A bit more Dorothea Lange

Richmond, California/It Was Never Like This Back Home, Dorothea Lange, about 1943
• What can you say about the woman in this picture?
• Where was Lange standing when she took this photograph?
• How does the low vantage point affect your impression of this woman?
• How would you describe the expression on her face?
• How would you describe this woman's life? What do you see in the picture that gives you clues about it?
• Why do you think she is wearing a dressy fur coat in the middle of a sunny day?
• How would you explain the title of this picture, It Was Never Like This Back Home?
• Why do you think that women were suddenly welcomed into the work force in the 1940s?

Background Information - Lange and her friend of many years, photographer Ansel Adams, were hired by Fortune magazine to document a twenty-four-hour cycle in the life of Richmond, California's Kaiser shipyard. The woman pictured here was one of the many newcomers to this town in the 1940s. Richmond saw astonishingly rapid growth during World War II as Kaiser built 727 ships. By 1944, the shipyard employed almost 100,000 workers. Since it was active round the clock in order to build ships as rapidly as possible, many businesses in Richmond stayed open twenty-four hours a day to meet the needs of off-shift defense workers. This woman may well have worked a swing or night shift and was taking an opportunity to dress up in her jewelry and evening furs for a special outing during her free time in the middle of a sunny day. Seen from a low vantage point, she stands proudly in front of a café. During the war, thousands of women joined the work force for the first time, often earning the same wages paid to men; perhaps this circumstance, too, underlies her happy and confident gaze.

This casual portrait does not betray the racial tensions that troubled Richmond at the time the picture was made. The town was undergoing a sudden enormous increase in its population of African-American residents, many of whom had abandoned the southern United States and its sharecropping system. They received equal pay, but the unions blocked them, the supervisors resisted promoting them (a problem shared by female shipyard workers of all races), and the local white people—many of them Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s—did not understand them.

 

Dust Bowl Refugees Arrive in California, Dorothea Lange, 1936
• What can you say about the people in this picture?
• How can you tell that the people in this picture are moving rather than just taking a trip somewhere?
• Can you identify any of the things tied to the car?
• What kind of trip do you think this group has just had? Describe how one day of their journey might have gone.
• What do you think these people might have done after they arrived in California?
• Block out the parts of the photograph as indicated by the crop lines. Does it look any different to you? Does it change the mood or message of the picture?
• Do you think this is a good picture to illustrate the story of people fleeing the Dust Bowl? What other scenes might a newspaper have used to show the situation of Dust Bowl refugees?
• Why do you think that this image did not spark the same concern and outrage that Migrant Mother did among viewers?

Background Information - This photograph was published in the New York Times on July 5, 1936, with the caption "'A Family Unit in The Flight From Drought'/Dust Bowl Refugees Reach a 'Promised Land'—California." The orange crop marks and notes are directions to the printer that were made by New York Times staff. They indicate that the already tightly composed image should be printed as an even more tightly framed picture, focusing closely on the jalopy crammed with people and their worn belongings, including quilts, pans, a stove, a bag of rice, and luggage. Note that while people nowadays are accustomed to viewing Lange's work as "fine art," the newspaper staff felt free to crop Lange's image because it had been provided to them as a document, not a work of art. The travelers were among the thousands from the heartland of America who had seen their prospects as farmers blow away in the dust storms of the 1930s. One man from Oklahoma recalled his early childhood in the Dust Bowl: "For a three-year-old kid, you just go outside and play, dust blows and sand blows, and you don't know any different. One evening a black duster come in here from the north. We had kerosene lamps. And it got so dark you couldn't see with kerosene lamps." No longer able to sustain their farms, and lured by advertisements and rumors that promised a sunny agricultural paradise with jobs for all who were willing to work, families journeyed to California with as many of their possessions as they could pack inside or tie onto their car.

Go back to section 18A: remember how Lange had taken several pictures of the "Migrant Mother's" camp? Here are some of the other images from that series. Do you think any of them are as striking as the very famous "Migrant Mother"? Why or why not?

