Review - The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock, The British Museum, Room 90, until September 7 2008.
A new exhibition of works depicting the period of great social and political change in America in the first half of the 20th century is on display at the British Museum.
This vast exhibition features 174 works by 74 artists including Edward Hopper, Louise Bourgeois and Jackson Pollock.
The British Museum has the biggest collection of American prints outside the United States from which the pieces on display are selected. This is the first exhibition to use this huge archive since 1980 and includes some new items acquired in the last five years.
The exhibition begins in 1905 with the work of John Sloane and George Bellows who were part of the Ashcan school. The series of etchings depict ordinary people carrying out their ordinary lives. An important image is Turning Out The Light by John Sloane. Then deemed to be obscene, its reception prompted Sloane to produce more etchings, which all show immense detail and depth.
Sloane and Bellows came from a background of newspaper illustration and both artists worked for left-wing magazine The Masses.
George Bellows work depicts the darker side of American life, including the Electric Chair.
Edward Hopper, Night On The El Train. Image courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Further highlights include highly evocative scenes of New York at night by Edward Hopper and Martin Lewis amongst others. In 'Night On The El Train' Hopper places the spectator in the piece, sitting them along the aisle. Often using windows to act as a metaphor for the interior and exterior worlds, his pieces have a film noir quality about them.
The next series of works shows how many of the artists who spent time in Paris but returned to America at the start of the First World War, incorporated European art styles such as Cubism, Futurism and Art Nouveau - but with American subject matter.
Stuart Davis’ lithographs - in particular Sixth Avenue El - show elements of montage and surrealism with a jumble of American street signs evoking a sense of chaos and congestion.
The arrival of modernism in 1913 had a huge impact on American artists, with Futurist techniques used to emphasise the geometry of the skyscrapers and bridges. Louis Lozowick’s lithograph, New York, portrays the Big Apple as a dynamic, futuristic city. The sweeping curves create a three-dimensional effect.
In contrast the exhibition moves on to the work of the Regionalists, who rejected European art themes. A series of artists who believed that the authentic American experience took place in the Midwest, The Regionalists included in their number artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.
Sultry Night by Grant Wood, which depicts a rural farmer showering in the evening, was deemed to be obscene by the US postal authorities. The print was distributed through mail order and became a rarity as it was often interecepted and removed.
During the Depression the etching industry collapsed and through the US Works Progress Administration (WPA) artists were encouraged to make prints. The prints, which were displayed in hospitals and schools, reflected the social conditions of the period.
Blanche Grambs used a printing technique in her pieces depicting Miners, which allowed her to show how the mine dust hurt the miners' eyes. Grambs did this to effect social change by raising public consciousness.
The WPA encouraged artists to take up the new technique of colour screen-printing. Under their patronage artists were encouraged to produce socially conscious prints often depicting themes of urban and rural poverty, or concerning the plight of African Americans and the working conditions of the mines.
Hitchhiker by Robert Gwathmey is a startling piece, which shows the stark contrast between the reality of black men looking for work and the advertising world of glamour.
In the 1930s the rise of fascism in Europe created a big divide between American artists.
When America entered the Second World War after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, the WPA was wound down and artists were asked to focus on the new war economy. Many patriotic pieces were produced. Benton Spruance’s classic piece Riders Of The Apocalypse captures the view of the USA liberating Europe from fascism.
Many of the prints produced by artists during the Second World War were used for propaganda. The Fifth Column by Hugo Gellert was produced after the Vice President of America spoke on an egalitarian future free of fascism. The rat symbolises Nazi sympathisers who the public were warned about.
After the Second World War America emerged as a super power and the Soviet Union became a threat. Artists were under deep suspicion and some of them even had their passports confiscated.
However, the ferment continued when the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers set up Black Mountain College in North Carolina and began to make prints using unusual materials like cork.
There was also a surrealist influx with Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York, which introduced pieces that explored the subconscious. Louise Bourgeois’ enigmatic series, He Disappeared Into Complete Silence - a collection of little parables - were produced under the patronage of Atelier 17. Her sculptural forms later encouraged her to abandon printmaking and go into making sculptures.
The exhibition concludes with abstract expressionism, which includes Jackson Pollock. There was a resistance as printmaking was associated with the WPA, this group of artists preferred the spontaneous gesture of exploring the subconscious, which was quite experimental and low key.
In conclusion and heralding the cold war era, Hans Burkardt’s After The Bomb reflects the horror and fear of the post war period with its threat of a nuclear holocaust.
All in all, the exhibition gives a great insight into the politics of a nation through the eyes of its artists and their interaction with the establishment and influences from across the Atlantic. It's an interesting way to reflect on our own relationship with North America in the first years of a new century, as well as gain an overview of artistic styles from the time.
A series of events ranging from films, readings, talks and lectures in partnership with King’s College London accompany the exhibition.
