American Art Final Exam Powerpoint Review Fall 2024 PDF

One of the best portrait painter’s you’ve never head of Who was Cecilia Beaux and why hasn’t her reputation been cemented in texts on American art? What if we called her “Cecil?” Has gender played a role? She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts but refus...

One of the best portrait painter’s you’ve never head of Who was Cecilia Beaux and why hasn’t her reputation been cemented in texts on American art? What if we called her “Cecil?” Has gender played a role? She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts but refused to take classes with Eakins.  At the height of her long career, Beaux painted the cream of the American elite, including college presidents, businessmen, socialites, eminent medical men and women and political notables, including the wife and the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. It was her goal to surpass Sargent’s reputation and she was ambivalent about the artist whom she met several times. She was a tough contender with extraordinary resolve. She refused to paint the “homelier” children of family and friends. Painting is of the Gilder daughters doing a dance. This might be her response to Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose Cecilia Beaux, Dorothea and Francesca, 1898  Henry Tanner will study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but will eventually relocate to Paris where he spends the rest of his life. Paris offered him an environment free from the racial prejudice of America. In his later years he will often focus on religious subjects. Work openly addresses and subverts the stereotype of the minstrel player. This is a picture of generational “torch passing.” Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation,1898  Impressionism Interested in the effects of outdoor, fleeting light Not concerned with the academic technique of modeling Wants to give the viewers a sense of the process of painting Not interested in the smooth, finished surface New development of portable metallic tubes Placed flat areas of color next to one another Complementary Colors Impact of Paris on artists—The Bohemianization Thomas Hovenden self portraits  What were the factors that helped contribute to the rise of American Impressionism 1. The number of artists who practiced it 2. Inclusion of their works in annual exhibitions, which gave it exposure. 3. Painting en-plein-air was taught as part of the curriculum at art schools. 4. Emergence of the American collector who was willing to buy it. 5. In general, Americans come to the style much later than their European counterparts.  What were some of the differences between French and American Impressionism? 1. Americans tended to avoid portraying the marginal to lower class individuals that the French often glorified. American subjects were more sanitized and genteel. 2. While French Impressionism deals with the dissolution of form (depending on the artist), most Americans did not completely give over to the dissolution of form. Americans had struggled to get their academic training and be accepted at the Salon. Many were “impressionizers.” Mary Cassatt, Self Portrait, 1878 Cassatt, an adventurous modern artist and independent woman, was wholly involved in the French impressionist movement beginning in the late 1870s. A strong-willed businesswoman and influential consultant to art collectors, she was an expatriate who nonetheless always considered herself an American.  Cassatt’s father was so distraught over her going to Paris that she told a biographer her father told her he would have rather seen her dead than go to Paris to become an artist. Although her family was well-do-do, her father insisted that she make enough money from her art to support herself.  Cassatt settled in Paris in 1874, where she began to show regularly in the Salons, and where her parents and sister Lydia joined her in 1877. That same year, Edgar Degas invited her to join the group of independent artists later known as the Impressionists. They met when he visited her studio in Montmartre. The only American officially associated with the group, Cassatt exhibited in four of their eight exhibitions, in 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1886. Under their influence, Cassatt revised her technique, composition, and use of color and light, manifesting her admiration for the works of the French avant- garde, especially Degas and Manet.  “I used to go and flatten my nose against that art dealer’s window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.” Mary Cassatt writing about the work of Edgar Degas in 1875  In 1878, at the urging of Degas, Cassatt began to exhibit with the Impressionists. She remained an active member of the Impressionist circle until 1886. Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878  Degas’ use of pastels had a profound effect on Cassatt. Mary Cassatt, Two Sisters, c. late 1880s  Cassatt was not able to attend the cafes and social situations attended by the Impressionists, but she could meet with them privately. She went to the Louvre with Degas, often working with him side-by side. Her body of work focuses mainly on domestic scenes and scenes of mothers and children. These were the accepted subjects for a woman painter. Cassatt was an advocate for women’s rights Paris was the center of culture Mary Cassatt, La Loge, 1879 Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1879  A woman is seen in control as opposed to the man Mary Cassatt, A Woman and Girl Driving, 1881 was extremely influenced panese prints  “The man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him.” Childe Hassam, 1927  Childe Hassam (1859–1935), a pioneer of American Impressionism and perhaps its most devoted, prolific, and successful practitioner, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (now part of Boston), into a family descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After establishing his reputation in Boston between 1882 and 1886, Hassam studied from 1886 to 1889 in Paris. There he was unusual among his American contemporaries in his attraction to French Impressionism which was just beginning to find favor with American collectors. Hassam returned to the United States late in 1889 and took up lifelong residence in New York. Early work could be very tonal in color Childe Hassam, Boston Common at Twilight, 1885-86 Hassam “comes in out of the rain” once he is in Paris and adopts an Impressionist style Childe Hassam, Grand Prix Day, 1887  “ I never had any desire to remain permanently on the other side. America represented to me the highest opportunity. I believe that the thoroughfares of the great French metropolis are not one whit more interesting than the streets of New York.” Childe Hassam, October 1889  Hassam hardly ever taught or painted on commission to supplement his income, and his involvement in the art organizations in New York were critical for showing his work.  He maintained a very genteel view of the city Fifth Ave. and Madison Square Park Hassam painted the upper-class, sanitized vision of New York Childe Hassam, Spring Morning in the Heart of the City, 1890 Hassam began summer excursions to the New England shore. Isle of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire Childe Hassam, Poppies, Isle of Shoals, 1891 Hassam spends summers at the artist colony in Cos Cob, Connecticut and lives at the Holley House Holley House, Cos Cob, CT Hassam excluded the new factory that had opened the previous year, and fishermen were using steam boats. Childe Hassam, Oyster Sloop, Cos Cob, 1902 Childe Hassam, Displays of Fourth of July, flags and 1916 banners were in response to World War I. Hassam does a series of flag paintings when American enters the war. Whistler as he wanted to see himself, in the guise of Rembrandt. Whistler’s body of work is over 2700 pieces of art. He worked in oil, etchings, lithography, pastel, and charcoal. JAM Whistler, Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter, 1872  Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Whistler spent part of his youth in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where his father, a civil engineer, advised on the construction of the railroad to Moscow, and Whistler took drawing classes at the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He claimed to have been born in St. Petersburg (rather than the working class factory town of Lowell). Upon his return home, Whistler entered the United States Military Academy at West Point and he is eventually asked to leave.  In May 1859, he decided to settle in London and to work at a distance from his avant-garde French colleagues, although he remained a conduit of ideas between them and his English artist friends. The latter included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and other Pre-Raphaelites, whose paintings influenced Whistler’s and who shared his enthusiasm for Japanese prints and blue-and- white porcelain.  Rejects the conventions of traditional portraiture Rejected from the This work is NOT Royal Academy of meant to have a Arts Exhibition, narrative. 1862 Whistler, The White Girl: Symphony in White #1 , 1862  Aesthetic Movement: English Artistic movement of the late nineteenth century, dedicated to the doctrine of “art for art’s sake”—that is, as a self-sufficient entity concerned solely with beauty and not with any moral or social purpose. Associated with the movement were the artists Aubrey Beardsley and James McNeill Whistler and writers Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.  What is the floating world? Referred to the entertainment districts in major cities such as Edo (Tokyo) Later, referred to the entire world of urban fashion and pleasure Ukiyo-e Pictures of the Floating World including paintings, books, and prints Abandoning oneself to pleasure  Influence on Western painters Some artists used direct references, such as models dressed in kimonos and the display of Asian props. Others absorbed the elongated pictorial formats, asymmetrical compositions, aerial perspectives, and spaces emptied of all but abstract elements of color and line.  