Charles Sheeler is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century. He studied painting under William Merritt Chase in Pennsylvania. In 1909, he went to Paris, just when the popularity of Cubism was skyrocketing. Returning to the United States, he realized that he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting. Instead, he took up commercial photography (as a self-taught photographer). Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography. He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasized the linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his photographic works, his subjects were generally material things such as machinery and structures.
Look closely at all the details in this painting.- Locate the tiny figure. He is on the railroad tracks.
- Where is the ladder? It is located in the right corner.
- Where are the silos? They are on the left.
- How does Sheeler indicate distance in this painting? The parallel horizontal lines are converging, coming closer together, to the left of the painting. Objects overlap and distant structures are smaller, with fewer details.
- What lines look as if they were drawn with a ruler? The lines on the edge of the canal, the train and tracks, and the buildings look as if they were composed with a straight edge.
- Much of this painting is geometric. What parts are not? The water and the reflections in the water, the sky and smoke, and the pile of ore are irregular in shape.
-How large do the buildings seem in comparison with the man. They are huge.
- This plant mass-produced automobiles. Raw materials and ores were transformed into cars. Long conveyor belts moved materials within the factory. What structures in this view possibly house conveyor belts? The long, thin white structure in front of the silos and other large buildings are possible sheds.
- What does this painting say about the scale of American industry in 1930? Sheeler was impressed with the massive scale of American industry and this plant.
- Visualize how industrial progress changed this view of the American landscape. Encourage them to imagine how this scene looked before the canal, railroad, and factories were built. The river might have curved and been lined with trees and plants. Smoke would not fill the sky.
- Do you think this painting seems more positive or negative regarding industrial development?
- How might an average American in 1930 answer this question? How did factories like this affect the lives of American consumers? Factories like this employed many people and the mass-produced goods they made were affordable to middle-class Americans. Early twentieth-century Americans were proud of their country’s industrial development and appreciated the rise in their standard of living made possible by mass production. Today, Americans are more sensitive to the effects of industrial development on the environment.
- Does this painting look like a photograph? Why or why not? Everything looks extremely clean and new- probably didn’t look this way for long, if at all, in reality.
- How does the absence of any evidence of humanity (save the lonely, anonymous figure) affect your reading of the painting? Sheeler exalts the industrial age and the inventiveness of man while at the same time glorifying the machines as beings apart from humanity.
Compare to Stella: What is each artist's goal in painting these huge man-made structures? How are they different? How are they similar? How might these artists have treated the subject of the other? How might they portray the same objects in different ways?
Conversation with Sky and Earth 1931; Classic Landscape
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