Urban Confinement, Rural Expanse
By the 1930s, many people had begun to associate life in the countryside with a sense of nostalgia and nationalism. Representation of rural life tended to be “traditional and conservative in style, focusing on simple scenes of life on the land, family life in small-town America, and a return to the nation’s agricultural roots” (Mattison). On the other hand, city life was characterized by the increasing challenges posed by living in the hidden abode of production. “Factories, mills, and railroads offered jobs, but at a heavy social cost,” Paul Boyer writes. “Work was exhausting, hours long, wages low, and conditions dangerous.” These two generic landscapes signified recognizable locations, but just as powerfully the often-unspoken feelings associated with them: a sense of expansiveness or entrapment.
A pair of artworks, both set along rivers, illustrate the starkly contrasting aesthetics. Isadore Weiner’s River Front dares its viewer to locate any trace of a waterway; all that’s visible are smokestacks, heavy industrial equipment, waste tailings, and smoke that envelops what little we can see. It’s not a place fit for life; the imagination flees anywhere but here, however striking the image. Arthur Emery Powell’s A Peaceful Valley, by comparison, depicts a pastoral scene of a horse-drawn wagon filled with hay, situated alongside a gorgeous river. Its pastel colors are evenly illuminated, presumably the entire valley. A closer look at the middle third of Powell’s work—its potentially cramped layout—reveals how an expanse of water in the foreground, and hazy mountains in the distance, are necessary for its sense of spaciousness.
Visual arts of the New Deal Era can confirm our expectations of impersonal urban cityscapes and serene rural landscapes. For this reason, it’s important to recognize the role of art in that process. Sol Wilson’s Cement Plant is set along the East River corridor of industrial production and commercial shipping; Oscar Weissbuch’s Fields in Spring depicts a farm set in rolling hills. Despite their different locations and subject matter, both employ a nearly identical overhead perspective that encompasses a visually pleasing landscape. Both contain a small number of tiny figures in the larger scene. Wilson compresses and stylizes factory buildings, using a color palette that harmonizes with the river and (probably) Hell Gate Bridge. Weissbuch’s farm is a study in wood engraving patterns so much as crops: each tree and plant has one that’s distinct in a densely patterned composition. In geographical terms the two works still might signify friction between rural expanses, just outside of city-dwellers’ reach, and the reality of an urbanizing America. But any artist’s felt relation to those places was unique. The East River could feel spacious and beautiful; a farm could feel dense with complexity and meaning.
Works Consulted
-- Boyer, Paul S. American History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, 2012.
-- Mattison, Amanda. “American Regionalism—A Shift in Perspective.” Portrait Society of Atlanta. Link