social change.notebook

1

November 25, 2008

Nov 24­2:06 PM

Art concerned with social

commentary

Nov 24­2:08 PM

These visual images provide a vivid, authentic picture of American history and culture. They also serve as a springboard for confronting issues that continue to face the world today, especially as they relate to Economics , War and Race & Ethnicity

Nov 24­2:12 PM

Land of plenty Lucienne Bloch

Nov 24­2:17 PM

Bloch created her woodcut, Land of Plenty, the same year she joined the Federal Art Project (FAP).

A comment on the fate of poor farmers, the scene shows a poor, rural family of indeterminate race physically separated from the new electrical innovations and towering corn stalks by a barbed wire fence.

The problem during the Depression was not a lack of food, but a lack of money – city dwellers could not afford to buy food from the farmers, forcing the farmers out of business despite their booming crops.

Nov 24­2:25 PM

Tomato Pickers

by Harry Brodsky

Nov 24­2:26 PM

Brodsky’s inspiration for Tomato Pickers came to him during a long drive in Pennsylvania – the vehicle directly in front of him was a truck crowded with migrant workers. He was moved to create this image of archetypical poor workers, seeking whatever work they could find. What about the composition of this image makes it so dramatic?

social change.notebook

2

November 25, 2008

Nov 24­2:27 PM

Miner at Dougherty’s Mine, Near Falls Creek, Pennsylvania

by Jack Delano

Nov 24­2:28 PM

The Agricultural Department hired Jack Delano as a photographer for the Farm Securities Administration (FSA) and this photograph focuses on the working conditions of the coal miner. Between 1880 and 1930 the coal industry expanded as the production of steel required coal to fuel the furnaces. In the 1930s mining sites could be found throughout the eastern United States and mechanization began to be implemented within coal mines but the conditions were still dirty and the risk of injury or death due to explosions or a shaft collapsing was still high. Workers were typically immigrants and were required to live in company­built, efficiency towns called “patches.” What does this photograph tell you about the quality of life of a coal miner in the 1930s in the USA?

Nov 24­2:29 PM

West Texas

by Meritt Mauzey

Nov 24­2:30 PM

This deserted and rapidly decaying West Texas gas station sits in isolation in an arid landscape. Perhaps Mauzey saw the war in Europe as casting a shadow on the West Texas economy. Do you agree with this conclusion?

Nov 24­2:32 PM

A Manhattan Landscape with Figures

by Ida Ableman

Nov 24­2:32 PM

Like much of Abelman’s work, this lithograph criticizes the effects that technology and business can have on nature and human life. A group of people, nervously glancing around at their surroundings, huddle together under a streetlight; they are bordered on the top by the elevated railway, and the back of the image is dominated by imposing buildings. The flowers and apples the two women in the front sell have been taken out of their natural context and are instead being used commercially. The intricate floral design adorning the streetlight further demonstrates the assimilation of natural life into an unfeeling technology.

social change.notebook

3

November 25, 2008

Nov 24­2:37 PM

Jobless Man

by Francis Chapin

Nov 24­2:37 PM

Chapin, an Ohio native, was trained at the Art Institute of Chicago where he became an instructor in lithography. He spent most of his life in Chicago. His skills as a printmaker are evident in this depiction of an unemployed man killing time over a cup of coffee at a lunch counter, a scene he no doubt witnessed often in Chicago.What do you imagine this man is thinking about?

Nov 24­2:38 PM

Spring

by Phillip Evergood

Nov 24­2:39 PM

From a privileged background, Evergood’s education and lifestyle were paid for by his wealthy family. He was deeply moved by his first exposure to New York City’s poor. During a nighttime walk in the winter, he encountered a group of homeless men, huddled around fires in make­shift shelters. He was so affected by these men and their plight that he remained with them all night, talking with them and sketching them. Spring eventually grew out of these drawings and is a condemnation of the city’s widespread poverty. The wheelless car symbolizes the near impossibility of social or economic mobility for these men, but Evergood also placed the delicate white flower in the bottom left corner to suggest hope.