Whistler often used musical terms in his titles Whistler, Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen, 1864  He was the painter of nocturnes or evening scenes JAM Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, 1872-75 Whistler was the painter of the London fogs JAM Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Silver, 1872-78  Was in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1872 and it did not have a great critical reception. She wore black mourning clothes throughout her life. JAM Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871 This was a landmark Art critic John piece and Ruskin accuses his most Whistler of infamous “flinging a pot of work. paint in the public’s face.” JAM Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket, 1875  The leaders of the Progressive Era worked on a range of overlapping issues that characterized the time, including labor rights, women's suffrage, economic reform, environmental protections, and the welfare of the poor, including poor immigrants.  William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri are two of the most admired American artists of the popular turn-of-the-century period, yet few know that the two had a tempestuous relationship in the early years of the twentieth century. Their regard went from mutual admiration to mutual animosity, and their arguments over the nature and future of American art affected an entire generation of young artists.  Henri studied Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1886 to 1888 under Thomas Anshutz (1851–1912). Anshutz had himself studied at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1876 to 1882 with Thomas Eakins. In his teaching, Henri minimized the importance of draftsmanship and technique, the very values for which Chase was famous. Finally, Henri's earthy, intense personality clashed with Chase's elegant refinement. The tensions between them escalated until 1907, when Chase left the school that he had founded in disgust.  Ashcan School or The Eight Group of artists who sought to document life in turn-of-the century New York, capturing it in realistic paintings and etchings of urban street scenes. It largely consisted of Robert Henri and his circle, including George Bellows, William Glackens, George Luks, and John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, and Arthur B. Davies. They exhibited together as a group only once in 1908 at the Macbeth Gallery in New York as a reaction to the exclusionary decisions of the jurors at the National Academy of Design. The exhibition then had a national tour.  All of the participants were different One critic suggested that the exhibition reminded him of the “clashing dissonances, the jangling and booming of eight differently tuned orchestras.”  Unacceptable subjects “These painters stop where most of us begin to paint. Is technique and cleverness everything and subject nothing? Is the art of the future to be judged on how paint is used, regardless of the message of the painter? In what other age was talent content to paint dancing girls, wine shops, ugly noisy streets and sordid scenes without a ray of sunshine.”  Henri studies in Paris with the academic painter Bouguereau. However, he was much more impressed with the work of Velazquez, Hals, and Goya. Henri was mainly a portraitist.  Robert Henri’s credo was art for life’s sake rather than art for art’s sake He goes to Holland in 1907 to teach. He painted 15 portraits of this girl. Robert Henri (1865-1921), Laughing Child, 1907 Henri, Ruth St. Denis, 1919  Portraits from Henri's stay in La Jolla during 1914 show the local population as a melting pot of Native American, Chinese-American, Mexican-American, and African-American influence. Robert Henri, "Tam Gan," 1914,  In New York City–where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880–buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing. With less than a foot of space between buildings, little air and light could get in. In many tenements, only the rooms on the street got any light, and the interior rooms had no ventilation (unless air shafts were built directly into the room).  John Sloan, McSorley’s Bar, 1912 John Sloan, McSorley’s Bar, 1912 John Sloan as a “flaneur” John Sloan, Hairdresser’s Window, 1907 Sloan was the art director of this socialist magazine where he published illustrations  George Luks once said that “Like Mozart, I began my career when I was barely out of my diapers.” He was a boisterous figure whom critics called a “guts” painter because of his gritty subject matter and bold painting style. He began as a sketch reporter, and also made a name for himself producing a Sunday comic about the adventures of Mickey Dugan, “the Yellow Kid,” who made all sorts of trouble in the tenements with his gang of delinquent friends. Luks created portraits of the urban poor, explaining that he liked the slums because “down there people are what they are.” He died at the age of sixty-six after a bar fight. George Luks (1866-1933), Hester Street, 1905  We now know that works such as Luks Hester Street had anti-immigrant and anti-semitic overtones. George Luks was the “bad boy” of the Eight who