DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- East Wing -- Exhibit: The City:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Description of Pictures: The City
Ongoing from February 20, 2020
East Building, Ground Level - Gallery 106A
Towering skyscrapers, massive steel bridges, and the hubbub of city streets captivated artists working in the first half of the twentieth century. Roaming the rapidly changing urban environment, they explored ways to convey the awe-inspiring scale and speed of the modern American city. For photographers, technological advances such as hand-held cameras and faster film and shutter speeds enabled new visual practices, from off-kilter, oblique views and bird’s and worm’s eye vantage points to the blurred effects of motion. Printmakers likewise experimented with cropped compositions and varying proportions to underscore verticality or broad expanse.
Drawn to the social strata of the metropolis, artists portrayed a wide variety of city-dwellers going about their daily lives. The dynamic geometry of the skyline and vitality of the city offered endless sources of inspiration, from the dramatically cast shadows of cavernous streets, the cadence of drying laundry suspended in rows, and the swirling forms of Coney Island’s amusement rides to the repeating curves of ornamental lampposts and the dazzling lights of the city at night.
About the Series: American Art, 1900–1950: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
During a period fueled by enormous urban growth and technological changes, riven by world wars, and rocked by new modes of thought, American artists explored many diverse means to express their changing experience and environment. Prints, drawings, and photographs were vital media through which artists pursued radical experiments in form, figuration, and abstraction. Reevaluating European traditions, they developed new ways of seeing the modern world around them.
Complementing the American modernist paintings and sculptures in the adjacent galleries, these rotating installations feature prints, drawings, and photographs by American artists working in the first half of the 20th century. By looking at pairs or groups of artists, or at broader themes such as abstract portraiture or the Machine Age, the installations spark conversations between established and lesser-known figures in American modernism and highlight the era’s full range and complexity.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- CITY_220206_003.JPG: The City
Soaring skyscrapers, massive steel bridges, and the increasing hubbub or city streets captivated artists working in the first half of the twentieth century. Roaming the rapidly changing urban environment, they explored ways to convey the awe-inspiring scale and speed of the modern American city, epitomized in depictions of New York.
For photographers, technological advances such as handheld cameras and faster film and shutter speeds enabled new visual practices, from off-kilter, oblique views and vantage points to the blurred effects of motion, as seen in the photographs of Ruth Orkin and Lisette Model. Printmakers likewise experimented with cropped compositions and variant proportions to underscore vertically or broad expense. They also took advantage of the tonal effects of different techniques, represented forms abstractly, and created inaccurate juxtapositions of structures -- as seen in Charles Turzak's woodcut and Samuel L. Margolie's etching -- to heighten visual impact.
The photographs and prints on view in this room were made by artists of different gender identities, cultural backgrounds, and national origins. Drawn to the mix of social classes, these artists portrayed a wide variety of city-dwellers at work, engaging in leisure pastimes, or otherwise going about their daily lives. The dynamic geometry of the skyline and the vitality of the city offered endless sources of inspiration, from the dramatic shadows cast along cavernous streets, the rhythmic lines of drying laundry, and the swirling forms of Coney Island's amusement rides to the dazzling lights of the city at night.
- CITY_220206_014.JPG: Charles Turzak
Man with Drill, 1931
- CITY_220206_019.JPG: Alvin Langdon Coburn
- CITY_220206_026.JPG: Louis Lozowick
Luna Park, 1926
- CITY_220206_034.JPG: Benton Spruance
The People Play -- Spring, 1941
- CITY_220206_042.JPG: Benton Spruance
The People Work -- Evening, 1937
- CITY_220206_067.JPG: Sid Grossman
San Gennaro Festival, New York City, 1948
- CITY_220206_073.JPG: Lisette Model
42nd Street from the Sixth Avenue Subway, New York, 1940-1941
- CITY_220206_078.JPG: Phyllis (Pele) de Lappe
Subway, 1932
- CITY_220206_087.JPG: Walter Rosenblum
Boy on a Roof, Pitt Street, New York, 1950
- CITY_220206_092.JPG: Walter Rosenblum
Girl on a Swing, Pitt Street, New York, 1938
- CITY_220206_096.JPG: Howard Cook
Manhattan Bridge, 1931
- CITY_220206_098.JPG: Jolan Gross-Bettelheim
Bowary [sic], c 1938-1940
- CITY_220206_105.JPG: Clara E. Sipprell
Sixth Avenue, New York, 1920s
- CITY_220206_108.JPG: Esther Bubley
Manhattan Bridge, New York, c 1947
- CITY_220206_115.JPG: Ilse Bing
View from Hotel Algonquin, New York, 1936
- CITY_220206_119.JPG: Victoria Hutson Huntley
Lower New York, 1934
- CITY_220206_132.JPG: Armin Landeck
View of New York, 1932
- CITY_220206_146.JPG: Berenice Abbott
Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place, 1936
- CITY_220206_154.JPG: Samuel L. Margolies
Man's Canyons, 1936
- CITY_220206_160.JPG: Ilse Bing
Laundry, New York, 1936
- CITY_220206_164.JPG: Martin Lewis
Glow of the City, 1929
- CITY_220206_174.JPG: Alfred Stieglitz
From the Back-Window -- 291, 1915
- CITY_220206_179.JPG: Martin Lewis
Chance Meeting, 1940-1941
- CITY_220206_189.JPG: Godfrey Frankel
Times Square Restaurant, Looking Out on Street, 1946
- CITY_220206_197.JPG: Martin Lewis
Shadow Dance, 1930
- CITY_220206_212.JPG: Ruth Orkin
Starlight Roof at the Waldorf, New York City, 1950
- CITY_220206_217.JPG: Johan Hagemeyer
Pedestrians, 1921
- CITY_220206_230.JPG: Walker Evans
Subway Portrait, 1938-1941
- CITY_220206_236.JPG: Walker Evans
Subway Portrait, 1938-1941
- CITY_220206_242.JPG: Mabel Dwight
Ferry Boat, 1930
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