American Art

NARRATOR:
Artist Grant Wood discovered the house in this painting by accident. Judith Barter, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator, American Arts, tells the story.

JUDITH BARTER:
Well, he was riding around in the country one day, and he found this wonderful Gothic Revival house. And it is a wonderful house—I’d buy it in a heartbeat. And he said he wanted to paint the perfect couple that would live in a house like that. And so he engaged his dentist and his sister to pose for this picture.

NARRATOR:
As the artist said:

ACTOR (GRANT WOOD):
I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house.

JUDITH BARTER:
Grant Wood never said whether this was a husband and wife or a father and daughter. She’s wearing her apron, and on the left side of the painting are her flowerpots and the domestic chores. He is on the right, with his pitchfork, probably headed to the barn, which is also on the right side of the picture. Over his bib overalls, which mark him as a farmer, he wears a dress shirt and probably his only suit jacket, dressing up for this picture. And she wears her best apron and the family cameo.

Ironically, in 1930, this neat, tidy little farm couple was already a dying breed. In 1920, this country was predominantly urban, and no longer rural. And particularly in the early 1930s, at the depth of the Depression, young people were leaving the farms. This couple would have been sort of left behind in the dust.

NARRATOR:
This work reads both like a satire of the American dream…and a celebration of a way of life that was quickly disappearing.

JUDITH BARTER:
People in Chicago loved this picture because it was something so foreign to them. It was certainly an American scene, but it wasn’t something that people lived in big cities could relate to very well. And they found it rather exotic and fun, and so it was quite popular.

Number 3-7-6. American Gothic, by American artist Grant Wood. Painted in 1930. Oil on Beaver Board. About 2 feet 7 inches high by 2 feet 2 inches wide.

A woman and a man stand side by side in front of a white wooden house. The two people are shown from the waist up, and their figures almost fill the canvas. They are both facing forwards with their bodies; but the woman, at left, turns her head slightly towards the right side of the canvas, while the man looks directly out at us.

The woman is perhaps in her thirties or forties, though it’s hard to pinpoint her age. She has straight fair hair parted in the center and pulled back smoothly over her ears. One lock, on the left, has escaped and hangs loose. She has a long, oval face and blue eyes under fine brows that seem to be pulled together into a slight frown. This is accentuated by the puckered lines at the corners of her mouth. She is dressed in a black dress with a white collar, and a coral and white cameo brooch at the neck. Over her dress she wears a brown sleeveless apron, with a pattern of white dots and circles, and with white zigzag braid trim round the neckline and armholes.

The man, to the right, is taller and looks older. He, too, has a very long face, with a high bald domed forehead, brown eyes under bushy dark brows, round spectacles, and a thin, unsmiling mouth.

He wears denim bib overalls over a white collarless shirt with green vertical stripes, neatly buttoned to the neck and fastened with a stud. Over this outfit he wears a black jacket. In his right hand he holds a pitchfork, its three prongs pointing upwards in the center of the canvas.

In the background, centrally placed between their two heads, the roof of the house rises to a point. Beneath this peaked roof is an arched window with a pointed top, like in a medieval – or gothic – church. The window is hung with a patterned lace curtain, which echoes the patterns on the woman’s apron.

The house itself is made of vertical wide wooden boards alternating with narrow wooden strips, creating a striped effect. Again, there is a strong sense of pattern in the way the artist repeats forms: the vertical stripes echo the stripes of the man’s shirt, and the three upright prongs of the pitchfork. The woodwork of the house has been painted white; and there is a brown tiled roof extending over the porch at the front of the house, and off to the side at left. At the far left, on the porch, behind the woman’s shoulder, are a few potted plants. At the right, behind the man’s shoulder, is a red wooden shed, again composed of vertical boards.

At the top of the canvas, behind the buildings, are rounded green tree tops, with light blue sky above.

To hear an interpretive commentary on this work, press 2-6-3.

NARRATOR:
Judith Barter, Field ¬McCormick Chair & Curator, American Arts.

