'Gas' by Edward Hopper
Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
RA “America after the Fall”
The 'America after the Fall' exhibition at the Royal Academy had a clear focus on the artistic responses to America's economic crash in 1929, and the successive recuperation and change that followed. The artists present their reactions to their social upheavals that plagued the public, such as the threat of unemployment, the repressed anger towards injustice, as well as the instability caused by a social shift.
Georgia O'Keefe's artistic response to the times is seen in her painting "Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses”. An agricultural animal head is stripped to the bone in the midst of a floral shrine, it's gleaming whiteness bears more of a resemblance to delicate porcelain. Meanwhile, Alice Neel's focuses on a particular individual's strife in her portrait 'Pat Whelan' depicting an activist clenching his fists in anger over the day's headlines, his eyes glisten with a dejected frustration. While Edward Hopper's attention is on the bleak emptiness surrounding his characters in 'Gas' and New York Movie' to create an atmosphere of disillusion felt by most.
Sketch of 'American Gothic' by Grant Wood
Some artists cling to the tiny hope of the American Dream, while Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' depicts the bleak reality. The unfashionable heroes, a resilient middle-aged farmer holding his pitchfork like a sceptre, accompanied by his stony faced devout colonial wife, a far cry from America's great Statue of Liberty triumphantly brandishing her torch to the sky.
A painting that stayed with us was Philip Guston's 'Bombardment' portraying the devastation caused by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's aerial bombing of the town of Guernica. The rare circular canvas creates an eyehole vision through which the viewer can observe a scene of chaos and utter destruction behind a wall of safety. Bodies surge towards you, running away from the inescapable swirling abyss that awaited them at the centre of the painting.
Sketch of 'Bombardment' by Philip Guston
The exhibition retained a focused and coherent central theme given the variety of artistic interpretations on display. Each artist dealt with their own version of events in their unique styles and challenged their own personal emotions to create a complete vision of the American subconscious in the 1930s. At the time, these paintings had a purpose - to bring together a community that had become isolated and riddled with apprehension by letting them know that were not alone in their fear. Today, they tell us of a time long past, anxieties that have since been fought and some conquered by a united country, and remain some of the most important works of art to date.
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