19-B James Karales, Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965, 1965

19-B James Karales, Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965, 1965
 

Study this photograph and think about the kind of mood it sets.
- Locate two flags. Why does the American flag play a prominent role in this march? These people were marching for equal voting rights for African Americans in the United States. As citizens of the United States, African Americans wanted the same rights and opportunities as other Americans.
- Imagine where the photographer placed himself in order to take this picture. He was slightly below the marchers, looking up at them.
- What is in the background behind the marchers? A light sky with dark clouds is above the marchers.
- How does this viewpoint emphasize the message and drama of the scene? Karales makes the marchers look larger by tilting the camera up and creates drama by silhouetting the figures against the sky.
- Discuss how this image might lose some of its impact if buildings and trees were included in the background.
- How does the photographer suggest that there are many people participating in this march?
The camera angle exaggerates the perspective, making the line look as if it stretches into a great distance; we can’t see the end of the line because it continues behind the hill.
- What do the outstretched legs and thrust-back shoulders of the three leading marchers suggest about their attitude? They seem young, determined, and strong.
- Pay attention to the legs of the leading marchers. Apparently they are marching together in unison.
- What do the clouds overhead suggest? There is the possibility of a storm. The clouds may also symbolize the oppression of racism, the ugliness of inequality, and/or the potential violence looming ahead of the marchers.
- Discuss why the publication of this photograph and others like it in magazines and newspapers helped the movement for civil rights in the United States.

Compare this photograph to Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" painting:
Themes: both center on themes of equality and freedom: the equality of all men (and women) in the United States, and the freedom to speak one's mind and participate in democracy.
Both images feature normal, everyday people exercising their rights as citizens.
Both images were published in magazines, intended for many people to see.
Both images were intended to stir patriotic sentiments and mobilize people for action.

19-A Norman Rockwell, Freedom of Speech, The Saturday Evening Post 1943, 1943

19-A Norman Rockwell, Freedom of Speech, The Saturday Evening Post 1943, 1943

Norman Rockwell was known for his paintings of domestic scenes, children, everyday life, Americana, the issue of racism, small towns. Regarding his work, he said,"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed."

- Study this painting carefully
- What are these people are doing? The standing man is speaking and others are looking and listening to him.
- Find the words TOWN and REPORT. They are located on blue paper near the lower edge.
Where might these people be? They are attending a community meeting. Because MONT is visible on the paper, it may be a town meeting in Vermont.
- Describe the expression on the speaker’s face. He seems very intent and serious. He looks up as if he is speaking to someone above him.
- Describe the textures and patterns of the standing man’s clothes and hands. Compare his hands and clothing with that of the other men. What do their hands and clothing suggest about their professions and financial status? The speaker wears a slightly rumpled, zippered, plaid shirt and frayed jacket. The other men wear smooth, white buttoned shirts, ties, and suit jackets. The speaker’s hands are darker and rougher than the lighter, smoother hand of the man on his right. The speaker is probably a manual laborer and the others, wealthier businessmen.
- In what ways does this scene seem real? The closely observed details and the composition with some faces only partially shown are almost like a photograph.
- Who is attending this meeting? We see young and old men and a woman in a black hat.
- Describe the reaction of the other people in this scene to the speaker. They are all listening respectfully to him.
- How did Rockwell emphasize the speaker? His light face contrasts with a plain black background. Light shines on his forehead and most of the people are looking at him.
- Where is the viewer of this scene? The viewer is seated two rows in front of the speaker, looking up at him.
- How does this viewpoint influence our understanding of how Rockwell felt about this man and what he was doing? We look up to this man, making him seem important.
- What inspired this painting? Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. Roosevelt appealed to four essential human freedoms.
- Explain why this scene shows an American freedom. Why did Americans believe there was a connection between this image and World War II? An ordinary working-class American citizen is able to voice his opinions without fear of censorship. Americans were fighting totalitarian dictatorships that did not allow this freedom of speech.

Compare this final version of the painting to an earlier draft, below. What key changes did Rockwell make to this earlier version of the painting to make the much stronger piece, above?

Other images:
Freedom from fear

Freedom of worship

Freedom from want

Visit the Norman Rockwell Museum's website! They've just added a neat exhibit of the photographs Rockwell staged and then used as reference in his paintings.
http://www.nrm.org/2009/10/opening-of-landmark-exhibition-exploring-a-new-body-of-rockwell-imagery-nov-7th/

18-B Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936

18-B Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936
- Look closely at this photograph noticing the details in the figures of the woman and the children.
- What do you first notice when you look at this photograph?
- Discuss why our attention is drawn to this part of the image. Light shines on the woman’s face, her right arm and hand lead toward her face, and the children turn toward her.
- Describe the woman’s clothing. The sleeve of her sweater is ragged and torn. She wears an open-neck, checked shirt under her sweater.

