Picturing the Industrial Revolution A Webinar for American Transitions from Rural to Urban Life Stuart Hobbs Ohio State University 21 July 2011 Margaret Bourke White, Smokestacks, Otis Steel Co., Cleveland (1928) Source: Cleveland Museum of Art

Picturing the Industrial Revolution 1. Industrial Revolution Defined 2. Changing America: Industrialism and the Creation of Modern America 3. Industrialism and Art

Before Industrialism Thomas Cole, View From Mt. Holyoke (The Oxbow) (1836) Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

What can we learn about industrialism from these three photographs? Above: Jeffrey Mining, Cincinnati Office. Left: Buckeye Steel, Columbus. Source: Ohio Historical Society

Industrial Revolution Defined First Industrial Revolution, 1760s to 1840s 1.Led by Great Britain; US, France, German states follow 2.Power: Water and especially coal-fired steam engines replace animals 3.Factory system developed 4.Products: steam engines, factory-produced textiles and pottery

Industrial Revolution Defined Second Industrial Revolution, 1840s to 1950s 1.Led by the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France 2.Communications and transportation revolutionized by the telegraph and railroad 3.Big Business appeared, with complex organizations featuring many layers of managerial bureaucracy 4.Products: Steel, turbines, chemicals Branded, packaged, mass produced consumer goods Consumer durables: cars, appliances

The 2 nd Industrial Revolution in Ohio: Cincinnati Pork Packing & the Industrial Factory Harper’s Weekly, 6 September 1873

The Second Industrial Revolution in Northeast Ohio Steel workers, Carnegie Steel Mill, Youngstown, Ohio, ca Margaret Bourke White, Industrial Scene With Worker Otis Steel Company Cleveland (1928) Source: Cleveland Museum Source: OHS

Industrial Revolution Defined Third Industrial Revolution, 1950s to Present 1.Led by US, Japan, and Europe 2.“Information Economy” 3.Growth Sectors: science-based products, especially computers, but also pharmaceuticals and synthetic chemicals 4.Internationalization of trade, with decline of 2 nd Industrial Revolution sectors in the US and other developed countries 5.Products: computers, chips, software, prescription drugs

Third Industrial Revolution in Ohio Demolition, US Steel Republic Steel Works, Youngstown, 1983 Source: OHS Promoting the 3 rd Industrial Revolution in Ohio, 2009 Source: OSU

Changing America: From Country to City Thomas Hovenden, Breaking Home Ties (1890) George Bellows, New York (1911) Source: Philadelphia Museum of ArtSource: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Changing America: Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe William Glackens, Far From the Fresh Air Farm (1911 ) George Luks, Hester Street (1905) Source: Museum of Art, Fort LauderdaleSource: The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Changing America: From Handcraft to Factory John Neagle, Pat Lyon at the Forge (1827) Thomas Anshutz, The Ironworkers’ Noontime (1881) Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Source: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Second Industrial Revolution in Ohio: Agriculture & Manufacturing Source: OHS Kavy Canning, Xenia, 1912 Ward, Bushnel, and Glessner, harvesting machinery manufacturers, Xenia, 1890

Changing America: Handcraft to Manufactured Goods Lilly Martin Spencer, Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the Lassess (1856 ) Grandma, Molasses (2011) Source: The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Changing America: Handcraft to Manufactured Goods Source: OHS George McCormick, bureau and sideboard, Chillicothe, Ohio, Manufactured furniture, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Page from Nelson Mater Co. catalog, 1890; Grand Rapids Chair Co., ca Source: Grand Rapids Historical Commission Source: LC

Changing America: Extremes of Wealth & Poverty James Whistler, The Peacock Room (1877) Jacob Riis, Street Arabs Asleep in Quarters (1890) Source: Museum of the City of New York Source: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution

Changing America: Industrial Violence Robert Koehler, The Strike (1886) Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Changing America: Industrial Violence The Haymarket Riot, Harper’s Weekly (1886)

Commemorating Haymarket Johannes Gelert, The Police Monument (1889) Chicago Historical Society Albert Weinert, The Haymarket Monument (1893) Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois

Artistic Responses to Industrialism Aestheticism Realism Abstraction

Aestheticism: James Whistler ( ) Art “should be independent of all clap-trap— should stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of ear and eye, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have not kind of concern with it, and that is why I insist on calling my works ‘arrangements’ and ‘harmonies.’” – The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890)

Aestheticism James Whistler, Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leland (1870) James Whistler, Symphony in White No. 2, The Little Girl (1864) Source: Freer Gallery Source: Tate

Aestheticism Whistler, The Peacock Room (1877) Source: Freer Gallery

Aestheticism John Singer Sargent, Carmela Bertagna (1888) Source: Columbus Museum of Art Cecilia Beaux, Sita & Sarita (1894) Source: Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Aestheticism to Modernism Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party (1894) Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Realism and the Ashcan School Realism: “The representation in art of literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form.” American Heritage Dictionary, 4 th ed. “Ashcan” a pejorative but highlights contrast with Whistler and Sargent Paintings focus on people and places of modern, urban world Capture energy and vitality of the city. In general, positive viewpoint. Not painting garbage—painting modern life Painters: George Bellows, John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks Other examples of Realism: novels of Theodore Dreiser; Muckraking journalism

Realism: The Ashcan School George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers (1913) Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ashcan School: Ordinary Life John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village (1914) George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey’s (1909 ) Source: Cleveland Museum of Art Source: Whitney Museum of American Art

Abstraction: Modernism in Art Non-objective: style of art in which the imagery is not representative of objects in the natural world Abstract: style of art in which natural objects are not represented realistically; content depends on intrinsic form, not narrative content or pictorial representation Why the turn to abstraction in the Industrial Era? Or (another way of putting it): How does abstract art represent aspects of the Industrial Era?

Abstracting the City Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1913) Max Weber, Rush Hour, New York (1915) Source: Yale University Art Gallery Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Abstracting the City Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge (1920) Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge (1929) Source: Yale University Art Gallery Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstracting the City Stuart Davis, House & City (1931)Davis, Abstraction (1937) Source: Whitney Museum of American Art Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Why the turn to abstraction in the Industrial Era? 1.An expression of individualism in a society increasingly viewed as homogenized and mechanized. 2.An expressive answer to the new technology, photography, that seemed to capture reality more directly than painting. 3.The artistic equivalent to the rapid innovation in technology at the same time.

Modernism in Painting & Poetry Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red fire truck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city “The Great Figure” by William Carlos Williams Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure Five in Gold (1928) Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstracting The African American Migration Jacob Lawrence, The Migration of the Negro Panel No. 57 (1941) Source: The Phillips Collection

Abstracting Nature Arthur Dove, Thunderstorm (1931) Arthur Dove, Nature Symbolized No. 2 (1911) Source: Columbus Museum of Art Source: Art Institute of Chicago

Modernist Realism Thomas Hart Benton, Plowing (Spring Planting) (1939) Edward Hopper, Morning Sun (1954) Source: Columbus Museum of Art Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Building Modern America William Van Allen, The Chrysler Building (1930) Source: Picturing America

From Rural to Industrial America: Compare and Contrast Albert Bierstadt, King Lake, California (1870) Charles Sheeler, American Landscape (1930) Source: Columbus Museum of Art Source: Museum of Modern Art