Open Magazine

The American Scene

A Stag at Sharkey's: Artist George Bellows, 1917. Lithograph.

The American Scene features images of American society and culture from the early 1900s to 1960 during a period of great social and political change. This exhibition aims to introduce a new audience to some of the most memorable images of American art and open the dialogue that America – in that era - had much to offer artistically, particularly during the period of the Second World War. Many of the striking images produced during the period have become iconic within the US but have, until now, remained relatively unknown to the rest of the world. And with the ‘time of war’ again with us and the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan having a devastating impact on so many lives, the images by Vogel and Spruance are relevant once more, and illustrate the message of pain and distress being suffered on both sides.

Fortunately for us, the British Museum holds the most comprehensive collection of American prints outside the United States and the exhibition shows a pictorial anthology of the various episodes in American printmaking.

It opens with George Bellows’s best-known lithograph A Stag at Sharkey’s inspired by the prize fights that used to take place at Tom Sharkey’s Athletic Club. Bellows was a prominent member of the Ashcan School, which was known for its resolute determination to capture the gritty, brutal and often squalid reality of life. Other works include Dance in the Madhouse and Electrocution both exploring the unsettled dark side of the American experience.

In contrast, John Sloan, a fellow member of the Ashcan School presented direct, unsentimental snapshots of ordinary inhabitants of Manhattan whom he encountered in less affluent areas of the city. Etchings including Turning out the Light and Roofs, Summer Night are among the few from his series of ten prints entitled New York City Life.

The 1910s show revolutionary art from Europe having an impact on the printmaking in America and etchings such as the swaying Brooklyn Bridge by John Marin became a landmark of contemporary New York. John Marin returned to New York in 1911 from Paris and introduced the importance of the modern urban landscape of New York as a subject for modern art and amalgamated the latest European styles of Futurism and Expressionism to his work. Stuart Davis also discovered that modernism and the American experience could be seamlessly integrated to articulate the rhythms of New York. The exhibition includes his figurative abstract lithographs of Sixth Avenue El and Two Figures & El which incorporate the ideology of Cubism and Surrealism.

A new era in American art had evolved and vividly captured the true power of the growing cities, New York in particular, showing how construction and development was the way of the future.

The European Modernism movement continued to exert a decisive influence on the art scene. Louis Lozowick , on his return to New York in 1924, produced his most iconic image of Manhattan, New York in which he used Cubo-futurism and Constructivism to evoke the utopian vision of the city as the ultimate symbol of the modern American metropolis. Another iconic image of Manhattan is Charles Sheeler’s precisionist lithograph of the Delmonico Building which illustrates the soaring architecture of newly built skyscrapers.

The Second World War ultimately changed the American art landscape. Although Hopper’s etchings continued to have a place in the American Scene, lithographs produced by Joseph Vogel such as The Innocents - depicting victims of war fleeing from the bombs – and Vision No2, a surrealistic nightmare scene of fractured and torn bodies, quickly became the subject-matter.

But it’s Spruance’s striking image Fathers and Sons, that really captures that time. Although he supported America’s involvement in the war he had no illusions as to what war entailed and his lithograph shows two snipers confronting each other, trapped within a swirling ‘figure of eight’ symbolising an eternal cycle of violence.

The exhibition concludes with Jackson Pollock and the triumph of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. The war clearly had a profound influence on the American Scene even after it was over, and Pollock’s screenprint based on his black ‘drip’ painting, Untitled 144 from his portfolio of six screenprints is a whirling skein of forms evoking the idea of a whole city turned in.

Other eras including The Depression and Slavery are featured in the exhibition : the memorable John Curry lithograph of John Brown who was a vociferous slavery abolitionist stands out. Brown is shown as a Moses- like figure accompanied by the fury of a tornado and a prairie fire in the background to amplify Brown’s beliefs. The strong message of equality that the lithograph conveys is reassuring and shows that prejudices towards different races and colour can be overcome and attitudes can change. Hopefully the past can guide the present and this message of equality lead to a real change in contemporary America.

Sophie Khan

American Scene: Prints from Hooper to Pollock, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG until 7 September 2008 http://www.britishmuseum.org/