1
10
3
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https://openvalley.org/files/original/70be43c099508d767688fbc8ab0c0b11.jpeg
50fe14e989c945344af3a3032efec5c7
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
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Oil on metal tray
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
11.75 x 17.75 in.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dead End
Description
An account of the resource
A piece of art by James Guy, known social surrealist, of a few figures and images clashing with each other.
Creator
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James Guy (1909-1983)
Publisher
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Hirshl & Adler
Date
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1939
Contributor
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Michalak, Benjamin
Source
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Hirshl & Adler
Format
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jpeg, 729 KB
James Guy
Social Surrealism
-
https://openvalley.org/files/original/c603fe3206503ed2860623cd8f54a7ab.jpg
c1a5a541527ea192e1cf6480c2925fca
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
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Photograph
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
16.8 x 21.7 cm
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
André Breton
Description
An account of the resource
A picture of André Breton, author of the "First Surrealist Manifesto" (1924).
Publisher
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Wikimedia Commons
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1924-1929
Source
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Réunion des musées nationaux
Format
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jpeg, 33 KB
André Breton
Social Surrealism
surrealism
-
https://openvalley.org/files/original/bd6040f043c4174a83fbedd7e521fae4.jpg
5db0dc529ac475c453367c892404bc08
https://openvalley.org/files/original/a8a53d3234c33cfebcf62829714e9894.jpg
267b190707bb34cec96ea7af2c828a50
https://openvalley.org/files/original/3bab745194936e94890314af79cb9289.JPG
f472688e0e62499d4994e86b71b995cb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New Deal Gallery
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of more than 200 paintings owes its existence to two primary causes: allocations from the Federal Art Project to a New York state tuberculosis sanatorium located at Mt. Morris--the landscapes and still lifes were thought to be restful--and to the committed volunteers who helped preserve the paintings after the hospital closed. For several decades the canvases were stored in non-climate-controlled basements; it appears that doctors and staff removed at least three dozen works as "keepsakes." <br /><br />Despite the seeming tranquility of the paintings, they were created by artists primarily from New York City whose background was more political and aesthetically adventurous than this rural location would indicate. <a href="https://openvalley.org/exhibits/show/green-new-deal/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Follow this hyperlink to a short introduction to the New Deal Gallery collection</a>. We're grateful to the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for access to their collection, which has been re-photographed and appears here at two resolutions: a cropped, web-friendly file size of around 1 MB; and a high-resolution file including the painting's frame.<br /><br />Items in this collection were created according to a consistent format: a short description of each painting in formal terms, followed by a biography of each artist. Where possible we have supplied hyperlinks relevant to their lives and to other examples of their art. In order to better view them using the Omeka program, click on the "View All" option at the bottom of this page to access various sorting options.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1935-1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cooper, Ken (project director)
Ritz, Abigail (photography and project assistant)
Additional research: Justin Anderson, Jessica Apthorpe, Jay Bang, Kristopher Bangsil, Julia Caldwell, Sydney Cannioto, Sabrina Chan, Paige Closser, Victoria Domon, Elana Evenden, Yadelin Fernandez, Michael Griffin, Madison Jackson, Niamh McCrohan, Ben Michalak, Ricky Noel, Elizabeth Ramsay, Skye Rose, Samantha Schmeer, John Serbalik, Marianna Sheedy, Emily Spina, Alison Stern, Ravenna VanOstrand, and Nicholas Vanamee.
Special thanks to: Deborah Bump, Mark Calicchia, Elizabeth Harris, Melissa Moody, Rebecca Lomuto, and Mai Sato.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as photograph, map, drawing, painting, etc., and any additional data
Watercolor painting
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
12 x 15.5 in.
