Social realism
Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports of Ukraine
National Technical University of Ukraine
«Kiev Polytechnic Institute»
Institute of Publishing and Printing
CHAIR OF GRAPHIC ARTS
LIBRARY RESEARCH PAPER
on topic:
SOCIAL REALISM
Executed by:
Student of the 3rd course, group SG-02
Kozyr Julia
Scientific advisor:
Senior lecturer Kononenko S.A.
Kyiv 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page* | ||
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ……………………………………………………………………………… |
2 | |
CHAPTER |
||
I DEFINITION AND ORIGINS ……………………………………………………………………………… |
3 | |
II DIEGO RIVERA ………………..………………………………………………………… |
5 | |
III INFLUENCES ON MOVEMENT …………………………………………………………........
|
? | |
III SOCIAL REALISM
IN PHOTOGRAPHY……………………...……………………
iv ashcan school……………………………………………………………… v connected movements………………………………………………………
vi “american gothic”…………………………………………………………… |
? | |
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………… |
? | |
GLOSSARY ……………………………………………………………………………… |
? | |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Figure 1. (“Creation” by Diego Rivera)……………………………………………..6
- Figure 2 . (“History of Mexico” by Diego Rivera)…………………………………7
- Figure 3. (Photo from Great Depression time)…………………………………….9
- Figure 4 (“Migrant Mother”, by Dorothea Lange)………………………………..9
- Figure 5. (Photo by Walker Evans of Allie Mae Burroughs)……………………11
- Figure 6.( George Bellows, Both Members of This Club,1909)………………...13
- Figure 7. (Robert Henri, Snow in New York 1902)………………………………..14
- Figure 8. (Everett Shinn, Self-portrait, 1901 )……………………………………..14
- Figure 9. (George B. Luks, Allen Street, c.1905)…………………………………15
- Figure 10. (William Glackens, Coney Island Fruit Stand, 1898)……………….15
- Figure 11. (John French Sloan, McSorley's Bar,1912,)………………………....16
- Figure 12. (Edward Hopper, Summer Interior 1909)…………………………….16
- Figure 13. (Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 )……………………………….18
DEFINITION, ORIGINS
Social realism is an artistic movement which first started in the 1930s during the Great Depression. It was seen in art, books and film. Social realism rejects the romanticized view of life and instead truthfully shows poverty, discrimination, and the difficult life of the working class. Social realism discards superstition and mysticism, both of which are often featured in other films to distract people from the hopelessness of their situation.
An artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic. The movement is a style of painting in which the scenes depicted typically convey a message of social or political protest edged with satire. This is not to be confused with Socialist Realism, the official USSR art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and later allied Communist parties worldwide.
Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of social consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to “fight the beautiful art”, any style which appealed to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw (“as it existed”) in a dispassionate manner. The public was outraged by Social Realism, in part, because they didn't know how to look at it or what to do with it.
Term used to refer to the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and film makers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. In general it should not be confused with Socialist realism, the official art form of the USSR, which was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934, and later by allied Communist parties worldwide. Social realism, in contrast, represents a democratic tradition of independent socially motivated artists, usually of left-wing or liberal persuasion. Their preoccupation with the conditions of the lower classes was a result of the democratic movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, so social realism in its fullest sense should be seen as an international phenomenon, despite the term’s frequent association with American painting. While the artistic style of social realism varies from nation to nation, it almost always utilizes a form of descriptive or critical realism (e.g. the work in 19th-century Russia of the Wanderers).
Social realism’s origins are traceable to European Realism, including the art of Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. In 19th-century England the Industrial Revolution aroused a concern in many artists for the urban poor. Throughout the 1870s the work of such British artists as Luke Fildes, Hubert von Herkomer, Frank Holl (e.g. Seat in a Railway Station—Third Class, wood engraving, 1872) and William Small (e.g. Queue in Paris, wood engraving, 1871) were widely reproduced in The Graphic, influencing van Gogh’s early paintings. Similar concerns were addressed in 20th-century Britain by the Artists international association, Mass observation and the Kitchen sink school. In photography social realism also draws on the documentary traditions of the late 19th century, as in the work of Jacob A. Riis and Maksim Dmitriyev; it reached a culmination in the worker–photographer movements in Europe and the work by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn and others for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) project in the USA in 1935–43.
