1939-1970: learning resources

Russel Wright, "American Modern" Pitchers

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Romare Bearden, Factory Workers

Key points

• Despite the need for workers as the American defense industry prepared for World War II, persistent racism and discrimination prevented many African Americans from finding jobs.
• In June 1941, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which sought to prohibit racial discrimination in defense and government hiring. This was the first executive order to address discrimination since the Emancipation Proclamation. The article in Fortune for which this painting served as the frontispiece was likely a direct result of this order. It argued that discriminatory hiring practices were bad for business, bad for the war effort, and bad for society.
• Romare Bearden, a Social Realist, used his art to highlight the difficulties facing workers and the poor. Prominent in the 1930s and 1940s, Social Realist artists intended to tell stories with their work in order to prompt political and economic change. This painting, published in Fortune magazine, would have conveyed its message of racial injustice to a wide audience.

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Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter

Key points

• America’s entry into WWII created a demand for women’s labor as the defense industry grew and men enlisted in the military. Women were encouraged to join the workforce as a patriotic service to their country. They also spearheaded support organizations and fundraising groups that supported the war effort.
• Rosie the Riveter was an idealized mascot for women workers. First coined in a 1942 song, her identity came to represent the newly empowered woman. In Norman Rockwell’s depiction, she combines femininity with a commanding muscularity. Rosie wears men’s work clothes and holds a riveter in her lap as she pauses from her work to eat lunch.
• Norman Rockwell’s painting of Rosie the Riveter includes biblical and symbolic references that elevate the subject. The body and pose are copied from Michelangelo’s painting of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel. This is amplified by the snake-like form of the riveter, which suggests a reference to a righteous serpent that slayed an evil monster from the book of Isaiah (especially as Rosie crushes a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf under her foot). She also evokes traditional depictions of the Madonna and Child.
• Tensions arose as men returned home from war and re-entered the workforce. Women were not universally willing to relinquish their newfound freedom and independence. This started new debates on the role of women, especially in the workplace, in the modern era.

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A mine disaster and those left behind, Ben Shahn’s Miners’ Wives

Key points

• The 1947 explosion in the Centralia mine in Illinois illustrated the dangerous conditions and lack of enforced regulations in the coal mining industry. Although hazards were long known at the site, this accident, which killed 111 men, raised public awareness around mining companies’ ongoing practice of neglect. While such tragedies have sometimes led to legal reform and occupational safety regulations, they continue to be a part of the history of industrial growth in the United States.
• Social realist artists like Ben Shahn were committed to making art that would expose social problems and advocate for real change to better the lives of the working class. In this painting, he draws attention not to the dramatic events of the tragedy, but the personal impact of the death of these men on the wives and families left behind.

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Glass Chair at the 1939 New York World's Fair

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Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building

Key points

• The Seagram building in midtown Manhattan (one of the five boroughs of New York City) is considered an icon of modernist architecture. At thirty eight stories tall, the sleek tower embraces simplicity and discipline, and elegantly employs modern industrial materials such as metal and glass while also drawing on the revered traditions of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Classical references, visible in the decoration, materials, and proportions of the structure, indicate the modernist architectural movement’s interest in striking a balance between the old and the new.
• German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s had a long history with this kind of building, as seen by designs he proposed in Germany in the 1920s and then in the many designs he realized in North America after his relocation to Chicago in 1938. His style was highly influential and copied in many buildings as part of the International Style of architecture that was prevalent in North America and Europe in the 1950s-70s.

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Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America

• Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, increased factory production and economic prosperity in the United States contributed to a rise in consumer culture dominated by recognizable product brands and iconic advertising images popularized through mass media.
• The widespread appeal of products like Coca-Cola suggested an ideal of American democracy where individuals shared common experiences, regardless of class or social difference.
• By imitating the style and commercial technique of mass advertising, Pop Art rejected an emphasis on the skill of the artist.
• Warhol replaced art’s traditional subject matter with images of everyday, mass produced objects.