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Georgia O'keeffe Alfred Stieglitz Harlem Renaissance Grant Wood Regionalism REGIONALISM was a reaction against the modernism of the European Armory Show. Objective, representational art 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 Alfred Stieglitz Harlem Renaissance Grant Wood Edward Hopper Dorothea Lange Wifred Lam Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo 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 Red Canna, 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 The Steerage, 1907. Alfred Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of photography 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 Manhattan 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 New York City in 1925 Developed an abstract style influenced by African art as well as the emerging Art Deco 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 Chicago 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, Fall Plowing, 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 arts 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 American Gothic, 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 Great Depression, 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 Florence Owens Thompson, 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 Paris, 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 Surrealism; 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.
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