- What does the clothing suggest about the woman and children? They are poor.
- Discuss with students how Lange focuses our attention on just the woman and her children. What doesn’t she show?
- What is in the background? As Lange moved closer and closer to this scene, snapping photographs as she approached, she gradually cropped out the background—the tent that the woman was sitting in front of. In this close-up, the woman and her children fill the composition.
- Describe the expression on this woman’s face. How does she feel? What might she be thinking? She seems to stare out into space with a furrowed brow and down-turned mouth. She appears worried and tired. Perhaps she’s wondering what to do next or where they will find food.
- Speculate on why the children turned their heads away from the camera. Maybe they were shy, or maybe they were afraid of a strange woman with a camera and are seeking their mother’s comfort. Lange could also have posed them this way for greater effect.
- Why might Lange have decided to take such a close-up photograph? It brings us closer to the subject and makes it more personal.
- Why did the Resettlement Administration want to document the effects of the Great Depression in photographs rather than just words and statistics. Photographs can be powerful eyewitness accounts that allow people to quickly grasp the meaning and emotion of an event.
- This photograph was published in newspapers. How do you think Americans responded to it? They were outraged that this should happen in America; the federal government responded by shipping thousands of pounds of food to feed the migrants.

Go here for lots and lots of info about Dorothea Lange

White Angel Breadline, San Fransisco, Dorothea Lange, 1933

- What is going on in this picture?
• How would you describe the expression on the face of the man turned toward the viewer? What might he be thinking about?
• Would the meaning of this picture change if several of the men faced toward the camera, instead of just one? Explain your answer.
• Compare the dress and expression of the man who faces the camera with the appearance of the other men in the picture. Why has Lange singled him out?
• Where do you think Lange stood to take this picture?
• Can you find any patterns or repeating motifs? How do they contribute to the photograph's meaning?
• Do you think a person needs to have personally experienced unemployment and hunger to understand this photograph?
• Who should see this photograph? Does the publication of a photo like this help the people pictured in it? 

Background Information - A crowd of men stands waiting, tightly packed together. Most of them have their backs to the camera, but one man in the foreground, with the brim of his hat covering his eyes, is turned toward the viewer. Leaning on a wooden rail, he tensely clasps his hands and balances an empty cup between his arms on top of the fence. All of the men pictured here were standing in a breadline organized during the Depression by a wealthy San Franciscan known as the "White Angel."

Lange's friends urged her to stay away from places like this, where unemployed and desperately poor people gathered. Nonetheless, one day in 1933 she ventured out from her portrait studio and created this image of the misery and passivity endured by the unemployed who wait for food as well as for a chance to get a job. She later described the experience, which proved to be a turning point in her understanding of what she could accomplish as a photographer: "That's the first day I ever made a photograph actually on the street. I put it on the wall of my studio and customers, people whom I was making portraits of, would come in and glance at them. And the only comment I ever got was, 'What are you going to do with this kind of thing?' I didn't know. But I knew that picture was on my wall, and I knew that it was worth doing." She later said that, soon after photographing White Angel Bread Line, "I'd begun to get a much firmer grip on the things I really wanted to do in my work."  

Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco, Dorothea Lange, April 1942
• What is happening in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that?
• How would you describe the girl's expression? What do you think she might be feeling?
• Why do you think Lange chose to take a picture of a Japanese-American child reciting the "Pledge of Allegiance"?
• Why do you suppose Lange cropped the picture so that the Japanese-American girl is placed in the center?
• Does this photograph communicate a message or messages beyond the simple fact of a child's recitation of the "Pledge of Allegiance"? What message do you get from it?
• Do you recite or have you recited the "Pledge of Allegiance"? What does it mean to you? What do you think it meant to the girl in this photo?

Background Information - As far as Lange was concerned, her assignment from the United States government's War Relocation Authority (WRA) to document the Japanese-American evacuation process in northern California included picturing their lives in the San Francisco area before they were interned, as well as after. She made this image at a public school in April just days before citizens like this girl and her family were given numbers and transported to internment camps for the remainder of World War II. A group of schoolchildren are standing close together with their hands over their hearts and gazing upward, presumably at a flag. The image was cropped to draw attention to the girl in a plaid dress who stands front and center. Her expression is serious and shows strong emotion.

In Lange's words: "What I photographed was the procedure, the process of processing. I photographed the normal life insofar as I could. . . . I photographed . . . the Japanese quarter of San Francisco, the businesses they were operating, and the people as they were going to their YWCAs and YMCAs and churches and in their Nisei headquarters, all the baffled, bewildered people. . . ."

Although Lange undertook this photographic work on behalf of the United States government, it is clear that her sympathies were with the Japanese Americans. Many fellow WRA photographers attempted to present the internment in a positive light; Lange did not hesitate to convey the unfathomable injustice of Executive Order 9066.