In the USA during the first decades of the 20th century, Ashcan school painting, including George Luk’s Breaker Boy (1921; Minneapolis, MN, Walker A. Cent.) and John Sloan’s Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street (1928; New York, Whitney), depicted the unattractive reality of city and working life. The Ashcan school influenced the art of the Depression era, for example Thomas Hart Benton’s mural City Activity with Subway (1930; Williamstown, MA, Williams Coll. Mus. A.). The scale and commitment of these works were inspired by the example of the muralists active in Mexico after the Revolution of 1910. Their murals, which were largely propagandizing, emphasized a revolutionary spirit and a pride in the traditions of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Diego Rivera’s History of Mexico from the Conquest to the Future (1929–30, 1935; Mexico City, Pal. N.), José Clemente Orozco’s Catharsis (1933; Mexico City, Pal. B.A.) and David Alfaro Siqueiros’s The Strike (fresco, 1957; Mexico City, Mus. N. Hist.) are characteristic of the movement. Their example also encouraged social realism in other Latin American countries, from Ecuador (e.g. Oswaldo Guayasamín, The Strike, 1940; Quito, Mus. Fund. Guayasamín) to Brazil (e.g. Cândido Portinari, Coffee, 1935; Rio de Janeiro, Mus. N. B.A.).
In Europe, the symbolic style used by such socially critical artists as František Kupka at the beginning of the 20th century gave way to Expressionism, particularly in Germany. There Käthe Kollwitz, for instance, expressed concern for victimized women, as in Raped Woman (etching, 1907; Hannover, Sprengel Mus.). More caustic social criticism was characteristic of Neue sachlichkeit of the Weimar Republic era, as portrayed in George Grosz’s Teutonic Day (1921; Hamburg, Ksthalle) or the work of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. A related realism was also evident in the Netherlands in the work of Charley Toorop (e.g. the Friends’ Meal, 1932–3; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), Pyke Koch and others. Even in France the rural images of Maurice de Vlaminck and Roger De la Fresnaye, and the more critical works in the 1930s of Jean Fautrier and Francis Gruber, pursue social realist objectives. With the political polarization of the period the distinction from Socialist Realism became increasingly blurred, as exemplified by the position in Italy of Renato Guttuso. After World War II social criticism was absorbed by Socialist Realism in Eastern Europe, while in the USA and Western Europe it became overshadowed by the dominance of abstract art movements, though it continued to be important in cinema.
DIEGO RIVERA
Diego Rivera .( December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a prominent Mexican painter and husband of Frida Kahlo. His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City.
Rivera believed that all people (not just people who could buy art or go to museums) should be able to view the art that he was creating. He began painting large murals on walls in public buildings. Rivera's first mural, the Creation (1922), in the Bolívar Amphitheater at the University of Mexico, was the first important mural of the twentieth century. The mural was painted using the encaustic method (a process where a color mixed with other materials is heated after it is applied). Rivera had a great sense of color and an enormous talent for structuring his works. In his later works he used historical, social, and political themes to show the history and the life of the Mexican people.
1.
Between 1923 and 1926 Rivera created frescoes in the Ministry of Education Building in Mexico City. The frescoes in the Auditorium of the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo (1927) are considered his masterpiece. The oneness of the work and the quality of each of the different parts, particularly the feminine nudes, show off the height of his creative power. The general theme of the frescoes is human biological and social development. The murals in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca (1929-1930) depict the fight against the Spanish conquerors.
He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it 1917 for a visual language of simplified
forms and bold areas of colour. He returned to Mexico in 1921, seeking
to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of
the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious
of which is in the National Palace (192957). From 1930 to 1934 he worked
in the U.S. His mural for New York's Rockefeller Center aroused a storm
of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the
figure of Vladimir Ilich Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts
in Mexico City. With Jos Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rivera created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico's most significant contribution
to 20th-century art. His large-scale didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture,
and industry, with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers
drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow spaces.
