Machine Age Modernism

November 17, 2017 – May 29, 2018
East Building, Pod 1 Ground Level, Gallery 106A

Stuart Davis, *Barber Shop Chord*, 1931, lithograph in black on wove paper, Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen, 2005.99.10

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Mammoth cranes, soaring skyscrapers, bulky industrial tanks — the “stupendous magnitude of the new American environment,” as artist Louis Lozowick declared, held a powerful allure for artists in the United States during the peak of the machine age, between World Wars I and II. The works on view here testify to that allure. They also reveal the variety of methods that artists used in evoking a machine age modernism: angling their sights up or down along towering buildings, streamlining and abstracting forms, exposing the underlying geometry of architecture and machinery, treating dark shadows as solids, and focusing on interlocking parts, such as the gears in Ralph Steiner's Portrait of Louis Lozowick or the components in Paul Landacre’s The Press.

The emphasis on mechanical forms was so great that Stuart Davis's Torso and Head of Two Figures more closely resembles a design for a machine than a drawing of a human body.

Not all artists expressed a reverence for the machine and industry. Although Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz both used a machine — a camera — to create their art, Strand in his 1922 article “Photography and the New God” warned that we must humanize “God the machine . . . lest it in turn dehumanize us.”

About this Series
American Art, 1900–1950: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

During a period fueled by enormous urban growth and technological changes, riven by world wars, and rocked by new modes of thought, American artists explored many diverse means to express their changing experience and environment. Prints, drawings, and photographs were vital media through which artists pursued radical experiments in form, figuration, and abstraction. Reevaluating European traditions, they developed new ways of seeing the modern world around them.

Complementing the American modernist paintings and sculptures in the adjacent galleries, these rotating installations feature prints, drawings, and photographs by American artists working in the first half of the 20th century. By looking at pairs or groups of artists, or at broader themes such as abstract portraiture or the Machine Age, the installations spark conversations between established and lesser-known figures in American modernism and highlight the era’s full range and complexity.

From close to the ground, we look sharply up at three skyscrapers that nearly meet in the empty sky in this black and white photograph. The building in front of us has more than twenty-five stories, each of which is lined with windows. The building to our left is deep in shadow as it zooms steeply into space. Sun warms the top half of the building to our right. Only a sliver of sky is visible between the left and center building, and where the three meet in the deep distance.

Machine Age Modernism

Berenice Abbott, Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place, 1936, gelatin silver print, The Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Fund for Photography, 2000.148.1

Machine Age Modernism

Stuart Davis, Barber Shop Chord, 1931, lithograph in black on wove paper, Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen, 2005.99.10

Machine Age Modernism

Ralph Steiner, Portrait of Louis Lozowick, 1929, gelatin silver print, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2017.97.1

Machine Age Modernism

Howard Cook, Engine Room, 1930, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.1309

Machine Age Modernism

Ilse Bing, Wall Street "Abyss," New York, 1936, gelatin silver print, Gift of Ilse Bing Wolff, 2001.147.68

Machine Age Modernism

Arshile Gorky, Study for Mural for the Marine Transportation Building, New York World's Fair, 1939, opaque watercolor over graphite on paper mounted to board, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1971.59.1

Machine Age Modernism

Alfred Stieglitz, From My Window at An American Place, North, 1931, gelatin silver print, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.1207

Machine Age Modernism

Paul Landacre, The Press, 1934, wood engraving, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.184

Machine Age Modernism

Alma Lavenson, Tanks, Standard Oil Company, 1931, gelatin silver print, The Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Fund for Photography, 1999.131.1

Machine Age Modernism

Louis Lozowick, Untitled (Machine Ornament), c. 1923, pen and black ink on wove paper, Ruth and Jacob Kainen Memorial Acquisition Fund, 2014.89.1

Machine Age Modernism

Louis Lozowick, New York, 1923, lithograph in black on wove paper, Gift of Jacob Kainen, 2002.98.145

Machine Age Modernism

Paul Strand, The Docks, New York, 1922, gelatin silver print, Southwestern Bell Corporation Paul Strand Collection, 1991.216.7

Machine Age Modernism

Man Ray, Decanter, published 1926, color pochoir on wove paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.64.6

Machine Age Modernism

David Smith, Untitled, c. 1932-1935, gelatin silver print, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 1998.138.1

Machine Age Modernism

Louis Lozowick, Crane, 1929, lithograph in black on wove paper, Ruth and Jacob Kainen Collection, 1989.80.13

Machine Age Modernism

Man Ray, Concrete Mixer, published 1926, color pochoir on wove paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.64.9

Machine Age Modernism

Alfred Stieglitz, From My Window at An American Place, North, 1931, gelatin silver print, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.1208

Machine Age Modernism

Charles Sheeler, George C. Miller, Delmonico Building, 1926, lithograph in black, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.262