GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Painting in the United States blossomed in the opening decades of the 20th century, reflecting the developing regional character of the various parts of this immense country. Depending upon where you lived, regionalism could be the midwestern idioms of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, the Hispanic and Indian visions of the Taos and Santa Fe artists' colonies, representation of the Great Plains by the Dallas Nine, the lyrical landscapes of the California plein-air painters, or the gritty realism of the Ashcan school in New York. For example, a group of men trained at the Art Institute of Chicago turned Taos and Santa Fe into thriving artists' colonies, providing midwestern patrons with glimpses of the Southwest. Before long they were joined by Georgia O'Keefe, who divided her time between New Mexico and New York. The Southwest was a magnet for artists who were more often associated with New York, including Marsden Hartley, John Sloan, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper.
Regionalist concerns reached their apogee in the works created during the Great Depression. These paintings convey a universal message of man's struggle to survive both nature and financial disasters. Often used to label an artist's work as parochial or inferior, regionalism has been a pervasive force in U.S. art throughout the 20th century as artists allover the nation stuggled to define themselves both with and against the metropolitan art produced in the world capitals of Paris, London, and New York.
Excerpt from
DMA unpublished material.
NOTES
General Description: Excerpt from "Regionalism," in the Dallas Nine folder from the Education files.
200 Years of American Painting, October 5 to November 4, 1946. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. (Assembled for the State Fair of Texas) no author listed, unpaginated. 12711185: UMO.
REGIONALISM
It was natural that an interest in the American Scene
should produce regional an leaders. Most widely
known of these were the mid-westerners John Stellart
Curry, Grant Wood and Thomas BentOtl. There were
also many other painters who had received good
training in Europe or the East and who returned
to their native environment to paint what they knew and liked best. Still others not favored with publicity
were able to develop their talent on their own and
without leaving home. The combined effect of all
thesearrists was ro produce results in paincingsimilar
ro those in the American writings of Sinclair Lewis,
Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, William
Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe. The European apron
strings of art were definitely severed and the main
concern of painting was to study and interpret America. Once we were ashamed of our art and our background, and we patronized Europe, but now there was a healthy desire to learn about ourselves and respect our own accomplishments. Sometimes this led to the error of praising any painting of an American subject-yet the overall effect of regionalism on American art has been good when it has been mixed with continuing interest in world-wide technical developments.
Regionalism and American Modernism- typescript essay found in education files
Regionalism has sometimes been equated with provincialism. Regional artists are often considered naive and their works limited in vision. The artists most closely associated with "Regionalism" of the 1930s as an artistic movement are Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood; however, every region of the country produced artists who chose the local landscape ot cityscape as the arena in which to express ideas and concerns of much wider relevance.
The cultural upheaval of The Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal influenced the history of art in profound ways. Determined to free themselves from European influence, many artists sought to define their artistic identity by turning to the nearby landscape and local events for subject matter. Alexandre Hogue, a leading proponent of Texas regionalism, proclaimed "The American artists in general will come of age only when he has the stamina to blaze his own trails through the part of his country in which he lives." His Drouth Stricken Area, like Benton's Prodigal Son and William Lester's Three Crosses, reveals the continuing power of the landscape to express the hopes and despair also felt by urban Americans, evident in the depictions of tenements and bread lines in the works of their New York City contemporaries and Ashcan School predecessors.
Far from being provincial or shallow, regionalism was a catalyst for both representational and abstract modernist painters between the World Wars. During the 1920s and 30s, the Southwest acted as a magnet for many artists trained in Chicago, among them Victor Higgins and Joseph Sharp (who helped found the Taos School), who depicted the regional landscape as they experimented with light and color. By the 1930s, prominent New York artists John Marin, John Sloan, Marsden Hartley, and George O'Keeffe were regular visitors to Taos and Santa Fe. Their aims echoed Hogue's as they searched for an artistic identity grounded in the landscape. Many of these artists maintained their ties with the New York art world, further blurring the distinction between regionalist and modernist art. The brilliant light of the Southwest created the illusion of a landscape in which mountains appeared stacked atop each other rather than receding into the hazy distance familiar to the Hudson River Valley. This encouraged artists to explore the vocabulary of abstraction. By abstracting nature, these artists believed they achieved the essence of its forms. Abstraction unlocked the promise of a universal language of art.
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1945.15 William Lester, Road to White Rock
8566641: UMO
WEB RESOURCES
- DMA.org~Learn more about the Dallas Museum of Art's 1985 exhibition Lone Star Regionalism: The Dallas Nine and Their Circle, 1928-1945.
