Regionalism
A reaction against the modernism of the Armory Show.
Objective, representational art based on American life.
Hopper said "A nation's art is greatest when it reflects the character of
it's people".
Georgia O’Keeffe
Harlem Renaissance
Grant Wood
Edward Hopper
Dorothea Lange
Georgia O’Keeffe
(1887-1986)
Settled in New Mexico later in
life – known for her paintings
of the American Southwest
Subjects usually include
flowers, bones, rocks and
landscapes
Aesthetics – usually organic
shapes up-close with crisp
edges and many gradated
parts
Georgia O’Keeffe
Red Canna, 1923.
REGIONALISM
Georgia O’Keeffe
Horse’s Skull on Blue, 1930.
REGIONALISM
Georgia O’Keeffe
Music, Pink and Blue,
1919.
REGIONALISM
Georgia O’Keeffe
Iris, 1927.
REGIONALISM
Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram's Head, White Hollyhock and Little Hills, 1935.
The Harlem Renaissance
The northeast section of Manhattan island
was home to many African Americans.
During the decade of the 1920's witnesses a
huge explosion of African Americans artists
of all types from this area of the city- music,
literature and visual art.
Aaron Douglas
Jacob Lawrence
James Van Der Zee
Jacob Lawrence
(1917-2000)
One of the most famous
African-American artists of
the 20th Century
Known for ‘Great Migration’
series as part of the Harlem
Renaissance
Flat overlapped shapes
indicative of Matisse
Jacob Lawrence, 1941.
Jacob Lawrence
The Black Press Urged the People to
Leave the South
(Panel 34 of The Migration Series)
1940-41,
Tempera on gesso on composition
board
"Around the time of WWI, many African-Americans from the South left
home and traveled to cities in the North in search of a better life.“
Jacob Lawrence, The Great Migration, Part I, 1940-41.
Jacob Lawrence
The Studio, 1977.
Aaron Douglas
(1898-1979)
Native of Topeka,
Kansas – moved to New
York City in 1925
Developed an abstract
style influenced by
African art as well as the
emerging Art Deco
Aesthetics: Flat, solid shapes;
Transparent; Atmospheric
perspective (dark in
foreground)
Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936.
Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life from Slavery
through Reconstruction, 1934.
James Van Der Zee, Couple Wearing Raccoon Coats with a Cadillac, 1932.
James Van Der Zee, The Wedding Party, 1926.
James Van Der Zee, Dancing Girls, 1928.
Grant Wood
Born in Iowa – best known for
depicting scenes of the rural
American Midwest
Studied at the Art Institute of
Chicago
Though his forms are usually
smooth and rounded, he was
greatly influenced by the clarity in
the landscapes of 15th-century
Flemish Masters like Van Eyck.
Grant Wood, Fall Plowing, 1931.
Grant Wood, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1932.
(Cincinnati Art Museum)
In making these paintings, as
you may have guessed, I had
in mind something which I
hope to convey to a fairly wide
audience in America -- the
picture of a country rich in the
arts of peace; a homely
lovable nation, infinitely worth
any sacrifice necessary to its
preservation.
Grant Wood, in a statement
accompanying his final
painting
Grant Wood. Stone City, Iowa
Grant Wood
American Gothic
1930.
American Gothic house in Eldon, Iowa
Edward Hopper
Known for painting
landscapes and cityscapes
with a strong light source
Very lonely, calm, isolated
paintings
Edward Hopper,
Self-Portrait, 1925-30.
Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930.
Edward Hopper, Prospect Street, Gloucester, 1928, Watercolor.
Edward Hopper, Early Morning Sun, 1952.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942.
Dorothea Lange
With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange
turned her camera lens from the studio to the
street. Her studies of unemployed and homeless
people captured the attention of local
photographers and led to her employment with
the federal Farm Security Administration (FSA).
From 1935 to 1939, Lange's work for the FSA
brought the plight of the poor and forgotten particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm
families, and migrant workers - to public
attention. Distributed free to newspapers across
the country, her poignant images became icons
of the era.
Dorothea Lange in 1936.
Lange's most well-known picture is
titled "Migrant Mother." The woman
in the photo is Florence Owens
Thompson, but Lange apparently
never knew her name.
I saw and approached the hungry and
desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I
do not remember how I explained my presence
or my camera to her, but I do remember she
asked me no questions. I made five
exposures, working closer and closer from the
same direction. I did not ask her name or her
history. She told me her age, that she was
thirty-two. She said that they had been living
on frozen vegetables from the surrounding
fields, and birds that the children killed. She
had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.
There she sat in that lean-to tent with her
children huddled around her, and seemed to
know that my pictures might help her, and so
she helped me. There was a sort of equality
about it.
Dorothea Lange,
Migrant Mother, 1936.
Dorothea Lange, Japanese-American Internment, c1942.
Dorothea Lange, An Abandoned farm north
of Dalhart Texas, June 1938.
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Workers Near Manteca, CA, 1938.
Dorothea Lange,
Sharecropper's child
suffering from rickets and
malnutrition,
1938.
Dorothea Lange, San Francisco Social Security Office, 1937.
Dorothea Lange,
Texas Tenant Farmer in
California. Marysville
Migrant Camp,
September 1935.