died in a bar fight George Luks, The Wrestlers, 1905  In 1891 Glackens began a career as an artist- reporter for various Philadelphia newspapers and in the evenings, attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. That same year Sloan introduced him to Robert Henri, with whom Glackens shared a studio for a year and a half. After traveling to France and The Netherlands in 1895, Glackens moved to New York, where he continued working as an artist-reporter, magazine illustrator, and painter. This is dependent upon French Impressionism William Glackens(1870-1938), Chez Mouquin, 1905 Bellows did a series of fight scenes George Bellows (1882-1925), Stag at Sharkey’s, 1907 Slums of the Lower East Side in summer George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers, 1913 These are immigrant children who are defying authority. Bellows, Forty-two Kids, 1907  Edward Hopper enrolled in classes at the New York School of Art (1900–1906). In his shift from illustration to the fine arts, he studied with William Merritt Chase a leading American Impressionist painter, and with Robert Henri, who exhorted his students to paint the everyday conditions of their own world in a realistic manner. After working as an illustrator for a short time, Hopper made three trips abroad: first to Paris and various locations across Europe (1906–7), a second trip to Paris (1909), and a short visit to Paris and Spain the following year (1910).  Hopper painted New New York City. He wrote about taking the elevated trains and looking in people’s windows. He walked the streets and gathered visual material for his paintings. Hopper did not achieve any real commercial fame until he was past 40 years old. Edward Hopper, From the Williamsburg Bridge,1928 Hopper is a painter of universals, not specifics. Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930 Hopper’s figures are often seen as “lonely or isolated” Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942 The Americans Gertrude and Leo Stein had one of the most important collections of Modern art in Paris. There home was a gathering place for both American and European artists. Gertrude Stein  Synchromism (With Color) A style of painting employing pure colors and harmonious, abstract arrangements developed by Morgan Russel and Stanton Macdonald-Wright and first exhibited in Paris, 1913. Non-objective art Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Conception Symphony, 1914  Recognized as a pioneer in the advancement of Pictorial photography in America and abroad, Alfred Stieglitz (1864– 1946), photographer, publisher, gallerist, and impresario, also made unparalleled contributions to the introduction of modern art in America and gave unequivocal support to young American modernist painters. In 1905, Stieglitz, in association with the photographer and painter Edward J. Steichen opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in Steichen’s former studio at 291 Fifth Avenue. Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), The Steerage, 1907 Marin was also an accomplished jazz musician and primarily a watercolorist. This is a testament to the interdisciplinary nature of art and music. John Marin (1870-1953), Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1912  Innovator of non-objective art Arthur Dove moved to New York City, where he worked as an illustrator for various popular periodicals for several years. In 1908–9, Dove and his wife Florence traveled to France; in Paris, Dove associated with other young American artists such as Alfred Maurer and Max Weber, and his work was included in group exhibitions. Returning to New York, Dove met Alfred Stieglitz who invited him to submit work to the Younger American Painters exhibition, which also included work by John Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Edward J. Steichen and was held at his gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue in 1910. Is this a visual transcription of music? Arthur Dove, Rhapsody in Blue, 1927  Marsden Hartley studies at William Merritt Chase’s School and the National Academy of Design. With the financial help of Stieglitz he moves to Europe in 1912, traveling to Germany in 1913, becoming associated with Kandinsky and Franz Marc. This is a memorial to his lover, and reflects his interest in German militarism. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Portrait of a German Officer, 1914 O’Keeffe had determined to make her way as an artist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, where she learned the techniques of traditional painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically four years later when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow offered O’Keeffe an alternative to established ways of thinking about art. She experimented with abstraction for two years while she taught art in West Texas. Through a series of abstract charcoal drawings, she developed a personal language to better express her feelings and ideas. Alfred Stieglitz mounted her first exhibition. The two of them would wed several years later. She is best known for flowers, desert scenes, and abstracted images of the American Southwest. Georgia O’Keeffe, Red Canna, c. 1925-28 In the summer of 1929 she made her first trip to New Mexico. Rather than signifying death, she said that the bones symbolized the eternal beauty of the desert. Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue Horse Skull, 1930  On Feb. 17, 1913, an art exhibition opened in New York City that shocked the country, changed our perception of beauty and had a profound effect on artists and collectors. The International Exhibition of Modern Art — which came to be known, simply, as the Armory Show — marked the dawn of Modernism in America. It was the first time the phrase "avant-garde" was used to describe painting and sculpture. The critical reaction to the show was a mix of horror and confusion. On the evening of the show's opening, 4,000 guests milled around the makeshift galleries in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. Two-thirds of the paintings on view were by American artists. But it was the Europeans — Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp — that caused a sensation. The show traveled to Boston and Chicago Work in the Armory Show that became a symbol of what was wrong with modern art. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2, 1912  DADA (Hobby Horse) A movement in art, literature and performance, founded in Switzerland in the early twentieth century, which ridiculed contemporary culture and conventional art. The Dadaists shared an antimilitaristic and anti-aesthetic attitude, generated in part by the horrors of World War I and in part by a rejection of accepted canons of morality and taste. The anarchic spirit of Dada can be seen in the works of Duchamp, Man Ray, Miro, and later Picasso. Many Dadaists later explored Surrealism.  Readymades Implied that the production of art need be no more than a matter of selection—of choosing a preexisting object. In radically, subverting earlier assumptions about what the art making process entailed, this idea had enormous influence on later artists. J.L Mott Ironwork Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917  Duchamp’s claim of artist status for the urinal was denied in 1917 by the Society of Independent Arts, of which he was a founding member, when he submitted the work for inclusion in the group’s inaugural exhibition. The absence of a jury and the hanging of all works in alphabetical order was supposed to guarantee the democratic nature of the show. It was placed out of view behind a partition for the duration of the exhibition. Duchamp bought the fountain at Mott Works in New York, he changed the name—perhaps even as a reference to the popular cartoon strip Mutt and Jeff. The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald termed the 1920s "the Jazz Age." With its earthy rhythms, fast beat, and improvisational style, jazz symbolized the decade's spirit of liberation. At the same time, new dance styles arose, involving spontaneous bodily movements and closer physical contact between partners. In fact, the 1920s was a decade of deep cultural division, pitting a more cosmopolitan, modernist, urban culture against a more provincial, traditionalist, rural culture. The decade witnessed a titanic struggle between an old and a new America as well as the rise of a modern consumer economy and mass entertainment. All of these themes were played out in the nation's music and art. Joseph Stella, Voices of the City of New York Interpreted, 1920-22 The Battery The Great White Way Joseph Stella, The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted, 1920-22 The Prow Broadway The bold, brightly colored panels, each measuring over seven feet tall, depict distinct areas of the city. The first panel on the left depicts the port; the second depicts the dazzling electric lights of Broadway and Times Square; the central panel depicts Manhattan's towering skyscrapers, with the iconic Flatiron building front and center; Broadway, or the "White Way" is the focus of the fourth panel, which also integrates images of subway tunnels at the bottom; and the far right panel offers a romanticized view of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Precisionism Style of representation in which an object is rendered in a realistic manner, but with an emphasis on its geometric, stylized, angular forms. Depicted technology and the machine in a glorified manner. Movement had roots in the work of Cezanne, and shared the Italian Futurists interest in the beauty and power of machinery.  