Nov 24­2:40 PM

The Unemployed

by Raphael Soyer

Nov 24­2:42 PM

The scope of the unemployment problem during the Great Depression is poignantly portrayed in this 1931 painting. Weary men stand in line and scan the newspaper for jobs in what appears to be an industrial area of a large city. Many others are stretched out on I­beams most likely made at the factory, trying to catch some rest while still hoping to be available for potential employment. The dramatic diagonals of the beam lead the viewer back into the emptiness of industrial buildings that show no sign of economic activity. 25% unemployment

social change.notebook

4

November 25, 2008

Nov 24­2:44 PM

Supper

by Joseph Hirsch

Nov 24­2:44 PM

At the same time that President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his War on Poverty, Hirsch was painting Supper, his own condemnation of the nation’s inability to care for its elderly poor. Twelve men in tattered clothing eat together around a formal table, a probable allusion to the Last Supper. Their contentedness at having a hot meal and company to share it with is evident, and serves as the basis for Hirsch’s dismay. If such a seemingly small act can so greatly improve lives, Hirsch implies, why does it remain elusive except around the holidays?

Nov 24­2:45 PM

Obeisance to Poverty

by Walter Quirt

Nov 24­2:46 PM

Quirt, a member of the American Artists’ Congress, began this surrealist painting in the year the Congress first met. Quirt is criticizing the tendency of the public to romantically “elevate” and praise the poverty­stricken mothers who manage to keep their families together. It would be harder, but ultimately more helpful, if the public and leaders instead fought to solve the problems at the root of poverty. The mother and child at the center of the image represent both poverty and the Christian Madonna and child, while the figures on the left represent various religious leaders.

Nov 24­2:47 PM

Herrin Massacre

by Paul Cadmus

Nov 24­2:48 PM

Cadmus was one of sixteen artists commissioned by Life magazine to illustrate significant moments in American history after 1915. Cadmus chose to depict the tragic events of a labor contract dispute which occurred in the mining town of Herrin, Illinois in 1925. The bloody riot that ensued left twenty­six dead strikebreakers, slain by labor union members. Cadmus situated the action in a town cemetery, and included the symbolic Christian image of the sacrificial lamb on a headstone, drenched in blood.However, Cadmus’s tempera painting was never published by Life, most likely because the magazine did not wish to offend organized labor just as the nation was gearing up for war production.

social change.notebook

5

November 25, 2008

Nov 25­12:04 PM

3rd of MayFrancisco Goya

The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources in high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era.

Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808

Nov 25­12:27 PM

Nov 25­12:17 PM

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, showing the Nazi German bombing of Guernica , Spain, by twenty­eight bombers, on April 26 , 1937 during the Spanish Civil War . The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured.The Spanish rulers commissioned Pablo Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris ). The Guernica bombing inspired Picasso. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering war inflicts upon individuals.

Nov 25­12:20 PM

Liberty Leading the People (French : La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X . A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other

Nov 25­12:21 PM

How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. The artist could be viewed through the glass of the gallery’s window. His face was covered in honey and gold leaf, an iron slab was attached to his boot. In his arms he cradled a dead hare, into whose ear he mumbled muffled noises as well as explanations of the drawings that lined the walls. Such materials and actions had specific symbolic value for Beuys. For example, honey was the product of bees who, for Beuys (following Rudolf Steiner), represented as ideal society of warmth and brotherhood. Gold had its importance within alchemical enquiry, and iron, the metal of Mars, stood for a masculine principle of strength and connection to the earth. A photograph from the performance, in which Beuys is sitting with the hare, has been described "by some critics as a new Mona Lisa of the 20th century," though Beuys did not agree with that.

Nov 25­12:41 PM

CONVERSATIONS WITH A COYOTE (HOW TO RECOGNIZE A POSTMODERN ANIMAL WHEN YOU SEE ONE) ­­ Joseph Beuys, Carlos Castaneda, Sam Keen & Jean­Francois Lyotard

social change.notebook

6

November 25, 2008

Nov 25­12:42 PM

Other canvases depict men being sodomized with a broken stick, suffering a rain of urine or cowering before green attack dogs that are combination wolf, bull and stegosaurus.

Nov 25­12:55 PM

• List 10 social problems•• pick 3 of these and create 5 thumbnails •• chose the best thumbnails and create 3 color sketches

When you return we can chose one of the three sketches and complete a work.

All resource material is due then too.

20pts of you project grade ( I will consider quality of the sketches)