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Course: The Seeing America Project > Unit 2
Lesson 3: 1870-1945- The power of the bear and the story an American massacre
- The closing of the frontier and The Fall of the Cowboy
- Cities and pueblos: the search for an authentic America
- Strange Worlds, immigration in the early 20th century
- Pottery and tourism: Pueblo culture and the lure of the Southwest
- Revisiting the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree
- Georgia O'Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York
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Georgia O'Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York
Georgia O’Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York, 1927, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 76.2 cm (The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Fisk University, Nashville and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville) © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
A conversation with Dr. Jen Padgett, Associate Curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.
Want to join the conversation?
- Urban verticality, represented by the skyscraper (described here as the American contribution to international architecture) is now seen all over the world. Is this an advance over the horizontality of traditional urban architecture, punctuated by spires and towers, that used to prevail? What has been gained by "building upward", and what has been lost?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(soft piano music) - [Dr. Zucker] We're in
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art looking at
one of my favorite paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe. This is "Radiator
Building-Night, New York." It's part of the Alfred
Stieglitz collection co-owned by Fisk University
in Nashville, Tennessee and the Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art. This is such an exceptional expression of New York and modernity in the 1920s. - [Dr. Padgett] It comes from
a group of over 20 paintings that O'Keeffe made between 1925 and 1930, in which she takes on
the subject of the city. Inspired largely by her
moving into the Shelton Hotel, living in a skyscraper herself,
at first on the 28th floor, and then all the way to the 30th because she felt she wasn't high enough. When she described the experience
of living in the Shelton, she said, "I had never
lived so high up before and was so excited that I began talking about
trying to paint New York." Of course, it was an impossible idea. Even the men hadn't done too well with it. - [Dr. Zucker] The Sheldon
was a residential hotel, like an apartment building,
but it had all the amenities of a hotel. - [Dr. Padgett] Living in the Shelton and having that experience of the verticality of a city
had such an impact on O'Keeffe. And in this painting,
the building stretches through the center of the
canvas, which is quite elongated and the viewer's position
is floating in space. - [Dr. Zucker] O'Keeffe
cropped the street out, and it reminds me of partial views that
you get of structures in New York, hidden behind,
maybe lower buildings, maybe buildings just
below our line of sight. But we should be cautious. We don't want to take this
rendering too literally. O'Keeffe has simplified the structure. She's stripped off much of its lower ornament to create
this almost perfect grid. - [Dr. Padgett] The Radiator
Building is a striking building for many reasons, not least
of all, because the cladding of the building is black. So even during the day, it would stand out in dramatic contrast to
the surrounding buildings. - [Dr. Zucker] It was
designed by Raymond Hood in fronts 40th Street, an area that saw tremendous
growth in the 1920s. And in fact, the Shelton,
the hotel that O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived in was part of this new
generation of skyscrapers. It was this really exciting moment. New York was the center of
American economic power, and these buildings were one of the most tangible examples of that. - [Dr. Padgett] Curiously, you
see the name Alfred Stieglitz in red neon. This would've originally been assigned for advertising in the
Scientific American magazine, and instead, O'Keeffe has
used Alfred Stieglitz' name, the name of her husband, the photographer, Gallarus collector, and
overall advocate and promoter of modern art in the US. Stieglitzs' advocacy for modern art is something that
O'Keeffe is playing with, putting his name in lights,
both underscoring his connection with the city, but also
playing a bit of fun. That sense of an advertisement for somebody who boasted quite often that his galleries did not advertise. - [Dr. Zucker] She frames
the building on the left by the sign by Stieglitz which has a beautiful quality of neon, in the way that it's painted
a little bit out of focus, as if we're looking through
atmosphere at night, the sign is almost too bright
for our eyes to focus on, and there is this quality
of the way that neon can break the darkness of the night sky. And then on the right, we have the vapors and we
have those search lights, those wonderful beams that
create so much velocity in this painting. But I think that she does
something even more clever. She creates a kind of rhythm through the selective
illumination of windows that play across not
only the building itself, but also the buildings adjacent. And furthered by the rhythmic
play of floating streetlights that we see at the very
bottom of the canvas. The building was designed
to be illuminated at night. It was designed to advertise the American Radiator
Corporation without signage, and in doing so, it becomes
one of the crowning jewels of the New York skyline. I think for O'Keeffe, this and
many of the other buildings in the area were the
quintessential expression of modern life. - [Dr. Padgett] The idea that
the skyscraper was a symbol of American modernity
was widely discussed. The American architectural
theorist, Claude Bragdon, wrote, "Not only is the skyscraper the symbol of the American
spirit, restless, centrifugal, perilously posed, but it is the only true original
development in the field of architecture to which we
can lay unchallenged claim." - [Dr. Zucker] So there
was a national aspect to the skyscraper, it was
seen as an American invention. And in 1927, there was this idea that America was flexing its muscles as the new cultural center of the world. (soft piano music)