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White to Blue
| American Art as Reflection of Social Class in the 20th Century
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On October 29, 1929, the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end with a stock market crash, which was the first visible sign of an American economic depression. The Great Depression, however, would not be a loss to art. Franklin D. Roosevelt saw it as the federal government's responsibility to promote a strong economy. When elected president in 1932, he brought with him a plan to help the country recover economically. Under Roosevelt's leadership, the federal government created jobs for the thousands of unemployed, including artists. Among the "alphabet soup" of work programs under the New Deal were the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Federal Arts Project (FAP). Under the WPA, artists were paid a weekly stipend to produce a minimum amount of work, and their work then became public property. Murals for government buildings and other public places were a favorite project of the WPA as the public directly benefited from the artist's work. Artists were relatively free to choose a subject matter and style, as long as the image depicted an American theme from the past or present. The Works Progress Administration and the Federal Arts Project also encouraged art education and the documentation of the cultural heritage of the United States, particularly the rural South. Roosevelt's New Deal provided economic relief for artists during the Great Depression and also encouraged naturalism and patriotic themes.
Focusing both on the youth of American and the country's "favorite pastime," Paul Cadmus' Two Heads, 1938x, continued the realism movement in American art. Two Heads is an intensely realistic image of two young boys during a sandlot baseball game. Set in the city, the painting is filled with the two boys' faces. Richard Meyer notes that Cadmus' paintings are often a dialogue between classicism and American vernacular culture. Two Heads demonstrates this dialogue with the idealized heads of the two youth very obviously set in the 20th century. Their clothing, baseball caps and jerseys, as well as their surroundings place the two classical heads firmly in 20th century America.
Jon Corbino's Rockport Fishermen, 1935, depicts three fishermen in the foreground, looking out over rough seas and the two boats in the water. Corbino was known for his artistic portrayal of natural disaster and the forces of nature. As a young child, Corbino immigrated to America with his mother and during his journey from Europe he witnessed an earthquake and a storm at sea. The storm in Rockport Fishermen is not particularly rough yet, but the three men on shore may have already made the decision not to go out. In this image, man has not yet overcome nature, as the men yield to the rough seas. The image, however, does not suggest that man has lost entirely. The men keep their oars; perhaps to be ready when the storm ends.
The American economy would not be fully recovered from the depression of the 1930s until America entered World War II in 1941. The war in Europe had been going on since 1939, but an American policy of political isolationism and a preoccupation with American problems delayed American participation until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Suddenly America could no longer ignore international politics and declared war on Japan, Italy, and Germany within days. World War II and the related war industry would provide jobs for unemployed men and even encourage the employment of women in traditionally male fields. As men went off to fight for their country and the right for democracy everywhere, women followed the lead of "Rosie the Riveter" and joined the workforce to manufacture munitions and other essential war goods.
Jon Corbino, American, 1905-1964, Rockport Fishermen, 1935, oil on canvas, Gift of the Friends of Art, 1938.001
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Although Isabel Bishop's Lunch Counter was produced in 1940, before America's entrance into World War II, this etching depicts the reality of life for working women. This etching portrays two working women standing at a lunch counter. They are focused on their meal and do not interact with each other. Their physical proximity and similar clothing suggests a camaraderie or understanding between these two women. The detail of their clothing illustrates the fashion of the early 1940s, but does not give a clear indication of the employment of these women. Working as an urban realist, Bishop was known for her depictions of the daily activities of urban women.
Walter Biggs was an artist-illustrator who painted watercolor illustrations for magazines such as Harper's, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCalls. His illustrations for these magazines often depicted daily life in America and were viewed as representing America herself. Biggs' Lady with V-Mail, 1942, portrays a woman with a letter signed, "my love Jimmy." The gold band on her left hand suggests that "Jimmy" is this woman's husband and she is waiting for him to return home from the war. It is possible that the globe she is pictured with is being used to locate his present duty location. Biggs' depiction of the Lady with V-Mail confirmed society's expectations for women during World War II. Those women left behind were expected to make the best of the situation and wait for the return of their husbands, sons, brothers, or boyfriends. Beyond corresponding with those overseas, American women could also contribute to the war effort by planting a Victory garden, rolling bandages, organizing scrap metal drives, or joining the workforce. Each of these activities, popular opinion dictated, was important in the effort to beat the Nazis and no endeavor was too small or insignificant. If Biggs' Lady with V-Mail appeared in a popular magazine in 1942, readers would immediately have recognized and understood this woman's patriotism and support of her solider.
World War II not only brought a shift in gender roles to America, but it also brought a new wave of European immigration to the United States. Scientists, authors, and artists alike escaped Europe in the early years of the war for the freedom of thought that existed in the United States. With this new wave of immigration, European artists brought with them the most recent ideas, concerning modern art, including surrealism and the Bauhaus movement. Americans no longer had to travel abroad to study art; New York City was quickly becoming the new center of the art world. From these European ideas in their country, Americans developed a new form of modern art in the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism took the modern art view of "art for art's sake" one step further. Abstract Expressionists believed that the process of creating art was as important as the end result. They were also interested in the surface qualities of painting: paint viscosity, monumental canvasses, and improvisation. Representation was not of prime importance in their work; rather they saw their work as a combination of pigment, color, canvas, brushwork, and creative energy. Grace Hartigan's #19 Pastorale, 1953, is a silkscreen on paper and demonstrates the use of color and the energy present in Abstract Expressionism.
Abstract Expressionism not only freed the artist from representing the physical world, but also freed the artist from working in three dimensions. Abstract Expressionists largely worked in the single dimension of the canvas surface. Conrad Marca-Relli's Figure Form S-14-72, 1972, is a collage of paint, canvas, and burlap, reflecting ideas of both Abstract Expressionism and colorfield painting. Colorfield painting developed in the 1960s with an emphasis on the one dimension of the canvas and the effect of color. Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was an innovator of Abstract Expressionism and colorfield painting. Motherwell believed that meaning is conveyed through the gesture and structure of his work. Motherwell's Elegy Black Black, 1983, is representative of Motherwell's style in that it contains large amounts of a single color. Elegy Black Black is a color lithograph with large areas of black ink along with dribbles, splatters, and smears that suggest the movement and energy involved in its creation.
Abstraction, however, was not the only new movement in modern art. A new type of realism developed in the 1960s as a group of artists became interested in depicting popular culture, consumer objects, and the depersonalization in American society that resulted from this mass media. Known as Pop Art, short for popular art, this art is best known by Andy Warhol's Campbell soup cans or Roy Lichtenstein's comic book scenes. Pop Art, then, became a way of breaking down the barrier between high art and everyday objects and experiences. Roy Lichtenstein's Painting in Gold Frame, 1984, combines Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Lichtenstein's subject is Abstract Expressionist, but executed in comic book style, with large, fast "brushstrokes" surrounded on two sides by the gold frame. Lichtenstein's "painting" is actually a print made to resemble a painting, employing ideas of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.
Photorealism evolved in the 1960s as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism. Called Photorealism for its detailed and realistic images, artists in this movement sought simply to recreate what was present in front of them. Philip Pearlstein (b. 1924) was one of the first artists to work in this manner and his paintings of nudes are similar to those in the Renaissance tradition. Pearlstein's Model on Hammock, 1974, is typical of this movement with a nude model posed naturally and painted without commentary. Pearlstein does not idealize his images, nor are they expressionistic, they are simply portrayed as they appear, as a camera might capture them. Pearlstein, however, does not see his art as imitating the camera, because he feels an artist "sees more than a camera does."
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