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General Description
Painting in the United States blossomed in the opening decades of the 20th century, reflecting the developing regional character of the various parts of this immense country. Depending upon where you lived, regionalism could be the midwestern idioms of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, the Hispanic and Indian visions of the Taos and Santa Fe artists' colonies, representation of the Great Plains by the Dallas Nine, the lyrical landscapes of the California plein-air painters, or the gritty realism of the Ashcan school in New York. For example, a group of men trained at the Art Institute of Chicago turned Taos and Santa Fe into thriving artists' colonies, providing midwestern patrons with glimpses of the Southwest. Before long they were joined by Georgia O'Keefe, who divided her time between New Mexico and New York. The Southwest was a magnet for artists who were more often associated with New York, including Marsden Hartley, John Sloan, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper.
Regionalist concerns reached their apogee in the works created during the Great Depression. These paintings convey a universal message of man's struggle to survive both nature and financial disasters. Often used to label an artist's work as parochial or inferior, regionalism has been a pervasive force in U.S. art throughout the 20th century as artists allover the nation stuggled to define themselves both with and against the metropolitan art produced in the world capitals of Paris, London, and New York.
Excerpt from
DMA unpublished material.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- DMA.org~Learn more about the Dallas Museum of Art's 1985 exhibition Lone Star Regionalism: The Dallas Nine and Their Circle, 1928-1945.
Notes
General Description: Excerpt from "Regionalism," in the Dallas Nine folder from the Education files.
200 Years of American Painting, October 5 to November 4, 1946. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. (Assembled for the State Fair of Texas) no author listed, unpaginated. 12711185: UMO.
REGIONALISM
It was natural that an interest in the American Scene
should produce regional an leaders. Most widely
known of these were the mid-westerners John Stellart
Curry, Grant Wood and Thomas BentOtl. There were
also many other painters who had received good
training in Europe or the East and who returned
to their native environment to paint what they knew and liked best. Still others not favored with publicity
were able to develop their talent on their own and
without leaving home. The combined effect of all
thesearrists was ro produce results in paincingsimilar
ro those in the American writings of Sinclair Lewis,
Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, William
Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe. The European apron
strings of art were definitely severed and the main
concern of painting was to study and interpret America. Once we were ashamed of our art and our background, and we patronized Europe, but now there was a healthy desire to learn about ourselves and respect our own accomplishments. Sometimes this led to the error of praising any painting of an American subject-yet the overall effect of regionalism on American art has been good when it has been mixed with continuing interest in world-wide technical developments.
Regionalism and American Modernism- typescript essay found in education files
Regionalism has sometimes been equated with provincialism. Regional artists are often considered naive and their works limited in vision. The artists most closely associated with "Regionalism" of the 1930s as an artistic movement are Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood; however, every region of the country produced artists who chose the local landscape ot cityscape as the arena in which to express ideas and concerns of much wider relevance.
The cultural upheaval of The Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal influenced the history of art in profound ways. Determined to free themselves from European influence, many artists sought to define their artistic identity by turning to the nearby landscape and local events for subject matter. Alexandre Hogue, a leading proponent of Texas regionalism, proclaimed "The American artists in general will come of age only when he has the stamina to blaze his own trails through the part of his country in which he lives." His Drouth Stricken Area, like Benton's Prodigal Son and William Lester's Three Crosses, reveals the continuing power of the landscape to express the hopes and despair also felt by urban Americans, evident in the depictions of tenements and bread lines in the works of their New York City contemporaries and Ashcan School predecessors.
Far from being provincial or shallow, regionalism was a catalyst for both representational and abstract modernist painters between the World Wars. During the 1920s and 30s, the Southwest acted as a magnet for many artists trained in Chicago, among them Victor Higgins and Joseph Sharp (who helped found the Taos School), who depicted the regional landscape as they experimented with light and color. By the 1930s, prominent New York artists John Marin, John Sloan, Marsden Hartley, and George O'Keeffe were regular visitors to Taos and Santa Fe. Their aims echoed Hogue's as they searched for an artistic identity grounded in the landscape. Many of these artists maintained their ties with the New York art world, further blurring the distinction between regionalist and modernist art. The brilliant light of the Southwest created the illusion of a landscape in which mountains appeared stacked atop each other rather than receding into the hazy distance familiar to the Hudson River Valley. This encouraged artists to explore the vocabulary of abstraction. By abstracting nature, these artists believed they achieved the essence of its forms. Abstraction unlocked the promise of a universal language of art.
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