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Why and how did the artists involved with the Stieglitz Circle establish their artistic voices in relation to or in rejection of European trends?

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Risa Puleo / rpuleo@saic.edu

Tuesdays, 10-11 AM and by appt.

Christine Magill / cmagill@saic.edu
Wednesdays, 1-2 PM

Amanda Mendelsohn / amendelsohn@saic.edu
Mondays 530-630 PM

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Visit your selected artwork and spend 15 minutes just looking at it. What do you see that you haven't before?

In your journal, focus your writing on: What COLORS did the artist use to compose the artwork? What are the effects of that color palette? Do the colors create a MOOD or TONE? How and why? Ex. Is the blue of sky pastel and serene or dark and stormy? How does color help the artist achieve what they want to communicate in the artwork?

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BP: How is Pollock's Primitivism different that Picasso's?

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BP: How is Pollock's Primitivism different that Picasso's?

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We've seen white American, like Robert Henri and Thomas Hart Benton, artists represent African-Americans and the black experience in the US. Compare these versions to how artists of The Harlem Renaissance chose to represent their own experiences.

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Why and how did the Ashcan School establish their artistic voices in relation to or in rejection of European trends?

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Compare and contrast Thomas Eakins painting, Gross Clinic to the Monet's Impressions Sunrise. Both were made only two years apart!

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How is American Realism different than Social Realism in Russia and Mexico?

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How is American Realism different than Social Realism in Russia and Mexico?

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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In the era of its creation, Grant Wood's American Gothic was in the middle of a battle between intention and reception. The artist intended the painting to be a celebration of the American heartland. Viewers in big cities like Chicago saw it as a satire of the rural. What do you see? Do the artist's intentions for the painting influence how you view it? Should the artist's intentions always determine the interpretation of a painting? even when times, cultural beliefs, change?

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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Thomas Hart Benton intended his paintings of Southern sharecroppers to portray the black experience with the dignity of endurance against the racist systems they were trapped in. His critics thought his art wasn't enough and criticized him for not doing more, like being involved in anti-racist causes. What do you think? Do you think Benton's paintings romanticize the black experience in the US? Is art a vehicle in and of itself to promote change? If so, what kind of change can Benton's paintings help viewers make? If not, why not?

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Cotton Pickers

Date:

1945

Artist:

Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889-1975

About this artwork

The American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton painted Cotton Pickers based on notes of a trip he made to Georgia in the late 1920s. He depicted the dignity of the cotton pickers in the face of backbreaking labor and intense summer heat, rendering the dry fields and the working bodies in a sinuous, curvilinear style. Benton held progressive views on race, social relations, and politics, and he believed ardently that African American history was central to the understanding of American culture. Cotton sharecropping, an agricultural system that developed after the Civil War, allowed landowners to rent land to poor farmers in return for a share of the crops. Because sharecropping kept agricultural laborers impoverished, it became a symbol of a racially and economically unjust system. Cotton cultivation became one of Benton's most important subjects, especially as the rapid industrialization of the nation during World War II changed the American landscape.

Status

On View, Gallery 263

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

Thomas Hart Benton

Title

Cotton Pickers

Origin

United States

Date

1945

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

81.3 × 121.9 cm (32 × 48 in.)

Credit Line

Prior bequest of Alexander Stewart; Centennial Major Acquisitions Income and Wesley M. Dixon Jr. funds; Roger and J. Peter McCormick Endowments; prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection and Cyrus H. McCormick Fund; Quinn E. Delaney, American Art Sales Proceeds, Alyce and Edwin DeCosta and Walter E. Heller Foundation, and Goodman funds; prior bequest of Arthur Rubloff; Estate of Walter Aitken; Ada Turnbull Hertle and Mary and Leigh Block Endowment funds; prior acquisition of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize; Marian and Samuel Klasstorner and Laura T. Magnuson Acquisition funds; prior acquisition of Friends of American Art Collection; Wirt D. Walker Trust; Jay W. McGreevy Endowment; Cyrus Hall McCormick Fund; Samuel A. Marx Purchase Fund for Major Acquisitions; Maurice D. Galleher Endowment; Alfred and May Tiefenbronner Memorial, Dr. Julian Archie, Gladys N. Anderson, and Simeon B. Williams funds; Capital Campaign General Acquisitions Endowment, and Benjamin Argile Memorial Fund

Reference Number

2013.4

Copyright

© T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trust / UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Extended information about this artwork

Publication History

Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 130.

Exhibition History

Art Institute of Chicago, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, Jun 5-Sep 18, 2016; Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie, Oct 15, 2016-Jan 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, Feb 25-Jun 4, 2017, cat. 4 (Paris and London only).