Although the artists whom we now associate with Precisionism never formally organized themselves as a group, contemporary critics and gallerists, and later, art historians connected them through their common subjects and aesthetics. The term was probably coined by a critic in the late 1920s. The surface is pristine. You cannot see the brushstrokes John Eshelman and Sons grain elevator Charles Demuth (1883-1935), My Egypt, 1927  The painting has been interpreted as celebration of modernization. The title suggests that industrialization is a pinnacle of American achievement equivalent to the great monuments of the ancient world, evoking the pyramids of Egypt and their symbolic association with life after death, which may have been a compelling idea to Demuth, who was bedridden by illness at numerous points throughout his life. Demuth completed eight abstract portraits between 1924 and 1929 as tributes to modern American artists, writers, and performers. Though not a physical likeness, Demuth created this portrait of his friend, the poet and physician William Carlos Williams, using imagery from Williams’s poem "The Great Figure," which evokes the sights and sounds of a fire engine speeding down the street. The intersecting lines, repeated "5," round forms of the numbers, lights, street lamp, and blaring sirens of the red fire engine together infuse the painting with a vibrant, urban energy. Demuth derived the title from the poem, which reads:  William Carlos Wiliams Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold, 1928 Uses wordplay and objects to depict the sitter Charles Demuth Poster Portrait, c 1923 Charles Sheeler, New York, c. 1925 In late 1927 and early 1928, Sheeler spent six weeks documenting the Ford Motor Company’s automobile plant in River Rouge, Michigan, as part of the promotional campaign for the release of the Model A Ford. Sheeler’s thirty-two photographs of the Ford plant depict its acres of gleaming, massive machinery, rather than the human process of labor. They celebrate the company’s—and, by association, America’s—ideals of power and productivity, although there is also a strangely forbidding atmosphere to the unpopulated scenes. Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), American Landscape, 1930  “Here is to be seen the machine working with an infallibility which precludes human competition. Noticeable is the absence of debris. Everything in the path of the activity is in the process of being utilized. It becomes evident that one is witnessing the workings of an absolute monarchy. It confirms a preference for that type of government with the proviso that the monarch be of the caliber of Henry Ford.” Fortune Magazine, March 1931 Originally a magazine illustrator, Davis seriously turned to painting after viewing the Armory Show of 1913 where he also exhibited. His works featured banal images (a cigarette packet, signs, notices), altered with strong colors and words in script, suggesting the rhythm of an urban environment suffused with jazz. He took Henri’s admonishment to paint the world around him. Davis uses the stuff of American life Stuart Stuart Davis, Davis, Lucky Lucky Strike, Strike, 1921 1921  These were very avant-garde in America Stuart Davis (1894-1964), Eggbeater Series, 1927-28  Davis had an extremely strong connection to Jazz. Stuart Davis, Rapt at Rappaport’s, 1952  The Federal Art Project (FAP) was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration Federal One program in the U.S. It operated from August 29, 1935 until June 30, 1943. FAP artists created posters, murals, and paintings. Some works still stand among the most significant pieces of public art in the country. The program made no distinction between representational and nonrepresentational art. However, the themes had to be either American history or contemporary history. Abstraction had not yet gained favor in the 1930s, and 1940s, and thus was virtually unsalable. As a result, the program supported such iconic artists as Jackson Pollock before their work could earn them income. The FAP’s primary goals were to employ out of work artists and to provide art for non-federal government buildings: schools, hospitals, libraries, etc.  American Scene Painting General term encompassing the mainstream realist and antimodernist style of painting in the U.S. popular during the Depression. A reaction against European Modernism, it was seen as an attempt to forge a uniquely American style of art that could appeal to all Americans rather than the cultural elite.  The three artists most associated with American Scene painting, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry did not paint together.  During the 1920s Wood traveled to Paris on three occasions, experimenting with the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles. Grant lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Is he celebrating or denigrating these people? Grant Wood (1891-1942), American Gothic, 1930  “Modern French painting is all right; it has produced many beautiful and interesting things, fully worthy of admiration, but it has also set up response habits among our artistic authorities which have worked against a free approach to other artistic forms.” “Artists talk more than they paint.” Thomas Hart Benton Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Activities with Dance Hall, 1930 from America Today murals Steel Plant  Benton visited the Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Maryland (closed in 2012) to document the nation’s industrial might. “All that was romantic and aspiring in the American spirit found its expression in steel.” “He is an anthropologist of American life.” Art Historian, Henry Adams