The American Scene features images of American society and culture during a period of great social and political change from the early 1900s to 1960. The exhibition aims to introduce a new audience to some of the most memorable images of American art and open the dialogue that America has more to offer than just going to war. Many of the striking images produced during the period have become iconic within America, however are still relatively unknown to the rest of the world. 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.
George Bellows (1882–1925)A Stag at Sharkey’s,lithograph, 1917
The exhibition 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. His other works in the exhibition 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 who he encountered in less affluent areas of the city. Etchings such as 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 and the exhibition includes his figurative abstract lithographs of Sixth Avenue El and Two Figures & El which incorporate the ideology of Cubism and Surrealism.
Louis Lozowick (1892–1973),New York, lithograph, c.1925.© Lee Lozowick.
The European modernism movement continued to exert a decisive influence on the art scene and Louis Lozowick who 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 New York as the ultimate symbol of the modern American city. Another iconic image of Manhattan is Charles Sheeler’s precisionist lithograph of the Delmonico Building which illustrates the soaring architecture of New York’s skyscrapers.
The late 1920s and 1930s show the images created by Edward Hopper gain supremacy and in contrast to Sloan’s observations of everyday world, Hooper concentrated on the solitary individuals and produced highly evocative scenes of New York at night with a cinematic quality. His etchings of Night on the El Train and Night in the Park are featured in the exhibition.
During the 1930s the rise of Fascism in Europe lead to debates among artists whether or not to become politically involved in the war effort. Joseph Vogel, produced the lithographs The Innocents using abstract surrealist idiom to depict victims of war fleeing from the bombs and Vision No2, a surrealistic nightmare scene of fractured and torn bodies. While in 1943 Benton Spruance produced two complementary images of the war, both lithographs, one of civilians who had signed up for the home front as politically engaged citizens, Subway Shift; The Second Front and the other, entitled Rider of the Apocalypse which was his best-known work and a response to the American war effort in Europe.
Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Night on El Train, etching, 1918. © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
However, Spruance’s most striking image of the Second World War was his lithograph titled Fathers and Sons. 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 ‘time of war’ is again with us and with the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan having a devastating impact on so many lives, the images of Vogel and Spruance are prevalent and illustrate the message of the pain, suffering and distress well.
The exhibition concludes with Jackson Pollock and the triumph of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. His screenprint based on his black ‘drip’ painting, Untitled 144 is from his portfolio of six screenprints is a whirling skein of forms evoking the idea of a whole city turned in on itself and captures the avant-garde mode.
The American Scene as well as exhibiting the works of well-known American artists during that period can also be seen as a visual lesson in American history. The exhibition is on until 7 September with free admission so there’s no excuse not to head down to the British Museum and see history as it was made.
American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock,British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG until 7 September 2008
Article by Sophie Khan for http://www.roubimagazine.com/
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