Classic Landscape 1931
To understand this painting and much of Sheeler's other work one must first understand the style in which Sheeler used simply put "Precisionism" is a "style of early twentieth century painting in which depicted scenes -- many of industrial architecture -- or objects. Precisionists typically depicted mechanical and industrial subject matter, such as smokestacks, steel foundries, or grain elevators. These subjects were usually reduced or simplified to geometric forms and rendered in bright and clear light, by a combination of abstraction and realism. In a work such as River Rouge Plant, Sheeler's commercial photography proved a valuable source of imagery. Pre-eminent among artists painting in this style were Charles Demuth (American, 1883-1935) and Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)."
"The ungainly name "Precisionism" was coined by the painter-photographer Charles Sheeler, mainly to denote what he himself did. It indicated both style and subject. In fact, the subject was the style: exact, hard, flat, big, industrial, and full of exchanges with photography. Photography fed into painting and vice versa. No expressive strokes of paint. Anything live or organic, like trees or people, was kept out. There was no such thing as a Precisionist pussycat. Sheeler's work records the displacement of the Natural Sublime by the Industrial Sublime, but his real subject was the Managerial Sublime, a thoroughly American notion. And though Precisionism broadened into an American movement in the late twenties and early thirties, Sheeler's work defined its essential scope and meaning.
Sheeler’s interest in the industrial objects sprang from a strongly rooted feeling for dynamic architectural forms. In many of his works earlier drawings including “Stacks” “Conveyors” and “Ballet Mecanique” the immense intricacies of structure have been reduced to the absolute essentials. The same preoccupation is more broadly seen in the oil paintings “American Landscape” and “Classic Landscape.”
Neither of the oil paintings is large but in fact breadth is prominent in both; like light it has an almost tangible element. We know upon consideration that nature was never quite like that, so luminous, so formally beautiful, so rich in design, yet nothing seems to have been altered to make then what they are. In a strict sense Sheeler’s “Classic Landscape” had no backgrounds; every passage has been fluently coordinated with the others. Their planes recede and flow, achieve clarity and are quite simply translated into other planes; this is plastic form in a fresh and highly individual sense. As compared to Cezanne’s planes, which often in recession are not defined but closely interwoven, Sheeler’s planes in each painting are kept distinct, crystalline, defined by a characteristic use of exquisite line, and remaining peculiarly resilient. “Classic Landscape” is the more abstract of the two, but there is equal flow and recession throughout the closer detail of “American Landscape” There is a transcending of realism present in the painting.
Sheeler has accepted industrialism and renders what he sees as its essential forms. These are pristine, as if the exhilaration of fresh certainties has gone into them, and they have the classic purity of form, the classic serenity. The title “Classic Landscape” was most probably chosen to suggest that the painting itself is classic, the tracks, the standpipes, chimneys, the single building all have outlines, which may be compared with elements in Greek classic architecture.
Abstraction is always present in Sheeler’s work to enhance design, and one surmises – for sheer pleasure.
It is in Sheeler’s search for American form, that he creates such simplicity in his depiction of the Ford Factory in Detroit.
(American Landscape 1930)
Definition of Precisionism courtesy of http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/precisionism.html General text and Images provided by http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/sheeler.html Further indepth anaylasis thanks to: Rourke Constance. Charles Sheeler; Artist in the American Tradition. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1938. (147,148,153,166) |