur Woman,
1964

Romare Bearden,The Dove, 1964

American Modernism
in Architecture

The Prairie school
Term given to an American group of architects. Inspired by
Louis Sullivan and led by Frank Lloyd Wright. Originally
these architects were called the Chicago school, but in 1914
Wilhelm Miller, a professor at the University of Illinois,
proposed the separate term, because of the visual
associations with the broad, level character of the American
prairie that he discerned in the residential work of many of
these architects.
Modernist Architecture in America

Frank Lloyd Wright, (1867–1959)
American.
One of the most influential 20th
century architects in the world.
Began in Oak Park with flat roofed,
horizontal houses with and heavy
overhangs that echoed the flat plains of
the prairie in the Midwest.
His life’s achievement was largely centered on suburban and
rural houses, renowned for their spatial integration with
their surrounding environments, though his series of public
buildings was unprecedented in their structural
inventiveness.

Wright, Frank Lloyd, (US, 1867-1959) “Robie House”, Chicago: 1907-1909

The FREDERICK C. ROBIE HOUSE is one of Wright’s early
masterpieces in the Prairie Style. It was designed around a
central chimney (to radiate heat throughout the house in the
bitter Chicago winter), and features a low, ﬂat overhanging roof
(to shade against the summer sun) with open porches for
sleeping outside in the cool of summer nights.
The roof is dramatically cantilevered on both sides of the
chimney.The windows are arranged in low bands around the
house; many are stained glass, creating a colored screen between
the interior of the house and the outside world while also
inviting the viewer to look through the windows into the garden
beyond.

Fallingwater, Edgar J. Kaufmann House, Mill
Run, Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright
(American, 1867-1959), 1934-37
Frank Lloyd Wright’s
“Fallingwater”
•Integrated architecture and nature
•Perched above a waterfall.
•Anchored to a large boulder, which
serves in the interior as the central
hearth and the symbolic core of domestic
life.
•Made of stone from a nearby quarry.
As a great work of art, Fallingwater goes beyond its function
as a house to meet a client's needs and symbolizes an
American democratic ideal: to be able to live a free life in nature.

Fallingwater, Edgar J. Kaufmann House, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright
(American, 1867-1959), 1934-37

Sleek cantilevered balconies of reinforced concrete, made possible
by modern engineering, seem to ﬂoat effortlessly, if precariously,
over the water.Their shape echoes the stepped rock ledges in the
stream.An outdoor staircase suspended from below the living room
leads to the plunge pool below.
Fallingwater embodies Wright's deeply held values about the
underlying unity of humans and nature, which is reﬂected in his
selection of building materials.As a great work of art, Fallingwater
transcends its function as a house to meet a client's needs and
symbolizes an American democratic ideal: to be able to live a free
life in nature.

American System-Built Houses for The Richards Company., Model D101, project, Exterior
perspective Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959) c. 1915-17
Frank Lloyd Wright's "System-Built Houses"-low-cost houses
assembled from factory-produced elements.

Frank Lloyd Wright,The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, NewYork, 1957-59.

After World War II,Wright’s career dramatically expanded
until the end of his life, most notably in a series of major
public buildings.
The most famous of these is the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum (1943–59) in NewYork City. Its main gallery as a
continuous spiral ramp around a central circular rotunda
further demonstrated the potential of the cantilever principle
realized in steel-reinforced concrete.The Guggenheim
Museum was the most inﬂuential of Wright’s late buildings,
especially on later art museums by architects

Art1100 LVA 21_4 American Modernism online

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