2.
INFLUENCES ON SOCIAL REALISM
The Mexican
revolution was the first social revolution of the twentieth
century (1910-20). It started as a political revolution against the
more than thirty-year dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz. This movement
was led by Francisco I. Madero, whose motto ‘Effective suffrage, no
re-election’ crystallized discontent around the country in 1910-11
against Díaz's permanence in power. Eventually Díaz went into exile
in Paris, while Madero won democratic elections and became Mexico's
president in 1911. However, the ancien régime forces, supported by United States ambassador Henry
Lane Wilson, overthrew and assassinated Madero, and installed General
Huerta in power in 1913. Under intense pressure from several revolutionary
factions, Huerta fled to the United States in 1914.
After this the violent conflict became a social revolution. Leaders
such as Emiliano Zapata in the south and Pancho Villa in the centre-north
fought for land reform and social justice. Eventually these groups had
to compromise with the more liberal-constitutional-
Great Depression was the longest and most severe economic depression ever experienced by the Western world. It began in the U.S. soon after the New York Stock Market Crash of 1929 and lasted until about 1939. By late 1932 stock values had dropped to about 20 of their previous value, and by 1933 11,000 of the U.S.'s 25,000 banks had failed for a combination of reasons, including declining property values, bank runs by panicked customers, and defaults on loans. These and other conditionsworsened by monetary policy mistakes, adherence to the gold standard (until 1933), and the introduction of voluntary wage-and-price controls through the National Recovery Administrationled to much-reduced levels of demand and hence of production, resulting in high unemployment (by 1932, 2530). Since the U.S. was the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, the U.S. financial breakdown precipitated or exacerbated economic failures around the world, especially in Britain and Germany. Isolationism spread as nations sought to protect domestic production by imposing tariffs and quotas, ultimately reducing the value of international trade by more than half by 1932. The Great Depression contributed to political upheaval. It led to the election of U.S. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, who upon taking office declared a national bank holiday during which all banks were closed until being deemed solvent by government inspectors. He also introduced major changes in the structure of the U.S. economy through his New Deal programs of economic relief and reform. The Great Depression also advanced Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933 and fomented political extremism in other countries. Before the Great Depression, governments relied on impersonal market forces to achieve economic correction. Afterward, government action came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability.
3.
SOCIAL REALISM IN PHOTOGRAPHY
4.
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documenta
From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea Lange's work for the RA and FSA brought the plight of the poor and forgotten — particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers — to public attention. Distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era.
Lange's best-known picture is titled "Migrant Mother." The woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson. The original photo featured Florence's thumb and index finger on the tent pole, but the image was later retouched to hide Florence's thumb. Her index finger was left untouched (lower right in photo).
In 1960, Lange spoke about her experience taking the photograph:
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)
After Lange returned home, she told the editor of a San Francisco newspaper about conditions at the camp and provided him with two of her photos. The editor informed federal authorities and published an article that included the photos. As a result, the government rushed aid to the camp to prevent starvation.
According to Thompson's son, Lange got some details of this story wrong, but the impact of the picture was based on the image showing the strength and need of migrant workers.[6]
In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she gave up the prestigious award to record the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans to relocation camps, on assignment for the War Relocation Authority (WRA).[7] She covered the rounding up of Japanese Americans and their internment in relocation camps, highlighting Manzanar, the first of the permanent internment camps. To many observers, her photograph of Japanese-American children pledging allegiance to the flag shortly before they were sent to internment camps is a haunting reminder of this policy of detaining people without charging them with any crime or affording them any appeal.[8]
Her images were so obviously critical that the Army impounded them. [9] Today her photographs of the internment are available in the National Archives on the website of the Still Photographs Division, and at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1945, Lange was invited by Ansel Adams to accept a position as faculty at the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Imogen Cunningham and Minor White joined as well.[10]
In 1952, Lange co-founded the photographic magazine Aperture. Lange and Pirkle Jones were commissioned in the mid-1950s to shoot a photographic documentary for Life magazine of the death of Monticello, California and of the displacement of its residents by the damming of Putah Creek to form Lake Berryessa. The magazine did not run the piece, so Lange devoted one whole issue of Aperture to the work. The photo collection was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960
Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots
during a European trip. Upon his return to New York, he published his
first images in 1930. During the Great Depression, Evans began to photograph
for the Resettlement Administration, later known as the Farm Security
Administration (FSA), documenting workers and architecture in the Southeastern
states. In 1936 he traveled with the writer James Agee to illustrate
an article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine; the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men came out of this collaboration.