Condition: paper rippled
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
100 Years Pass
Creator
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Guy, James Meikle, 1909-1983
Publisher
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Federal Art Project
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1936
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ritz, Abigail (photography)
Cooper, Ken (biography)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts
Object #FA18167
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg, 1.3 MB
jpeg, 9.6 MB
jpeg, 1.2 MB
Description
An account of the resource
A neoclassical mansion, accessorized by ancestral family tree, looms over a woman wearing a long dress at lower left. Upon closer viewing the coherence of this scene breaks down; she's carrying an axe in her left hand, <em>a la</em> Lizzie Borden, along with something in her right hand we cannot see. Moreover, any attempt to inhabit a romantic tableau of the past is undermined by an historical marker on the front lawn--or is it a 1930s highway sign?--along with an airplane flying overhead.<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">About the Artist</span>: Born in Middletown, CT and trained at the Hartford Art School, Guy was among the earliest Americans to see European surrealism via a 1931 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum on the <a href="https://youtu.be/1UNpfGZ3wy4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Newer Super-Realism.”</a> Thereafter he was strongly influenced by painters like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Salvador Dali</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_de_Chirico" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Giorgio de Chirico</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Clemente_Orozco" target="_blank" rel="noopener">José Clemente Orozco</a>. At the same time, Guy’s work was characterized by a sharp satirical edge that may have owed something to his own work experience—after high school he had tried selling rugs and typewriters; was a sailor and census-taker—and to his political activities, including membership in the radical John Reed Club. In 1930 he helped stage a 1930 labor play entitled <em>Strike</em>; amid unsuccessful attempts to stage it in New York, Guy remained in the city. During the Great Depression Guy was among the leaders of the Unemployed Artists Group (later renamed the Artists Union), which advocated government support for the arts and later resisted proposed cuts to the Federal Arts Program. Guy’s paintings were exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Annex (1931), the ACA Gallery (1937), American Artists’ Congress (1937), a “Fight War and Fascism” show at the La Salle Gallery (1937), Federal Art Gallery (1938), Boyer Gallery (1939), and Ferargil Galleries (1941). In 1936 he married the respected woodblock artist Clara Skinner, and they co-exhibited at several shows. Guy also undertook public mural projects, referenced only as located in Mexico and “New York churches” (Older). One that is known was a 1934 three-panel project for the Hartford Public High School’s cafeteria on the production of food: “The New England fishing industry is at its center—the port of Gloucester, Mass.—is brought to life in the first panel. The second reveals the story of the wheat belt; fields of grain, elevators, transportation on the Great Lakes. From pastures to stockyard, the cattle industry is recorded in the third” (Older). Perhaps the peak of Guy’s popular recognition, by that time including the epithet of “Yankee Surrealist,” involved a 1941 portfolio of paintings published in <em>Esquire</em> magazine as <a href="https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19410801/print" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Fun in Ghost Town.”</a> “Today he is more or less established,” the profile stated, “if somewhat precariously....James Guy may be called a depression period radical, for there is nothing in his background or conditioning which would make inevitable the questioning of social values that has been going on in his picture making” (Saltpeter). During World War II Guy worked at the Pratt Read glider factory in Deep River, CT where his visual style changed markedly into a futurism he called “industrial symphonies” (Dickinson). After the war he taught art at Bennington College, MacMurray College, and Weslyan University—with a sabbatical of several years during which he wrote and photographed articles on fishing for outdoor magazines (Stedman). 2 works at the <a href="https://www.nga.gov/collection-search-result.html?artist=Guy%2C%20James%20Miekle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Gallery of Art</a>. 6 more images at <a href="https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/federal-art-project-photographic-division-collection-5467/series-1/box-9-folder-47" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FAP</a>.<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sources Consulted</span>: Ernest Dickinson, “Paints ‘Symphonies of Industry’”, <em>Hartford Courant </em>15 Oct. 1944: 67; Ilene Susan Fort, “Social Surrealism,” <em>Archives of American Art Journal</em> 22.3 (1982): 8-20; Gerald M. Monroe, “Artists as Militant Trade Union Workers During the Great Depression,” <em>Archives of American Art Journal</em> 14.1 (1974): 7-10; Cy Stedman, “Return of an Artist,” <em>Hartford Courant </em>19 Jan. 1958: 114-115; Harry Saltpeter, “Guy: Ghoul of the Ghostly West,” <em>Esquire </em>16.2 (Aug. 1941): 86-87; Julia Older, “Hartford Public Buildings Richly and Lastingly Adorned as Uncle Sam Becomes Nation’s Most Lavish Art Patron,” <em>Hartford Courant</em> 1 Jul. 1934: 59.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
077
Federal Art Project
James Guy
New Deal Gallery
Social Surrealism
Watercolor