GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Suspended Power depicts a water turbine being lowered into place at a new hydroelectric power dam in Guntersville, Alabama. In 1938 Fortune magazine commissioned Charles Sheeler to produce a group of paintings on the theme of power. Over the next two years, he created a series of photographs and paintings exploring the varieties of industrial, mechanical, and natural power in the United States. In addition to this representation of American engineering prowess, the subjects shown in the series include the exterior of the Hoover Dam, an airplane, a steam power plant, a train, and a waterwheel (representing earlier methods of harnessing power). Suspended Power, along with the five other paintings, appeared in Fortune in December 1939.
This painting is one of the few in the Power series to have a recognizable photographic prototype. Not content to merely replicate the photograph, however, the artist combined two different perspectives in the final oil painting, as well as reducing the number of figures in the scene and significantly cleaning up the industrial interior.
Adapted from
- Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 264.
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA label text, 2005
NOTES
Created in 1939
French title—Puissance suspendue
Power Series exhibition at DMA Jan to April 2006
From Fortune:
"...Here, in a room larger and more still than a corridor in the Vatican, the runner of a hydroelectric turbine floats majestically down into its pit. When the huge red ring settles in its bed and the generator is connected to the bright steel shaft, water will shoulder through the penstocks under the dam, pass the opened gates, swirl around this tapered casing, shove against the sloping planes of the propeller blades, and churn through the tailrace below them. This is Unit No. 2 at Guntersville on the Tennessee River, a part of TVA. Its propeller is 265 inches in diameter, smaller by only a few inches than the world's highest-powered Kaplan unit at Bonneveille. For decades it will whirl out power with few stops, no fuel, and very little supervision. The important man-hours of labor will have all gone before: the hours put in by the machinists who built the power shovels that prepared the damsite; the dusty, slamming hours of the drivers who worked them; the hours of the workers in cement plants, sweating in gritty overalls; the hours in that hall of mastodons, the shop of the S. Morgan Smith Co. at York, Pennsylvania, where the great bones of this turbine were shaped and fitted together. All of these man-hours are implicit in this moment of achievement, will henceforth be transmuted and run off into millions of kilowatt-hours to provide comfort to many men and women and aid to them in further efforts. This, then, is the symbol of a colossal sharing, a bringing together and a giving out of energies. But because the mechanism of the sharing itself is money, and because large-scale hydro requires so much money—about twice as much as steam per kilowatt of capacity—and because expensive dams can often be used to aid flood control and navigation also, it is perhaps natural that such projects should be increasingly undertaken by the government."
CULT OF THE MACHINE LABEL
Suspended Power belongs to Charles Sheeler's iconic "Power" series, commissioned in 1938 by Fortune magazine and published in its December 1940 issue. The six paintings in the series—four of which are on view here—are based on photographs Sheeler took of what Fortune termed the nation's "instruments of power." While other works in the series are devoid of people, focused exclusively on the geometric forms and gleaming surfaces of the featured structures, Sheeler here placed laborers behind and below the hydroelectric turbine he depicted, highlighting the massive scale of the machine, and conveying a sublime sense of its awesome and even terrifying might.
WHO IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ABOVE?
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location: Guntersville (Alabama/United States): TGN: 2003745
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
n.d.: Downtown Gallery, New York City
n.d.: Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Meriden, Connecticut
n.d.: S. Morgan Smith Company, York, Pennsylvania
n.d.: Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York
From 1985: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund J. Kahn
The main source for this provenance was existing information in the Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records Object Files). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.
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VIDEO ASSETS
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WEB RESOURCES
- Charles Sheeler, Biography~Read a biography of Charles Sheller on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
- YouTube~View the short film Manhatta: A Film by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler presented by the Getty Museum.
- YouTube~Learn more about Charles Sheeler's photographic work in this video by Ted Forbes and The Art of Photography.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- Charles Sheeler was considered a great photographer and often photographed the subjects of his paintings as studies for the works.
