14-B Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1919–1920

14-B Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1919–1920

Find these objects:
- Towers of the Brooklyn Bridge: They are at top, center.
- Traffic signal light: It is at the lower center.
- Bridge cables: They run from the edges to the center of the composition. Note in particular the two curving pieces connected to the bridge tower.
- What time of day is it? It is night. The sky is dark; there are deep dark shadows and shining lights.
- Are there any cars on the bridge? Perhaps. Some of the lights look like headlights.
- Do some objects seem close and others far away? Why? The thin white buildings seem farther away because they are placed higher in the painting and are smaller than the traffic light at the bottom. The cables also get smaller and several angle toward each other as though they were parallel lines converging in the distance.
- How does Stella suggest the complexity of the modern machine era? How has he indicated its dynamic movement? He jumbles the thick and thin lines, showing bits and pieces of forms as though they are glimpsed only briefly; he blurs the colors and adds diagonal and curving lines that suggest movement.
- Identify some vertical lines in this painting. How do they affect the dynamics of the composition? They give some order to the chaos.
- Imagine what Stella heard as he stood on this bridge at night. The bridge is over a river. He might have heard tugboat horns, sirens, subway trains, and cars and trucks rumbling over the bridge.
- What do you think Stella found fascinating about the bridge? He was intrigued by its huge scale, the complexity of the cable lines, and its dizzying angles. When you drive over the bridge, things are seen as fragments; headlights flash here and there, and you hear traffic in the water and on the bridge. For Stella the experience was urban, modern, and a bit frightening.

(To give you a sense of scale, here are several of Stella's paintings on exhibit)