America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Breaking the Prairie

4

The fiery red and cool blue sky in Edward Hopper’s Railroad Sunset is a direct nod to the great nineteenth-century landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church. One of a long line of artists and writers captivated by North America’s natural grandeur, Church and others of the Hudson River School used theatrical scale, meticulous technique, and an understanding of the sublime to imbue their scenes with a sense of the mythic.

In the decades leading up to World War II, Hopper and his contemporaries picked up this thread, becoming deeply interested in America as both a real place and an abstract idea that might be expressed through stylized images of the land and its people. James Castle, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Bill Traylor invested humble, mundane subjects with a sense of mystery and symbolism. Using panoramic sweep and cinematic spatial effects, Chiura Obata and Grant Wood transformed the landscape and its inhabitants into idyllic scenes or allegories. And Marsden Hartley and Charles White turned ordinary people, such as a boxer or a preacher, into powerful archetypes whose physical presence and actions stand for countless individuals and their stories.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915-2012), HEAD, 1947

A brown terracotta sculpture of a woman's head down to the neck sits on a white plinth. The eyes of the sculpture are cut out.
A brown terracotta sculpture of a woman's head down to the neck sits on a white plinth. The eyes of the sculpture are cut out.

Elizabeth Catlett, Head, 1947. Terracotta, 10 3/4 × 6 1/2 × 8 3/4 in. (27.3 × 16.5 × 22.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Jack E. Chachkes Purchase Fund, the Katherine Schmidt Shubert Purchase Fund, and the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund in memory of Cecil Joseph Weekes 2013.103. © Estate of Elizabeth Catlett/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Elizabeth Catlett believed that making art about ordinary people was a political gesture. Head is part of a series of prints, paintings, and sculpture that she made focusing on the strength and poise of black women.

Catlett made this sculpture in Mexico. While training as an artist in New York, she had learned to sculpt by vigorously pounding forms out of solid blocks of clay. In Mexico, however, she began working with pre-Columbian coil techniques, building up each piece layer by layer. This ancient method allowed her to work more directly with the tactile qualities of terracotta, resulting in the elegant and sensuously modeled Head.

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On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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