JUDITH BARTER:
‘Nighthawks’ is a really fascinating painting. It’s such an American painting. The Americanness is in many of the details: The ‘Phillies Cigar’ ad above the diner. The salt shakers, the heavy-duty porcelain mugs. The napkin holders. The big coffee urns in the back. The soda jerk, with his cap on. It’s what America was like and what America liked in the ’30s and ’40s.

NARRATOR:
But look closer. There’s something unrealistic—and off-putting—about Edward Hopper’s scene.

JUDITH BARTER:
It looks real, but it’s not. There’s no sense of real depth. When you try to go deep into this picture, it pushes you back to the surface. He uses acid greens against bright yellows and oranges—the red dress of the woman with her orange hair. These set your teeth on edge, but they do work together; he was a brilliant colorist.] And if you look at the diner, there’s no way in or out except through that orange door that ostensibly goes to the kitchen. So it’s sort of a hermetically-sealed environment with these four people in this diner at night.

NARRATOR:
And…no one is talking. To many, ‘Nighthawks’ evokes a sense of loneliness. But Hopper himself disagreed with this interpretation. In an interview, he said.

[EDWARD HOPPER ARCHIVAL AUDIO]:
I think those are the words of critics. It may be true, it may not be true. It’s how the viewer looks on the pictures. What he sees in them.

JUDITH BARTER:
What I see in Hopper is a sense of everyman. That any of us could be sitting in this diner. it’s really the idea of we are individuals, but we have a collective consciousness as well. I think people just relate to the everydayness of it. They can put themselves in these pictures.

Number 3-7-5. Nighthawks, by American artist Edward Hopper. Painted in 1942. Oil on canvas. About 2 feet 9 inches high by 5 feet wide.

In this night scene, the viewer is placed outside the window of a lighted diner, looking in. Inside the diner, three customers sit at the counter, together with a waiter.

The diner is set on a corner. It forms a long wedge shape from the right edge of the canvas to about two thirds of the way across to the left. An area of empty sidewalk is visible running along the bottom of the canvas, below the long window. A painted advertisement above the window reads ‘Phillies’ in capital letters, with a picture of a cigar to the left.

The diner’s window extends almost from floor to ceiling, with an acid green ledge running along the bottom; and it continues on the other side as the diner curves round the corner: so not only is everything inside the diner plainly visible, but the viewer can look right through the window to the empty street on the other side, with its darkened shop fronts. This second street runs at right angles to the first, from left to right across the canvas.

But it’s the scene inside the diner that draws the eye. While the light outside on the street has the dim bluish tinge of street lighting, the diner itself is bright with a yellowish fluorescent light. A triangular-shaped wooden counter occupies most of the interior space and is set with occasional salt shakers and metal napkin dispensers. Four figures are spaced out across the scene.

From left to right, the first figure is a man, sitting with his back towards us, on a bar stool at the corner of the counter. He wears a blue suit and a fedora-style hat, and is leaning with his elbows on the counter. The next two figures are leaning their elbows on the opposite side of the counter, facing us: on the left, a man, similarly dressed in blue suit and fedora; and, on the right, a woman with long vivid red hair and a short sleeved red dress. The man and woman are sitting very close together, almost touching, but they don’t look at each other. The man is holding a cigarette in his left hand, and the woman is looking at something she holds in her right hand. Each of the three customers has a white coffee mug at his or her elbow. Furthest to the right, behind the counter, is the fourth figure: a waiter in a white jacket and cap, who leans over and busies himself, just glancing up towards the couple on the far side. Behind him, on the opposite side of the counter, are two large shiny coffee urns. To the far right is an orange doorway apparently leading to a backroom.

To hear an interpretive commentary on this work, press 9-7-3.

ARCHIBALD MOTLEY: I think every picture should tell a story and if a picture doesn’t tell a story then it’s not a picture.

NARRATOR: ‘Nightlife’ by Archibald Motley, depicts the vibrant scene of a jazz nightclub in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During the 1930s and 40s, this area was home to 90 per cent of the city’s African-American population, who, like Motley’s family, moved to Chicago from southern states in search of economic opportunity and freedom from racism. Here they faced discriminatory housing policies and a climate of violence. But in Nightlife, Motley depicts the pleasure and sense of community that many people found in the city’s urban nightlife. Field-McCormick Chair and curator of American Art, Judith Barter.