Stoop Labor in Cotton Field, San Joaquin Valley, California, Dorothea Lange, 1938

• What can you say about how Lange framed her subject?
• How do you think the man is feeling? What do you see in the picture that gives you clues about this?
• How would you describe the mood of this picture? Would this picture have a different mood if the top half were filled by the sky?
• Why do you think that Lange chose not to clearly show the man's face?
• What do you think this man will do after the cotton-picking season has ended?
• Have you ever picked a crop in a field? What was it like?

Background Information - A man is shown stooped over in a field of cotton. The horizon line is high, making the worker appear monumental as he goes about his work in the strong sunlight. The bag he is dragging looks very heavy. Yet Lange's photograph makes the difficult, exhausting work look graceful, and the coarse cloth of his overalls and heavy bag seem to crease and hang in beautiful ways.

In the revised and expanded edition of An American Exodus (1969), this picture is accompanied by a caption from Paul Taylor's field notes: "Migratory cotton pickers paid 75 cents per 100 pounds. A good day's pick is 200 pounds. CIO union strikers demand $1 per 100 pounds." Workers who were paid by the day lacked job security and were forced to move their families again and again in search of work.

The work of picking cotton occupies a chapter of John Steinbeck's 1939 book about migrant life in California, The Grapes of Wrath. Like other seasonal labor, it was a possibility for his Joad family, who had fled the Dust Bowl conditions of Oklahoma. In a conversational style, seemingly from the migrant picker's viewpoint, Steinbeck describes the process: "Now the bag is heavy, boost it along. Set your hips and tow it along, like a work horse. And the kids pickin' into the old man's sack. Good crop here. Gets thin in the low places, thin and stringy. Never seen no cotton like this here California cotton."

18-A Thomas Hart Benton, The Sources of Country Music, 1975

18-A Thomas Hart Benton, The Sources of Country Music, 1975
- Study this painting carefully, paying attention to the way the artist has grouped the elements in his work.
- Find five scenes in this painting that show regional musicians. These represent the roots of American country music. Can students identify what type of music each of these represents?
Church and choir music: Three women with a choir director (upper left) are representative of church and choir music.
Appalachian singers: Two barefoot women playing the dulcimer (left) represent Appalachia.
Barn dance: Two fiddlers and dancers (center) are representative of barn dancing.
Singing cowboy: A man with a guitar (right) represents the “singing cowboy.”
African American music of the Deep South: The man with a banjo and a group of women on the distant riverbank (center right) represent African American music of the Deep South.
- How did Benton join these different scenes into one unified composition? He overlapped forms, used the same painting style throughout, repeated colors, and made most of the figures face in toward the center of the painting. Just as all these musical influences came together in American country music, they hold together as a unified composition in this painting.
- How did Benton create a sense of rhythm and movement throughout this composition? Most of the vertical lines and bodies slant to the right, creating visual movement in that direction. The train leans forward as it speeds to the right. Even the telephone poles seem to sway.
- What things and people are making music and sound in this scene? The choir, Appalachian women, banjo player, and cowboy are singing. The train rumbles and whistles, the riverboat whistles, and dancers stamp their feet on a wooden floor. The dulcimer, fiddles, banjo, and guitar are all being played.
- Benton wanted all the musicians to play the same note and sing their varied music in tune. Do you think this painting seems like noisy confusion or are all the parts in harmony?
- What does the steam engine represent? The steam engine represents change—the end of agrarian life as Americans left farms for cities and regional cultures blended together.
- Why did Benton include in the painting a homage to Tex Ritter, the singing cowboy? Ritter helped persuade Benton to paint this picture but died before it was completed.
- Why did Benton not sign this painting? He died before he completed it.
- Before he died, Benton was trying to decide whether he should repaint the train. Why do you think he wanted to do this?

Public art: murals

- A mural is any piece of artwork painted directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. Murals are often site-specific, meaning that they are artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location (including culture and history) into account while planning and creating the artwork.
Have you seen any murals? Where? What are they for?

Compare to the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (10a):

- How are the pieces similar? They were both created for a specific site, they both depict important historical events. Both pieces make use of symbolism (the steam engine, the angel) as well as real, historical figures (Tex Ritter, Robert Gould Shaw)

- How are they different? Benton's mural depicts a generalized history of country music, whereas Saint-Gauden's piece was created to commemorate a specific moment in time.