Provenance

Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, by 1971; acquired by Sergio Stella, February 8, 1971, by trade; by descent in the family; consigned to Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC, New York, 2012; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.

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Cotton Pickers | The Art Institute of Chicago

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Show this image Cotton Pickers 1945 Thomas Hart BentonAmerican, 1889-1975 The American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton painted Cotton Pickers based on notes of a trip he made to Georgia in the late 1920s. He depicted the dignity of the cotton pickers in the face of backbreaking labor and intense summer heat, rendering the dry fields and the working bodies in a sinuous, curvilinear style.

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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Artist's Intention vs Viewer's Reception

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Many of Georgia O'Keefe's male critics made assumptions that her paintings of flowers were references to the female anatomy. In response she said: “Well, “I made you take time to look at what I saw, and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower, and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—and I don’t.” What do you think?

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Artist's Intention vs. Viewer's Reception

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Artist's Intention vs. Viewer's Reception

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The artists of the Ashcan School intended to shine a light on the harsh realities of being poor and working class in New York City. But because they didn't belong to the groups that they painted, their paintings often involved stereotypes of different backgrounds (Luks) or else reduced people to examples of different types (Henri). From the journalistic "objective" distance they employed,  did they have the possibility to paint anything other than caricatures or ethnic types? What do you think? (Read more about Henri's ethnic types by clicking the link).

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Robert Henri produced this striking portrait of Ramoncita Gonzales (Tom Po Qui) (Tewa, San Juan Pueblo) in 1914, at the onset of the First World War. The date of the painting, the vibrancy of Henri's palette, and the sitter's indigenous Pueblo identity are key to unpacking the significance of the work.

Henri was, by this time, an important figure in the American art world, and was recognized as a leading figure in the development of the Ashcan School style of painting. He had been the main organizer of a renegade group of artists known as The Eight. Tom Po Qui was painted six years later, relatively late in his career, and here we see a shift in style.

A new vibrancy

Just a year prior to the production of this work, the New York art world had been rocked by the 1913 Armory Show (also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art), which was the first major exhibition of modern art staged in the United States. While some American artists (including Henri) were included in the show, it was the Europeans who really shocked audiences with their avant-garde styles, including Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. For American viewers who had only recently become accustomed to the gritty realism of Henri and his fellow Ashcan School painters, the experimental European works were shocking.

In fact, one of Henri's contributions to the show, Figure in Motion, is often compared to Marcel Duchamp's famed Cubist composition Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2) as a way to underscore the resolutely representational character of American Realism with the flat planes and abstracted quality of the European avant-garde. While Henri's work remained figurative in the years after the Armory show, his technique grew looser and his palette became lighter and brighter, likely due in part to experiencing Fauvist works at the Armory.

However, the vivid colors of Tom Po Qui cannot be explained by exposure to European modernist styles alone; that Henri was in California when he painted this canvas is also important. New York-based Henri typically spent summers abroad, traveling to various European locales (significant previous trips included Ireland, Holland, and Spain). However, World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, which made international voyages untenable. Like many Americans whose travel plans were restricted to domestic trips, Henri turned his eye westward. He took the train out to California, settling for the summer months in La Jolla.

Henri was particularly drawn to the intense light of southern California, declaring the conditions ideal for painters. His affinity for this light can be seen in the portrait of Tom Po Qui, where the backdrop of the painting is not the dark, interior spaces common in his earlier work, but rather a loosely-painted setting evocative of the sunlight-dappled coastal region where he found himself. The patchy brushwork and bright colors may show evidence of the influence of European modernists such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, but also the impact of working out west.

"My People"

Henri was not only attracted to the light of California; he was also drawn to the diverse population of the area. Throughout his career, Henri was invested in finding new and interesting people to paint, seeking out models of varying social positions, professions, regions, and ethnicities. In California, he was especially interested in finding sitters of what he understood to be diverse racial identities. During what would eventually be three trips to the area, he painted Black, Chinese American, Mexican American, and American Indian sitters. In a 1915 article predicated on these works, Henri stated: "I was not interested in these people to sentimentalize over them, to mourn over the fact that we have destroyed the Indian, that we are changing the shy Chinese girl into a soubrette, . . . I am looking at each individual with the eager hope of finding there something of the dignity of life, the humor, the humanity, the kindness." [1]

Today we read his rhetoric as problematically racist and patronizing, particularly in light of the article's proprietary title, "My People." But Henri's desire to paint these sitters as dignified individuals nonetheless defies the more virulent racial stereotyping typical of the era, even as his approach could devolve into exoticism.