Throughout his career Evans contributed photographs to numerous publications,
including three devoted solely to his work. In 1965 he leftFortune, where he had
been a staff photographer for twenty years, to become a professor of
photography and graphic design at Yale University. He remained in the
position until 1974, a year before his death.
5.
ASHCAN SCHOOL
Key Dates: 1891-1918
A group of urban realist painters in America creating work around the early part of 20th century. The group, founded by the artist and teacher Robert Henri, began its activities in Philadelphia around 1891. Henri attracted a gathering of newspaper illustrators–George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn–and led them in a new artistic movement.
The Ash Can School was more revolutionary in its subject matter rather than its style. The Ash Can school artists sought to paint “real life” and urban reality. These artists believed what was real and true in life was what was beautiful and what constituted “art.” They painted gritty urban scenes and the poor and disenfranchised in America.
Ash Can School paintings have a loose and spontaneous style, very different from the polished techniques taught in the American art academies of the period. A slap-dash, rapid handling of the paint left individual brushstrokes and the paint was applied thickly. Ash Can painters used a dark, subdued palette–a result of Robert Henri’s trip to Europe, where he became captivated with Goya, Velazquez, Hals and Manet.
The “Eight” included the core Ash Can group + three more artists under Henri’s thrall: Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson and Maurice Prendergast. In 1908, as a protest against prevailing restrictive academic exhibition procedures the “Eight” organized a history-making exhibition that became a symbol of rebellion in American and modern art. The show was revolutionary in that it was the first exhibit that was self-organized and self-selected by a group of related artists, without a jury and prizes. This type of non-juried exhibition became the model for one of the most famous exhibits in the history of Modern Art: The Armory Show of 1914.
Notable Ashcan works include George Luks’ Breaker Boy and John Sloan’s Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street. The Ashcan school influenced the art of the Depression era, including Thomas Hart Benton’s mural City Activity with Subway
The Ashcan school is sometimes linked to the group known as "The Eight," though in fact only five members of that group (Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Luks, and Shinn) were Ashcan artists. The other three -- Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast -- painted in a very different style, and the exhibition that brought "The Eight" to national attention took place in 1908, several years after the beginning of the Ashcan style. However, the attention accorded the group's well-publicized exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries in New York 1908 was such that Ashcan art gained wider exposure and greater sales and critical attention than it had known before.
The Macbeth Galleries exhibition was held to protest the restrictive exhibition policies of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design and to broadcast the need for wider opportunities to display new art of a more diverse, adventurous quality than the Academy generally permitted. When the exhibition closed in New York, where it attracted considerable attention, it toured Chicago, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, and Newark in a traveling show organized by John Sloan. Reviews were mixed, but interest was high. ("Big Sensation at the Art Museum, Visitors Join Throng Museum and Join Hot Discussion," one Ohio newspaper noted.) As art historian Judith Zilczer summarized the venture, "In taking their art directly to the American public, The Eight demonstrated that cultural provincialism in the United States was less pervasive than contemporary and subsequent accounts of the period had inferred. Sales and exhibition opportunities for these painters increased significantly in the ensuing years.
The Ashcan School was a group of New York City artists who sought to capture the feel of turn-of-the-20th-century New York City, through realistic portraits of everyday life. These artists were not only depicting the rich and promising Fifth Avenuesocialites, but the lower class richly and culturally textured immigrants. One critic of the time did not like their choice of subjects, which included alleys, tenements, slum dwellers, and in the case of John Sloan, taverns frequented by the working class. They became known as the revolutionary black gang and apostles of ugliness.
