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Home , Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Fall Plowing, Regionalism (art), The Steerage

Regionalism

REGIONALISM was a reaction against the of the European . Objective, representational based on life in America. (We are also including Cuba and Mexico.)

Hopper said "A nation's art is greatest when it reflects the character of it's people".

Georgia O’Keeffe Harlem Dorothea Lange Wifred Lam Diego Rivera

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Georgia O’ Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

Settled in New Mexico later in life – known for her paintings of the American Southwest Subjects usually include flowers, bones, rocks and landscapes Aesthetics – usually organic shapes up-close with crisp edges and many gradated parts

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Georgia O’ Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe , 1923. REGIONALISM

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Georgia O’ Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe Iris, 1927. REGIONALISM

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram's Head, White Hollyhock and Little Hills, 1935.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz , 1907.

Alfred Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of as a fine art in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Steerage is considered Stieglitz's signature work, and was proclaimed by the artist and illustrated in histories of the medium as his first "modernist" photograph. It marks Stieglitz's transition away from painterly prints of Symbolist subjects to a more straightforward depiction of raw, everyday life.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz The Steerage, 1907. Stieglitz loved to recount how the great painter Picasso had praised the collage- like dispersal of forms and shifting depths of The Steerage. The scene depicts a variety of men and women traveling in the lower-class section of a steamer going from New York to Germany. Many years after taking the photograph Stieglitz described what he saw when he took it:

“…I saw shapes related to each other. I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life.”

Steiglitz was one of the first photographers to not only document, but to look at the composition of a photo is if it were a canvas.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance The northeast section of island was home to many African Americans. During the Aaron Douglas decade of the 1920's witnesses a huge explosion Jacob Lawrence of African Americans artists of all types from this area of the city- music, literature and visual art. James Van Der Zee

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) One of the most famous African-American artists of the 20th Century Known for ‘Great Migration’ series as part of the Harlem Renaissance Flat overlapped shapes indicative of Matisse

Jacob Lawrence, 1941.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) One of the most famous African- American artists of the 20th Century Known for ‘Great Migration’ series as part of the Harlem Renaissance Flat overlapped shapes indicative of Matisse

Jacob Lawrence The Black Press Urged the People to Leave the South (Panel 34 of The Migration Series) 1940-41, Tempera on gesso on composition board

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence The Migration of the Negro, panel No. 49. 1940-41, Casein tempera on hardboard.

The majority of southern blacks migrated to the North with optimism; however many were disappointed to find that it had its own brand of discrimination. The constant influx of black migrants into northern cities led to unprecedented levels of hostility on the part of northern whites. Black migrants were often segregated into the most dilapidated sections of the city, forced to pay high prices for inferior housing, and discriminated against in the workplace.

This panel shows a public dining space in the North. Blacks and whites are divided by a yellow barrier that zigzags through the center of the painting. The yellow dividing line is emphasized by the tilted table tops and chairs situated against the background of the restaurant floor. Tables and chairs are placed to reinforce the diners' separation.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Jacob Lawrence

"Around the time of WWI, many African-Americans from the South left home and traveled to cities in the North in search of a better life.“ Jacob Lawrence, The Great Migration, Part I, 1940-41.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence The Studio, 1977.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas (1898-1979) Native of Topeka, Kansas – moved to in 1925 Developed an abstract style influenced by African art as well as the emerging

Aesthetics: Flat, solid shapes; Transparent; Atmospheric perspective (dark in foreground)

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life from Slavery through Reconstruction, 1934.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee, Couple Wearing Raccoon Coats with a Cadillac, 1932.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee, The Wedding Party, 1926.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Harlem Renaissance James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee, Dancing Girls, 1928.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Grant Wood

Grant Wood

Born in Iowa – best known for depicting scenes of the rural American Midwest Studied at the Art Institute of Though his forms are usually smooth and rounded, he was greatly influenced by the clarity in the landscapes of 15th-century Flemish Masters like Van Eyck.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Grant Wood, , 1931.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Grant Wood, Daughters of the Revolution, 1932.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Grant Wood

In making these paintings, as you may have guessed, I had in mind something which I hope to convey to a fairly wide audience in America -- the picture of a country rich in the of peace; a homely lovable nation, infinitely worth any sacrifice necessary to its preservation. Grant Wood, in a statement accompanying his final painting

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Grant Wood

Grant Wood , 1930.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Grant Wood

American Gothic house in Eldon, Iowa.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper Known for painting landscapes and cityscapes with a strong light source Very lonely, calm, isolated paintings

Edward Hopper, Self-Portrait, 1925-30.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Edward Hopper, Early Morning Sun, 1952.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange

With the onset of the , Lange turned her camera lens from the studio to the street. Her studies of unemployed and homeless people captured the attention of local photographers and led to her employment with the federal Farm Security Administration (FSA).

