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Portfolios%3D%22362%22%20and%20Sort_Artist%3D%22Sheeler,%20Charles%22
Drawing
Ballet Mechanique
Charles Sheeler, 1883 - 1965
Sheeler, Charles
United States
1883 - 1965
Male
10 1/2 x 10 1/4 in. (26.7 x 26 cm)
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image
Conte crayon
Conte crayon
1931
1931
1931
1900-2000, 20th century, cityscapes, drawing, factories, Precisionism
Drawing
In 1927, Charles Sheeler was commissioned to photograph Henry Ford’s River Rouge car factory outside Detroit to advertise the company’s new Model A car. Ford’s innovations in the assembly line were celebrated for their efficiency, productivity, and ability to produce low-cost consumer goods. Yet the dark underside to this progress was unbearable, dehumanizing work conditions.
<em>Ballet Mechanique</em>, based on a photo from Sheeler’s Ford factory series, is a tightly-cropped scene of an industrial system of pipes and metal. By isolating the sleek machinery from actual labor, Sheeler elevates the loud, hot, dangerous factory environment to a cool, sleek, abstract vision of modernity.
Sheeler’s style, Precisionism, was a celebration of the technological sublime with its crisp, pure form and industrial themes. Of American artists in the early years of the 1900s, Charles Sheeler made one of the most dramatic breaks from the traditional assumption that beauty could be found in nature alone.
[label text for <em>Modern Icon: The Machine As Subject in American Art</em> exhibition, February 3 – March 6, 2012]
lower right, in image
1974.96
item
Memorial Art Gallery
9/8/1999
74.96TR1
Transparency
Memorial Art Gallery
2 x 2 3/4
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negative
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8 x 10
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74.96DI1
digital image
Memorial Art Gallery
Imaging complete
2/19/2001
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M425_p223.tif
digital image
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Watercolor
Totems in Steel
Charles Sheeler, 1883 - 1965
Sheeler, Charles
United States
1883 - 1965
Male
3 11/16 x 5 1/8 in. (9.4 x 13 cm)
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image
Gouache
Gouache
1935
1935
1935
1900-2000, 20th century, architecture in art, cityscapes, Precisionism, watercolors
Watercolor
This image of a New York City construction site is based on a film still from Charles Sheeler’s 1920 film collaboration with photographer Paul Strand, <em>Manhatta</em>. In the ten-minute film, the artists track the dynamism of Manhattan through the course of a day, focusing on the unique pulse and geometry of the city’s machinery, vehicles, and architecture. <em>Manhatta</em> provided Sheeler with numerous images from which he later painted.
The title of this painting, <em>Totems in Steel</em>, frames modern engineering, industry, and architecture in quasi-religious terms. Sheeler wrote, “In a period such as ours when only a comparatively few individuals seem to be given to religion, some form other than the Gothic cathedral must be found. Industry concerns the greatest numbers—it may be true, as has been said, that our factories are our substitute for religious expression.”
[label text for <em>Modern Icon: The Machine As Subject in American Art</em> exhibition, February 3 – March 6, 2012]
lower right, below imagelower right, in image
1974.94
item
Memorial Art Gallery
9/8/1999
74.94SL1
slide
full
2 x 2
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negative
4x5
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glossy
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74.94BW1
glossy
8x10
00/00/00
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74.94DI2
digital image
3/22/2005
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Media/images/74.94_A1.jpg
74.94TR1
transparency
full
4 x 5
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digital image
00/00/00
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74.94DI#3
digital image
1/20/2006
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