6.
George Bellows, Both Members of This Club (1909), Oil on canvas, 45¼ × 63⅛ in. (115 × 160.5 cm), National Gallery of Art
George Bellows
George Bellows (1882–1925), painted city life in New York City. His paintings had an expressionist boldness and a willingness to take risks. He had a fascination with violence as seen in his painting, Both Members of this Club, which depicts a rather gory boxing scene. In his painting titled Cliff Dwellers, (above), we find a city-scape that is not one particular view but a composite of many views.
Robert Henri
7.
Robert Henri, Snow in New York 1902, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art,Washington, DC
Robert Henri (1865–1921) was an important American Realist and a member of The Ashcan School. Henri was interested in the spectacle of common life. He focused on individuals, strangers, quickly passing in the streets in towns and cities. He had a sympathetic portrayal rather that a comic portrayal of people, often using a dark background to add to the warmth of the person portrayed. His works have a heavy impasto which stressed the materiality of the paint and the painter. He influenced Glackens, Luks, Shinn and Sloan. In 1906, he was elected to the National Academy of Design, but when painters in his circle were rejected for the Academy's 1907 exhibition, he accused fellow jurors of bias and walked off the jury, resolving to organize a show of his own. He would later refer to the Academy as a cemetery of art.
Everett Shinn
8,
Everett Shinn (1876–1953), a member of the Ashcan School, was most famous for his numerous paintings of New York and the theater, and of various aspects of luxury and modern life inspired by his home in New York City. He painted theater scenes from London, Paris and New York. He found interest in the urban spectacle of life, drawing parallels between the theater and crowded seats and life. Unlike Degas, Shinn depicted interaction between the audience and performer.[3]
George Benjamin Luks
9.
George B. Luks, Allen Street, c.1905,Hunter Museum of American Art
George B. Luks (1866–1933) was an Ashcan school artist who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In Luks' painting, Hester Street (1905), he shows children being entertained by a man with a toy while a woman and shopkeeper have a conversation in the background. The viewer is among the crowd rather than above it. Luks puts a positive spin on the Lower East Side by showing two young girls dancing in The Spielers, which is a type of dance that working glass immigrants would engage in; despite the poverty, children dance on the street. He looks for the joy and beauty in the life of the poor rather than the tragedy.
William Glackens
10.
William Glackens, Coney Island Fruit Stand, 1898
Early in his career, William Glackens (1870–1938) painted the neighborhood surrounding his studio in Washington Square Park. He also was a successful commercial illustrator, producing numerous drawings and watercolors for contemporary magazines that humorously portrayed New Yorkers in their daily lives. Later in life, he was much better known as "the American Renoir" for his Impressionist views of the seashore and the French Riviera.
John Sloan
11.
John French Sloan, McSorley's Bar,1912, Detroit Institute of Arts
John Sloan (1871–1951) was an early-20th-century Realist of the Ashcan School, whose concerns with American social conditions led him to join the Socialist Party in 1910.[4] Originally from Philadelphia, he worked in New York after 1904. From 1912 to 1916, he contributed illustrations to the socialist monthly The Masses. Sloan disliked propaganda, and in his drawings for The Masses, as in his paintings, he focused on the everyday lives of people. He depicted the leisure of the working class with an emphasis on female subjects. Among his best known works are Picnic Grounds and Sunday, Women Drying their Hair. He disliked the Ashcan School label,[5] and expressed his annoyance with art historians who identified him as a painter of the American Scene: "Some of us used to paint little rather sensitive comments about the life around us. We didn't know it was the American Scene. I don't like the name ... A symptom of nationalism, which has caused a great deal of trouble in this world.
Edward Hopper
12.