From 1935 to 1939, Lange's work for the 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.

Dorothea Lange in 1936.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. REGIONALISM

Lange's most well-known picture is titled "Migrant Mother." The woman in the photo is , but Lange apparently never knew her name.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. REGIONALISM

To quote Lange: “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.”

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Dorothea Lange, Migrant Workers Near Manteca, CA, 1938.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange, Texas Tenant Farmer in California. Marysville Migrant Camp, September 1935.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Wifredo Lam, The Jungle, 1943. Gouache on paper mounted on canvas.

Wifredo Lam remains the most renowned painter from Cuba and The Jungle remains his best known work and an important painting in the history of Latin American art and the history twentieth-century modernism more broadly. In the 1920s and 30s, Lam was in Madrid and , but in 1941 as Europe was engulfed by war, he returned to his native country. Though he would leave Cuba again for Europe after the war, key elements within his artistic practice intersected during this period: Lam’s consciousness of Cuba’s socio-economic realities; his artistic formation in Europe under the influence of ; and his re-acquaintance with Afro-Caribbean culture.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Wifredo Lam, The Jungle, 1943. Gouache on paper mounted on canvas.

Lam’s bold painting is a game of perception. The artist haphazardly constructs the figures from a collection of distinct forms—crescent-shaped faces; prominent, rounded backsides; willowy arms and legs; and flat, cloddish hands and feet. When assembled these figures resemble a funhouse mirror reflection. The disproportion among the shapes generates an uneasy balance between the composition’s denser top and more open bottom—there are not enough feet and legs to support the upper half of the painting, which seems on the verge of toppling over.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park, 1947-48. Fresco.

In Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park, hundreds of characters from 400 years of Mexican history gather for a stroll through Mexico City’s largest park. But the colorful balloons, impeccably dressed visitors, and vendors with diverse wares cannot conceal the darker side of this dream: a confrontation between an indigenous family and a police officer; a man shooting into the face of someone being trampled by a horse in the midst of a skirmish; a sinister skeleton smiling at the viewer.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park, 1947-48. Fresco.

In the spirit of Surrealism, this is a complex dream. Since dreams are so personal and strange, this allowed artists to juxtapose unrelated matter, like clocks and ants for Dalí. Though Rivera never officially joined the Surrealists, he uses this approach in Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park as he cobbles together a scene composed of disparate historical personages, including Hernán Cortés (the Spanish conqueror who initiated the fall of the Aztec Empire), Sor Juana (a seventeenth-century nun and one of Mexico’s most notable writers), and Porfirio Díaz (whose dictatorship at the turn of the twentieth century inspired the Mexican Revolution).

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park (detail), 1947-48. Fresco.

Perhaps the most striking grouping is a central quartet featuring Rivera, the artist Frida Kahlo, the printmaker and draughtsman José Guadalupe Posada, and La Catrina. “Catrina” was a nickname in the early twentieth century for an elegant, upper-class woman who dressed in European clothing.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park, 1947-48. Fresco.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park, 1947-48. Fresco.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939. Oil on canvas.

Facial hair indelibly marks the self-portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. In an era when women still wore elaborate hairstyles, hosiery, and attire, Kahlo was a rebellious loner, often dressed in indigenous clothing. Moreover, she lived as an artist during a period when many middle-class women sacrificed their ambitions to live entirely in the domestic sphere. Kahlo flouted both conventions of beauty and social expectations in her self-portraits. These powerful and unflinching self-images explore complex and difficult topics including her culturally mixed heritage, the harsh reality of her medical conditions, and the repression of women.

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM Regionalism

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939. Oil on canvas.

Photos confirm that Kahlo's self-portraits were largely accurate and that she avoided embellishng her features. The solitude produced by frequent bed rest— stemming from polio, her near-fatal bus accident, and a lifetime of operations— was one of the cruel constants in Kahlo’s life. Indeed, numerous photographs feature Kahlo in bed, often painting despite restraints. Beginning in her youth, in order to cope with these long periods of recovery, Kahlo became a painter. Nevertheless, the isolation caused by her health problems was always present. She reflected, “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”

20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN REGIONALISM