JUDY BARTER: He was well known for his palette. You can see the hot pinks that give this painting a lot of energy and strong diagonals that define the motion of the figures.

NARRATOR: The strong angular lines enliven the painting, making the figures move and dance across it’s surface. The man to the left gestures to a woman at the bar, maybe he’s asking her for a dance? His arm carries our eyes toward the centre of the dance floor, where a couple is frozen in mid-step. The diagonal of their bodies draws us deeper into the crowd of expressive faces and personalities.

Motley complicated stereotypes about African-Americans by painting compelling and diverse groups of people in his works. In an interview in his later years he said…

ARCHIBALD MOTLEY: You notice in all of my paintings where there’s a group of people, that they’re all a different colour — they’re not all black, they’re not all brown. And I try to give each one of them character, you know as individuals.

NARRATOR: The hot pink hue that covers the walls and the floor, is an impression of the interior lighting you might find in a the artificially lit bars of the day. The portrayal of light in an interior scene is a reaction to other works Motley saw at this time.

JUDY BARTER: This picture was painted in 1943. In the next gallery you’ll see Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ which is also a study of interior space and of lighting. Motley saw Hopper’s work, including ‘Nighthawks’, when it was on view here at the Art Institute here in 1942 and chose to do his own rendition of an interior space and nighttime lighting. (0’29”)

Raziel: Yo, Michael, how was your week?

Michael: What’s up, Raziel [ph?]? This week was crazy. I went to this party over the weekend. It kind of looked like this painting over here.

Raziel: What’s this painting called anyway?

Michael: I think it’s called "Nightlife" by Archibald Motley.

Raziel: You can’t even get into a club like that, dude.

Michael: You know what? You right. You right.

Raziel: Yo, you’re a DJ, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Raziel: Do you know what the jazz scene was like in Chicago?

Michael: Chicago’s individual jazz sound really came out in the ’40s, around the end of the Great Migration. Motley’s painting is set in Brownsville. You’re from there, right?

Raziel: Yeah. My aunt told me she remembers how the Chicago black population stretched from 22nd to 63rd, between State Street and Cottage Grove. The pulsing energy of Brownsville was at the crowded corners of 35th and State and 47th Street, South Parkway Boulevard. At those intersections people came to experience the bustling black metropolis and music was a big part of that.

Michael: I think that’s true. Music has probably affect a lot of things, including the general community feeling. Chicago has always had a unique version of many music genres. It still does today. Music can benefit a lot of people and their environments, especially with a good DJ, like Boy Genius, for example, who’s here in Chicago. I think he’s a perfect example of someone who brings groups of people together through music.

Boy Genius: Well, I was born in ‘89 and I caught a- a good wind of the ’80s through my brother. And growing up, you know, not consuming much of what’s happening to me in the ’90s, when I’m growing up, but like by the time I’m 10, I had already consumed all of the ’80s, even though I was living in the ’90s. But I came to when I realized oh okay, I can think for myself and I like my own music and I like things that, you know, I can detach myself from what my brother showed me or my family showed me or all of my other influences and just grow into my own, I was like 11, 12. Chicago makes itself special when we figure out why we’re on the map, like we’re on the map for some of the best musicians, some of the best creative art. Chicago just has to be itself. Once it grows and realizes that we are the best, that’s what it takes.

Raziel: Yo, that was a great interview.

Michael: Yeah, I think he brings up a lot of good points. Whether it was Chicago back then or Chicago now, there’s always going to be a unique music scene in the city.

Raziel: All this Chicago talk got me thinking about Harold’s Chicken. Let’s go get some.

Michael: All right, I’m down.

Number 3-7-4. Nightlife, by the American artist Archibald Motley, Junior. Painted in 1943. Oil on canvas. About 3 feet high by 4 feet wide.

This is a highly energetic painting of dancers in a nightclub, pulsing with life and movement. The scene is given a heightened, unnatural atmosphere by the intense, purplish-pink light that floods the room.