17-B Romare Bearden, The Dove, 1964

17-B  Romare Bearden, The Dove, 1964
Look closely at all the parts of this collage.
Find these elements: Dove, Black cat, White cat
Describe the setting for this scene. It is a city street. Some students may know this is a Harlem neighborhood in New York City.
What architectural details would you see on a city street? Complicated but weathered wooden moldings surround the doors and windows; there are steps, and grids on some windows. The fire escape has a wrought iron railing.
Where did Bearden repeat textures in the shape of brick? He repeated these textures above the street, in the upper half of the composition.
What do these brick textures represent? They represent walls of brick (tenement) buildings.
Bearden rearranges pieces of magazine and newspaper images to create new messages. Locate a figure. What is this figure doing? Find people looking out windows, sitting on steps, and walking on the street. Most of the figures are composed of more than one cut-out. In the center a man holding a cigarette sits on steps. Another man,wearing a white hat low over his eyes, walks down the sidewalk. To the left of the black cat, a woman leans on her elbows and looks out a basement window.
Ask the students to consider how we perceive our environment. For example, when we’re sitting in a room or walking down the street, do we see everything at once in equal detail? We see the scene in fragments.
How is Bearden’s collage like the way we take in a scene in real life? We see a complicated or active scene piece by piece over time.
Bearden grew up in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and he loved jazz. How is his collage like jazz? Both encourage the artist to improvise and try new arrangements. The fragmented style is like the upbeat syncopation of jazz rhythms, which opens up a musical composition.
Describe the mood and energy of this scene. It is bustling, everything is close and crowded; people are walking and milling about, watching and being watched; and it seems that there would be lots of sound.
Bearden wanted to show African American life in America from an African American point of view. Explain how well you think he accomplishes that in this collage.

17-A Jacob Lawrence, The Migration of the Negro Panel no. 57, 1940–1941

Harlem renaissance – 1920’s-30s – African American writers, musicians and artists celebrated their heritage and culture and redefined artistic forms of expression. Mainly explored three areas: the rich heritage of Africa, the ugly legacy of slavery, the realities of urban life. No unified visual style; ended with stock market crash.
 

17-A  Jacob Lawrence, The Migration of the Negro Panel no. 57, 1940–1941
Study this painting, paying attention to all the parts of the composition.
What is this woman is doing? She is stirring laundry with a washing stick.
What shapes do you see in this painting? There are rectangles and irregular rounded shapes.
What do the large rectangles and the irregular rounded shapes represent? The large rectangles are laundry drying, and the irregular forms are laundry being washed.
Lawrence painted all the panels for The Migration Series at the same time, one color at a time. How did this affect the way the series looks? Because the same colors are on each panel, the panels seem unified.
Who was migrating in The Migration Series? Where were they going? African Americans were moving from the South to the North.
Why were they leaving the South? They were seeking a better life with higher-paying jobs.
What type of jobs had African Americans traditionally done in the South? They were farm laborers and domestic workers, although some were professionals, such as doctors and teachers.
What type of jobs were many migrants hoping to find in the North? Many were seeking factory jobs.
How did Lawrence learn about scenes from the migration? He listened to his family and friends’ stories, and he researched historical events from this time period in the   Harlem branch of the New York Public Library.
What was significant about Lawrence being asked to exhibit his art in a downtown gallery? 

Previously, African American artists had been excluded from downtown galleries.

Go here to see the odd numbered images of the migration series

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity.
 

In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.
 

Analytical Cubism is one of the two major branches of the artistic movement of Cubism and was developed between 1908 and 1912. In contrast to Synthetic cubism, Analytic cubists "analyzed" natural forms and reduced the forms into basic geometric parts on the two-dimensional picture plane. Color was almost non-existent except for the use of a monochromatic scheme that often included grey, blue and ochre. Instead of an emphasis on color, Analytic cubists focused on forms like the cylinder, sphere and the cone to represent the natural world. During this movement, the works produced by Picasso and Braque shared stylistic similarities.
 

In Paris in 1907 there was a major museum retrospective exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne shortly after his death. The exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris. Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for Cubism from Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Picasso was the main analytic cubist, but Braque was also prominent.
 

Synthetic Cubism was the second main movement within Cubism that was developed by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others between 1912 and 1919. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, and a large variety of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage materials being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art work.
 

Whereas Analytic Cubism was an analysis of the subjects (pulling them apart into planes), Synthetic Cubism is more of a pushing of several objects together. Less pure than Analytic Cubism, Synthetic Cubism has fewer planar shifts (or schematism), and less shading, creating flatter space.

Above: Picasso, "Le Guitariste" (Analytic Cubism)

Picasso, "Three Musicians"

Picasso, "Still Life with Chair Caning" (Synthetic Cubism)