TEACHING IDEAS
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Apply to objects where number equals 1985.143
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General Description
Suspended Power depicts a water turbine being lowered into place at a new hydroelectric power dam in Guntersville, Alabama. In 1938 Fortune magazine commissioned Charles Sheeler to produce a group of paintings on the theme of power. Over the next two years, he created a series of photographs and paintings exploring the varieties of industrial, mechanical, and natural power in the United States. In addition to this representation of American engineering prowess, the subjects shown in the series include the exterior of the Hoover Dam, an airplane, a steam power plant, a train, and a waterwheel (representing earlier methods of harnessing power). Suspended Power, along with the five other paintings, appeared in Fortune in December 1939.
This painting is one of the few in the Power series to have a recognizable photographic prototype. Not content to merely replicate the photograph, however, the artist combined two different perspectives in the final oil painting, as well as reducing the number of figures in the scene and significantly cleaning up the industrial interior.
Adapted from
- Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 264.
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA label text, 2005
Fun Facts
- Charles Sheeler was considered a great photographer and often photographed the subjects of his paintings as studies for the works.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Charles Sheeler, Biography~Read a biography of Charles Sheller on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
- YouTube~View the short film Manhatta: A Film by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler presented by the Getty Museum.
- YouTube~Learn more about Charles Sheeler's photographic work in this video by Ted Forbes and The Art of Photography.
Notes
Created in 1939
French title—Puissance suspendue
Power Series exhibition at DMA Jan to April 2006
From Fortune:
"...Here, in a room larger and more still than a corridor in the Vatican, the runner of a hydroelectric turbine floats majestically down into its pit. When the huge red ring settles in its bed and the generator is connected to the bright steel shaft, water will shoulder through the penstocks under the dam, pass the opened gates, swirl around this tapered casing, shove against the sloping planes of the propeller blades, and churn through the tailrace below them. This is Unit No. 2 at Guntersville on the Tennessee River, a part of TVA. Its propeller is 265 inches in diameter, smaller by only a few inches than the world's highest-powered Kaplan unit at Bonneveille. For decades it will whirl out power with few stops, no fuel, and very little supervision. The important man-hours of labor will have all gone before: the hours put in by the machinists who built the power shovels that prepared the damsite; the dusty, slamming hours of the drivers who worked them; the hours of the workers in cement plants, sweating in gritty overalls; the hours in that hall of mastodons, the shop of the S. Morgan Smith Co. at York, Pennsylvania, where the great bones of this turbine were shaped and fitted together. All of these man-hours are implicit in this moment of achievement, will henceforth be transmuted and run off into millions of kilowatt-hours to provide comfort to many men and women and aid to them in further efforts. This, then, is the symbol of a colossal sharing, a bringing together and a giving out of energies. But because the mechanism of the sharing itself is money, and because large-scale hydro requires so much money—about twice as much as steam per kilowatt of capacity—and because expensive dams can often be used to aid flood control and navigation also, it is perhaps natural that such projects should be increasingly undertaken by the government."
CULT OF THE MACHINE LABEL
Suspended Power belongs to Charles Sheeler's iconic "Power" series, commissioned in 1938 by Fortune magazine and published in its December 1940 issue. The six paintings in the series—four of which are on view here—are based on photographs Sheeler took of what Fortune termed the nation's "instruments of power." While other works in the series are devoid of people, focused exclusively on the geometric forms and gleaming surfaces of the featured structures, Sheeler here placed laborers behind and below the hydroelectric turbine he depicted, highlighting the massive scale of the machine, and conveying a sublime sense of its awesome and even terrifying might.
WHO IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ABOVE?
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location: Guntersville (Alabama/United States): TGN: 2003745
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
n.d.: Downtown Gallery, New York City
n.d.: Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Meriden, Connecticut
n.d.: S. Morgan Smith Company, York, Pennsylvania
n.d.: Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York
From 1985: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund J. Kahn
The main source for this provenance was existing information in the Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records Object Files). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.
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