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Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 - 1975)
Spring on the Missouri, 1945 |
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Thomas Hart Benton worked as a newspaper illustrator in the 1930s, and he was sent to record the Missouri flood of 1937. These sketches became Spring on the Missouri a few years later in 1945. The sharecroppers push their belongings onto their wagon in an attempt to flee the rising waters. Diagonal lines force the horse-drawn wagon away from us. Is this the way of escape? Do these sharecroppers escape the rising water?
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Franz Kline (American, 1910 - 1962)
Orange Outline, 1955 |
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Franz Kline's brash and freewheeling art comes from a distinctively urban, specifically New York sensibility. (He claimed to prefer the roar of traffic to the peace of the country.) Each of his paintings is a clamorous construction site, built stroke by stroke, revised and reworked. The seemingly haphazard swaths of tar-black paint suggest an iron truss spanning and shoring the composition.
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Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922 - 1993)
Berkeley No. 8, 1954 |
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Richard Diebenkorn's paintings have been rightly described as "abstract landscapes." Berkeley No. 8, painted in 1954, belongs to a series executed while the artist was living across the bay from San Francisco. The composition is built of blocks of color, reportedly inspired by aerial views of the American Southwest. We see the desert colors of New Mexico and the cool blues of the Pacific coast of northern California. How does the feeling of place in this painting compare with the feeling of place in the Franz Kline painting?
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George Benjamin Luks
In the Steerage
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Jasper Francis Cropsey
Eagle Cliff, Franconia Notch, New Hampshire
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William Tylee Ranney
First News of the Battle of Lexington
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John Singleton Copley
Mrs. James Russell (Katherine Graves) (1717-1778)
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Winslow Homer
Weaning the Calf
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Focus Works of Art
Indian Fantasy
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Marsden Hartley
(American, 1877 - 1943)
Indian Fantasy,
1914 |
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MODERN AMERICAN ART - A SENSE OF PLACE
Marsden Hartley's Indian Fantasy describes an American landscape. Like many modern artists, Hartley abstracted or simplified his image in order to convey the essence of an idea and a sense of place. Hartley was living in Berlin when he painted Indian Fantasy in 1914. Far away from home, he was reflecting on his native country and those symbols that are uniquely American. In the early decades of the 20th century, the American West and cowboys and Indians were still a romantic vision of America for Europeans.
Indian Fantasy is a collection of abstract motifs and symbols of the Pueblo and Plains Indians. The eagle flies above the scene, coming out of the sun and stars. Plains Indians paddle their canoes along the fish-laden waters. Pueblo pots are engulfed by tepees. These details are set in an overall symmetrical arrangement, and each object is an abstract version of itself. Hartley employs these symbols to represent all American Indians and none in particular. Would the term stereotype apply to this painting? Why or why not?
Click here to view a related video produced in association with the North Carolina School of Science and Math's Learn More - Teach More Project. (RealPlayer is required to view this video file.)
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Below are suggestions for using the Focus Work of Art with students in the classroom. The activity and discussion ideas are listed in order of difficulty. The activity instructions and italicized discussion questions may be presented directly to students. The icons below each suggestion note the related subject area(s). Click on each icon to determine which subject area it represents. Browse the thematic Lesson Plans for more ideas on how to use this work of art and theme in the classroom. |
- Sounds of the City and Country
Look closely at Kline's cityscape. Describe the sounds you would hear in this urban environment. Create a poem about this city that mimics the rhythm of those sounds. Do the same with Diebenkorn's painting of Berkeley. How are those poems different? How did the artists create different moods in their paintings?
 
- Reporter on the Scene
Look carefully at Thomas Hart Benton's Spring on the Missouri. Based on details in the painting, write a newspaper article for the Kansas City Star that chronicles this event. When you are finished, look up some details about this flood. Consider the way the painting serves as a document, like a newspaper story or photographs.
 
- Looking Back
Using Hartley's Indian Fantasy as a starting point, consider why people across the world would have been interested in timeless symbols or images of primitive life during the height of the modern age. Reflect on why we continue to look back to the simple life as our world grows ever more technological.
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