1960.137 George Grosz, Cotton Harvest, Dallas (Cotton Pickers)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Condemned by the Nazi regime as a "degenerate" for his bitter social satire, George Grosz made his way to the United States in 1932, where he taught at the Art Students league in New York. In 1952, Dallas merchant Leon Harris commissioned a series of pictures from Grosz in which the artist was asked to capture "Dallas, its People, its Industries, its Character." In Cotton Harvest, Dallas, Grosz expressed his sympathy with the backbreaking labor of the cotton fields. The harvesters are bent to their work under a hot, oppressively heavy sky, their human forms distorted by the swollen sacks of cotton dragging behind them.

Grosz arrived in North Texas well outside of the cotton picking season, not to mention in the midst of a punishing drought that greatly reduced cotton crops. Grosz must have drawn on other sources to develop Cotton Pickers, and, tellingly, it relies heavily on conventions for depicting the work of the fields, from Jean-Francois Millet's Gleaners (1857) to more recent photographs and paintings made by the progressive artists of the 1930s. The decision to show the pickers bent low over the cotton plants echoes Millet's famous painting, but it also allows Grosz to elide the vexed question of race. Faces and hands concealed by their stooped posture, these cotton pickers are seamlessly written into art historical tradition and made universal signifiers of agricultural labor.

Adapted from

Heather MacDonald, Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2012), 50-52.
DMA label text.

NOTES

Created c. 1952-1953

Changed date to 1952-53 (Hariss had Grosz do revisions)

Object File Reviewed

"...a tribute to Millet, from whose work the spirit and the treatment has been borrowed. It is an honest transference of Millet's compassionate concern with peasant labour to the American SOuth, and, like Millet's work, Grosz's picture is more of an apotheosis than an accusation." Hans Hess George Grosz Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. New York THe Gleaners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet#/media/File:Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet_-_Gleaners_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg

Catalogue essays

Art Students League (New York, NY)

George Grosz's Impression of Dallas Series

George Grosz and America

Artist/designers

Grosz, George (American, born German, 1893-1959)

Cultures

Geography

Depicted location and place of origin: Dallas (Texas/United States): TGN: 7013503

Process/materials

Oil on canvas

Historical periods

1950s America

Individuals

Subject terms

RELATED OBJECTS

PROVENANCE

From 1960: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of A. Harris and Company in memory of Leon A. Harris, Sr. [1]

[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

AUDIO ASSETS

UMO: 13310072 The History and Culture of George Grosz's Dallas, Gallery talk by Carol Roark

UMO: 13310104 Reflections on George Grosz, Gallery talk with Marty Grosz, George Grosz's son

UMO: 13310145 Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas, Gallery talk by Alan Govenar

UMO: 13316195 Frontier Fantasies Meet Frontier Realities: George Grosz in Dallas in 1952, Late Night Lecture by Barbara McCloskey

UMO: 13317549 Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas, Gallery talk by Dr. Heather MacDonald

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY~Compare George Grosz's Cotton Harvest, Dallas (Cotton Pickers) to Jackson Pollock's Cotton Pickers c. 1935.
Art Institute of Chicago~Compare George Grosz's Cotton Harvest, Dallas to Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton's Cotton Pickers from 1945.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

Apply to objects where number equals 1960.137

General Description

Condemned by the Nazi regime as a "degenerate" for his bitter social satire, George Grosz made his way to the United States in 1932, where he taught at the Art Students league in New York. In 1952, Dallas merchant Leon Harris commissioned a series of pictures from Grosz in which the artist was asked to capture "Dallas, its People, its Industries, its Character." In Cotton Harvest, Dallas, Grosz expressed his sympathy with the backbreaking labor of the cotton fields. The harvesters are bent to their work under a hot, oppressively heavy sky, their human forms distorted by the swollen sacks of cotton dragging behind them.

Grosz arrived in North Texas well outside of the cotton picking season, not to mention in the midst of a punishing drought that greatly reduced cotton crops. Grosz must have drawn on other sources to develop Cotton Pickers, and, tellingly, it relies heavily on conventions for depicting the work of the fields, from Jean-Francois Millet's Gleaners (1857) to more recent photographs and paintings made by the progressive artists of the 1930s. The decision to show the pickers bent low over the cotton plants echoes Millet's famous painting, but it also allows Grosz to elide the vexed question of race. Faces and hands concealed by their stooped posture, these cotton pickers are seamlessly written into art historical tradition and made universal signifiers of agricultural labor.