BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: The Urban Scene: 1920

DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: The Urban Scene: 1920–1950:

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Description of Pictures: The Urban Scene: 1920–1950
February 26 – August 6, 2017
American artists of the early 20th century sought to interpret the beauty, power, and anxiety of the modern age in diverse ways. Through depictions of bustling city crowds and breathtaking metropolitan vistas, 25 black-and-white prints in this exhibition explore the spectacle of urban modernity. Prints by recognized artists such as Louis Lozowick and Reginald Marsh, as well as lesser-known artists including Mabel Dwight, Gerald Geerlings, Victoria Hutson Huntley, Martin Lewis, and Stow Wengenroth, are included in this exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Charles Ritchie, associate curator, department of American and modern prints and drawings, National Gallery of Art.

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[1] NGAURB_170412_001.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] NGAURB_170412_005.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] NGAURB_170412_009.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
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[10] NGAURB_170412_044.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] NGAURB_170412_048.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] NGAURB_170412_051.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
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[22] NGAURB_170412_103.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[23] NGAURB_170412_107.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[24] NGAURB_170412_113.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[25] NGAURB_170412_118.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[26] NGAURB_170412_122.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NGAURB_170412_001.JPG: The Urban Scene: 1920 – 1950 AMERICAN ARTISTS of the early twentieth century sought to interpret the beauty, power, and anxiety of the modern age in diverse ways. Some turned to abstraction borrowed from European modernism, but those represented in this gallery took a realistic approach, manipulating light and shadow to create scenes imbued with vitality and imagination. These artists employed precise detail and descriptive clarity to characterize experience, suggest meanings, and convey a narrative. The representation of twentieth-century urban life provided them endless opportunities to probe the modern human condition. The urban panorama offered unprecedented vistas. Skyscrapers, bridges, and other technological marvels projected wealth and opportunity, while the city's towering forms invoked the sublime. Simultaneously, the streets and dwellings of the metropolis hosted life's theater. Depictions of harmonious communities and workers suggest a utopian vision, whereas scenes of crowding, poverty, and hunger point to society's ills and failures. The same buildings glorified from one perspective could be interpreted from another as blocking light, deepening shadows, and heightening a sense of enclosure and confinement. Artists chose their subjects, arranged their compositions, and scrutinized details to convey particular aspects of urban life. They used line to capture the specific features of a face or the unique character of a building, and tone to mimic the play of light -- from great shafts of morning sunshine spilling onto avenues to the poetry of the city's riverside at night with reflections in the water. By selectively emphasizing certain elements and minimizing others, images were distilled to their atmospheric or narrative essence. The best artists balanced specificity with ambiguity, drawing our attention to the fundamental while leaving open to interpretation the implied, the hidden, and the undefined. During the past decade, the Gallery has added extraordinary collections of prints and drawings to its holdings, from the Reba and Dave Williams Collection to the Corcoran Collection and works donated and promised by Bob Stana and Tom Judy. This exhibition highlights some of these acquisitions and reveals how the Gallery's American print holdings continue to develop, incorporating new artists as well as works that expand our view of printmakers already represented in the collection.
2. NGAURB_170412_005.JPG: Howard Cook Lookup up Broadway, 1937
3. NGAURB_170412_009.JPG: Louis Lozowick Allen Street, 1929
4. NGAURB_170412_017.JPG: Benton Spruance The People Work -- Evening, 1937
5. NGAURB_170412_020.JPG: Isac Friedlander 3 A.M., 1934
6. NGAURB_170412_024.JPG: Lawrence Kupferman Victorian Mansion, 1938
7. NGAURB_170412_029.JPG: Marin Lewis Building a Babylon, Tudor City, NTC, 1929
8. NGAURB_170412_036.JPG: Stow Wengenroth Quiet Hour, 1947
9. NGAURB_170412_040.JPG: Robert Riggs Germantown & Chelten, c 1950
10. NGAURB_170412_044.JPG: Martin Lewis Yorkville Night, 1947
11. NGAURB_170412_048.JPG: Gerald Geerlings Grand Canal, America, 1933
12. NGAURB_170412_051.JPG: John Taylor Arms West Forty-Second Street, Night, 1922
13. NGAURB_170412_061.JPG: Thomas Nason Louisburg Square, 1930
14. NGAURB_170412_065.JPG: Martin Lewis Quarter of Nine -- Saturday's Children, 1929
15. NGAURB_170412_070.JPG: Edward Arthur Wilson Untitled (Laying Pipe in New York City), 1941
16. NGAURB_170412_075.JPG: Reynold Weidenaar Locomotive Shops, 1947
17. NGAURB_170412_085.JPG: Victoria Hutson Huntley Lower New York, 1934
18. NGAURB_170412_088.JPG: Clare Leighton Breadline, New York, 1931
19. NGAURB_170412_091.JPG: Armin Landeck View of New York, 1932
20. NGAURB_170412_099.JPG: Samuel L. Margolies Men of Steel, c 1939
21. NGAURB_170412_103.JPG: Mabel Dwight The Clinch, 1928
22. NGAURB_170412_107.JPG: Millard Sheets Family Flats, 1935
23. NGAURB_170412_113.JPG: Reginald Marsh Tattoo -- Shave -- Haircut, 1932
24. NGAURB_170412_118.JPG: Paul Cadmus Shore Leave, 1935
25. NGAURB_170412_122.JPG: Asa Cheffetz Monday (The American Scene), c 1932
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Museums (Art)] [National Gallery of Art]
2017 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Overnight trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences in Pensacola, FL, Chattanooga, TN (via sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) and Fredericksburg, VA, a family reunion in The Dells, Wisconsin (via sites in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin), New York City, and my 12th consecutive San Diego Comic Con trip (including sites in Arizona). For some reason, several of my photos have been published in physical books this year which is pretty cool. Ones that I know about: "Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture" (David Lemmo), "The Great Crusade: A Guide to World War I American Expeditionary Forces Battlefields and Sites" (Stephen T. Powers and Kevin Dennehy), "The American Spirit" (David McCullough), "Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History" (David T. Gilbert), "The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 — Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia" (Marvin Kalb), and "The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons" (Ron Collins and David Skover). Number of photos taken this year: just below 560,000.
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