Tom Po Qui is a prime example of such portraiture. On the one hand, the work appears to present Gonzales as an ethnic type, her colorful Native clothing and dazzling silver jewelry highlighted in a manner that seems to render her a decorative object, presented to be consumed by non-Native audiences eager to see depictions of exotic American Indian culture. Yet Gonzales stares out of the canvas with self-possession, evenly meeting the viewer's gaze in a way that disrupts the interpretation of this work as entirely exploitative. The agency of this sitter cannot be ignored, and indeed the historical record regarding Gonzales's identity as a Pueblo artist and performer in her own right brings further nuance to analysis of this painting.

Painted Desert

Henri painted Gonzales not in La Jolla, but in nearby San Diego, at the site of the Panama-California Exposition, which would open in 1915. The Panama-California Exposition was held between January 1, 1915 and January 1, 1917 in San Diego's Balboa Park, to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and to promote tourism in the region. Construction was underway for the Exposition's various exhibits, including the "Painted Desert," an ethnographic exhibit with a large-scale reconstructed pueblo that would display hundreds of Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache performers. Organizers asked several Pueblo families to travel from their homes in New Mexico to the site early and to aid in construction. Gonzales was among them, arriving with her cousin Maria Martinez and Maria's husband Julian. While Julian Martinez served as a construction foreman, Gonzales and Maria Martinez constructed the large pots that served as chimneys in the living spaces for the reconstructed Pueblo. When the fair opened, they would continue producing pottery, this time for sale to the visitors who flocked to the exposition. Tourist interest in Pueblo pottery during this period spurred a revival in the practice, which had almost died out in the late nineteenth century.

Fairgoers occasionally purchased pots, but they also visited the Painted Desert exhibit to simply observe the Indigenous peoples residing there, undertaking activities deemed traditional-including pottery production. Visitors watched as Maria Martinez and Ramoncita Gonzales shaped and fired their vessels, with Julian Martinez providing the painted designs. These Pueblo figures were artist/performers; they agreed to present themselves as Native peoples living in a traditional manner in exchange for wages paid by the fair organizers. Likewise, as artists such as Henri visited the fairgrounds in search of models, Pueblo performers agreed to sit, or we might say, perform their traditional identity.

Gonzales likely selected her attire for Tom Po Qui; it is the same types of clothing and jewelry that we see her and other Pueblo women wearing when the exposition opened. As customary Pueblo livelihoods were threatened by encroaching white culture, Gonzales and others turned to the production of tourist wares and performance as "Show Indians" as a matter of survival. Images such as Tom Po Qui are reminders of the exploitative and exoticizing practices that led Pueblo people like Gonzales to take up the performance of their indigenous identity for financial security. It is worth noting however, that simultaneously, this work documented the agency of Native peoples in the early years of the twentieth century, as they adapted indigenous traditions to the needs of their modern lives.

[1] Robert Henri, "My People," The Craftsman vol. 27, no. 5 (February 1915), p. 467.

Additional Resources
This painting at the Denver Art Museum

Derrick Cartwright and Valerie Ann Leeds, Robert Henri's California: Realism, Race, and Region 1914-1925 (Laguna, CA: Laguna Art Museum, 2014)

Ruth B. Phillips, "Performing the Native Woman: Primitivism and Mimicry in Early-Twentieth-Century Visual Culture," Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity, edited by Lynda Jessup, 26-49 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)

W. Jackson Rushing, Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)

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Robert Henri, Tom Po Qui (Water of Antelope Lake/Indian Girl/Ramoncita)

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Robert Henri produced this striking portrait of Ramoncita Gonzales (Tom Po Qui) (Tewa, San Juan Pueblo) in 1914, at the onset of the First World War. The date of the painting, the vibrancy of Henri's palette, and the sitter's indigenous Pueblo identity are key to unpacking the significance of the work.

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What role does realism play in the Ashcan School? How is it uniquely American? What does it mean to create a uniquely American style?

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Pick a painting by 2 different Ashcan School artists and compare and contrast them. What do the similarities and differences tell us about the Ashcan School as a group/movement?

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What influence did journalism have on the work of the Ashcan School? Support your answer with artistic examples.

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How was the Stieglitz Circle influenced by Precisionism? Support your answer with artistic examples.

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How does the Stieglitz Circle differ from the Ashcan School? How did they aim to also create a uniquely American style? Which feels more successful to you, and why?

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What similarities do you see in the photographic versus non-photographic works of the Stieglitz Circle? What differences? Choose a specific piece for each.

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How does government sponsorship affect artistic expression? Can you have freedom of expression while working for a public patron? Why or why not?

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Why do you think Dorothea Lange and Walker Evan's photos are so iconic? Why did they have such an enduring and lasting affect? What are the similarities and differences between them? Do you prefer one over the other?

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Do you agree with the argument established in the Harrison and Wood reading? Why or why not?