Existing comment:
Reginald Marsh
Sorting the Mail, 1936
Unloading the Mail, 1936
In the 1930s, an enormous amount of the nation's mail transited New York City, a burgeoning metropolis and hub of international exchange.
Focusing on the mechanics of New York City's thriving postal exchange, Reginald Marsh's murals depict contemporary scenes of mail transportation and processing. To produce the urban mailroom in Sorting the Mail, Marsh observed the modern machinery of the Penn Station post office, interviewed postal workers, and made sketches as the men unloaded and transferred mail cargo. As a result, his fresco brings to life the frenzied energy of the diverse, muscular workers who lift and drag large bags of mail, and showcases the machinery that moves the mail in all directions. For Unloading the Mail, Marsh initially made sketches and watercolors of the RMS Berengaria docked in New York harbor, but in the final mural he focused on the sailors and workers transferring large sacks of mail -- marked from France, Austria, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and India -- off the ocean liner and onto a smaller harbor boat, the bull of which fills most of the scene. Marsh's pictures of urban workers demonstrated his interest in common people and his commitment to Social Realism, an artistic movement that, in the US in the 1930s, focused on the plight of the working class. This artistic movement and Marsh's use of the fresco technique were inspired by the monumental frescos of the celebrated Mexican muralists: Diego Rivera, Jose Climente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. |