Edward Hopper, Summer Interior 1909,Whitney Museum of American Art
Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. Hopper is the most modern of the American realists, and the most contemporary. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. In both his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Hopper's teacher, artist Robert Henri, encouraged his students to use their art to "make a stir in the world". He also advised his students, It isn’t the subject that counts but what you feel about it andForget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in life. In this manner, Henri influenced Hopper, as well as famous students George Bellows and Rockwell Kent, and motivated them to render realistic depictions of urban life. Some artists in Henri's circle, including another teacher of Hopper’s, John Sloan, became members of “The Eight”, also known as the Ashcan School of American Art. His first existing oil painting to hint at his famous interiors was Solitary Figure in a Theater (c.1904). During his student years, Hopper also painted dozens of nudes, still lifes, landscapes, and portraits, including his self-portraits.
CONNECTED MOVEMENTS
Idealism
In art idealism is the tendency to represent things
as aesthetic sensibility would have them rather than as they are. In
ethics it implies a view of life in which the predominant forces are
spiritual and the aim is perfection.
Regionalism is a realist modern American art movement wherein artists shunned the city and rapidly developing technological advances to focus on scenes of rural life. Regionalist style was at its height from 1930 to 1935, and is best-known through the so-called "Regionalist Triumvirate" of Grant Wood in Iowa, Thomas Hart Benton in Missouri, and John Steuart Curry in Kansas. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Regionalist art was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland.
Regionalism bridged the gap between a completely abstract art and the academic realist art in much the same way that the Post-Impressionists had done in France a generation earlier. The Regionalists prepared the way for Abstract Expressionists to emerge in America (for example, Jackson Pollock?s drip technique originated with exercises Thomas Hart Benton used in the art classes Pollock took while a student). Regionalism had the same influence on later American art that the Post-Impressionists had in France with the European Modernists.
‘AMERICAN GOTHIC’
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from what is now known as the American Gothic House, and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The figures were modeled by the artist's sister and their dentist. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 19th-centuryAmericana, and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman's right shoulder suggesting domesticity.
American Gothic caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. The hard, cold realism of this painting and the honest, direct, earthy quality of its subject were unusual in Americanart. The work ostensibly portrays a farmer-preacher and his daughter in front of their farmhouse, but Wood actually used his sister, Nan, and his dentist, B.H. McKeeby, as models. As a telling portrait of the sober and hard-working rural dwellers of the Midwest, the painting has become one of the best-known icons of American art.
Wood became one of the leading figures of the Regionalist movement. Another well-known painting by him is Daughters of Revolution (1932), a satirical portrait of three unattractive old women who appear smugly satisfied with their American Revolutionary ancestry. In 1934 Wood was made assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Among his other principal works are several paintings illustrating episodes from American history and a series of Midwestern rural landscapes that communicate a strong sense of American ambience by means of a skillful simplification of form.
It is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art, and one of the most parodied artworks within American popular culture.
13.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- “The Art World ” (1918) Publication. < http://www.jstor.org>
- Jean Delville (1867) “The new mission of art” < http://archive.org>
- <http://www.artinthepicture.
com/styles/Regionalism/> - <http://www.britannica.com>
GLOSSARY
p.4
superstition- суеверие
consciousness - сознание
traceable - прослеживается
p.5
emphasize - подчеркнуть
concern - беспокойство
murals - фрески
p.6
encaustic - энкаустический
p.7
revival -возрождение
didactic -дидактический
shallow - мелкий
- Social Recognition Of The Human Individual Essay
- Social Security Essay Research Paper The social
- Social Security Reform The Dangers Of Privatizati
- Social Skills At Work Essay Research Paper
- Society
- Society Essay Research Paper Shelley Abernethy April
- Society Is Evil Essay Research Paper Humans
- Social Groups In Sun Also Rises Essay
- Social Impact Of The Internet Essay Research
- Socialism And Capitalism Essay Research Paper What
- SocialismThe Ideal Society Essay Research Paper SocialismThe
- Socialization Of Gender Essay Research Paper In
- SOCIAL PROBLEMS Essay Research Paper SOCIAL PROBLEMSJOURNALFall
- Sociālpsiholoģiskie procesi grup
