A NEW AGE

Artists in the early-to-mid 20th century responded in two distinct ways to the rapid industrialization and tumultuous changes in the world around them.

- Sarah Gianelli

Whitney Museum of Art, Space Motive, a New Jersey Valley, 1913-1914. Oil on linen, 30% x 40% in., by Oscar Bluemner, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Mrs. Muriel D. Palitz 78.2.

Some turned to realism. Others took to abstraction. Work created by artists in both camps is categorized as modernist, one reason that the genre is so difficult to define. There is no aesthetic cohesiveness and its beginnings, and more so its end, is nebulous at best—troubling to a culture that likes to dice up history into easily digestible, linear bites.

Vose Galleries, Blue Runs Through It, 2004. Oil on canvas, 26 x 30 in. 28% x 32% in. (framed), signed lower center, by Wolf Kahn (1927-2020).

What we can say is that American modernism was a reflection of American life in the 20th century, which is why the artwork that defines the movement is as diverse as the artists’ experiences who created it.

Mattatuck Museum, Yellow Store Front, 1950s. Oil on Masonite, by James Daugherty (18891974). Gift of the Friends of James Daugherty Foundation, 2016; 2016.9.8.

Jacob Lawrence expressed the spirit of contemporary life during the Harlem Renaissance. Thomas Hart Benton painted Midwestern scenes of farms and factories; while Edward Hopper was capturing the anxiety and isolation of post-war America in easily-relatable realism.

Palette Contemporary Art and Craft, Color Rectangles, 1995. Silkscreen print, ed. of 80, 29% 10 x 22% 10 in. (framed), by Sol Lewitt (1928-2007).