The people gathered in the club appear to be mainly African Americans, but their skin tones vary from dark brown to pink and copper colored. Many of the women have long, flowing, black hair; others have their hair concealed under small, fashionable 1940s-style hats. They wear close-fitting, knee-length dresses in vibrant colors – pinks, purples and emerald greens – while most of the men are dressed in suits and colorful ties.

In the lower right corner of the painting, in the foreground, a couple sits drinking cocktails at a round table. The man, at the far right, has his back cut off by the right edge of the canvas. He is shown with his left profile towards us, and wears a blue suit, red tie, and bowler hat, and holds a cigar in his left hand. The woman, facing him across the table, wears a pink, sleeveless dress and tall, turquoise pillbox hat.

Moving now diagonally across to the upper left corner of the picture is a bar area. The bar’s counter forms a strong diagonal line, leading the eye toward the center of the painting. Lining the wall behind the counter are three long shelves crowded with colorful bottles. A small clock over the bar shows that it is nearly 1am.

Two barmen work behind the bar: the one on the left is wiping the surface of the counter; the one on the right is taking down a bottle from the top shelf.

Between these two areas – the table at bottom right and the bar at upper left – there is a crowd of bodies that sweeps from bottom left to upper right.

Starting in the foreground at bottom left, a man with his back to us twists his body to make a sweeping gesture with his right arm, holding a cigarette. Slightly to the right, and behind him, a woman perched on one of the high bar stools along the counter turns to watch him over her left shoulder. Moving into the center of the painting, a couple dances together: the woman has her back to us, with her face turned in left profile, and her long black hair flowing down over her peach-colored dress. The man is facing her, with his left hand resting on her back, and his right hand holding her left hand out to the side.

To the right of the couple, and slightly behind, one man, sitting at a table by himself, appears to be asleep, his cheek resting on his hand, his cigarette still between his lips, its smoke rising in front of his face.

Further to the right, at the right edge of the canvas, and about halfway up, is a jukebox – the cause of all this vigorous movement. It has a pink head set on top of it – possibly a peanut dispenser.

Moving now into the distance at the upper right of the canvas, there is a mass of flying limbs as dancers sway and twist. Waiters, in plain tunics or t-shirts, wind their way between them, trays of drinks held aloft.

The whole scene is set against a vibrant pink background; and the purplish-pink light reflects off all surfaces, turning tablecloths, stockings, and the waiters’ tunics various shades of mauve.

To hear an interpretive commentary on this work, press 4-2-3.

Transcript coming soon.

NARRATOR: This painting, called the Herring Net is by Winslow Homer, Homer painted it in 1885. Two anonymous fishermen pull a net filled with herring into their boat. The man facing us bends over his work head down, the other man turns his back toward us and hangs over the edge of the boat to counterbalance the weight of the fish. There is a grandeur about them, they appear as heroic representatives of humanity, alone and struggling with the forces of nature. This is not a depiction of particular figures or of mundane life lived by the sea but a dramatic painting of the highest order. In this gallery are some of Homer’s earlier paintings showing croquet, mountain climbing and other leisure activities that were popular in the period just after the Civil War. But Homer’s later work is very different, in 1880 however, he spent some time in the fishing village of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The next year he observed fishermen and their families in Cullercoats, England on the North Sea. And in 1883, he moved from New York to Prouts Neck on the coast of Maine where he lived the rest of his life. No doubt his daily contact with the hardened men and women of the sea impressed him deeply, they inspired pictures of a scale and dramatic intensity far different than anything he had painted before. This painting was once in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Ryerson. Mr. Ryerson was a generous supporter of the Art Institute and a donor to our library which is named in his honor. Like almost every American museum, the Art Institute’s collection is the result of generous donations from private individuals. You will find the Ryerson name on other works of art on view in our galleries. Other names to look for include the Palmers of Palmer House fame, Frederic Clay and Helen Birch Bartlett who gave the Art Institute numerous important paintings from Seurat’s Grande Jatte to Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and of course, Lucy Maud Buckingham who gave the museum so much of its important Asian art.