Charles Sheeler

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Charles Sheeler about 1910

Charles Sheeler (born July 16, 1883 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † May 7, 1965 in Dobbs Ferry , New York ) was an American painter of realism . He is considered the main exponent of precisionism and one of the best photographers of the 20th century .

Life

Charles Sheeler was born the son of a manager of a steamship company. He received his education at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia and from 1903 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , where William Merritt Chase was his teacher. In 1906 he graduated from the academy and began to work as a professional photographer, as he could not survive with painting alone. In 1908 he traveled to Paris when Cubism began its rise there with Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso . Sheeler rented a farmhouse called Worthington in Doylestown , Pennsylvania in 1910 , which he lived in with the artist Morton Schamberg until his death in 1918. In 1927 he was hired by the Ford Motor Company to photograph their factory in River Rouge , Michigan .

In 1963 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

plant

Sheeler began his career as a photographer ; in these works he mainly focused on architecture . In 1920 he made the short film Manhatta with Paul Strand , one of the first artistic films in the USA. His farmhouse in Doylestown and the surrounding area became his most common subjects, especially the stove in one of the rooms. The most striking example is The Interior with Stove from 1917.

Sheeler called the motif that offered him the work for Ford “by far the most exciting thing I've had to work with.” Sheeler made his breakthrough with the oil paintings American Landscape (1930) and Classic Landscape (1931). Both show factory buildings, which makes the naming of the latter work in particular a statement against traditional landscape painting .

In 1938 Fortune magazine commissioned Sheeler with the execution of six paintings that “reflect life in forms and trace the fixed pattern of the human mind.” Sheeler fulfilled this commission by initially looking for inspiration with the camera for a year and finally delivered the paintings Primitive Power (a water wheel), Steam Turbine , Rolling Power , Suspended Power (a water turbine), Yankee Clipper (an airplane ) and Conversation: Sky and Earth (a dam ). The works were printed in the December 1940 issue.

Sheeler, the avowed precisionist , was repeatedly accused of simply painting what he had previously photographed. But how to z. For example, as can be seen in the above-mentioned Rolling Power painting from 1939, which shows the wheels and drive linkage of a locomotive , the paintings represent an idealized representation of reality, without the dirt and wear and tear that could be seen in the photograph.

literature

  • Friedman, Martin. Charles Sheeler. New York: Watson / Guptill Publications, 1975.
  • Lucic, Karen. Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Members: Charles Sheeler. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 26, 2019 .
  2. ^ See http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/precisionism/  : "incomparably the most thrilling I have had to work with".
  3. ↑ Cf. http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3409  : "that reflect life through forms and trace the firm pattern of the human mind."
  4. ↑ See archive link ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dallasmuseumofart.org
  5. ↑ See http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/precisionism/
personal data
SURNAME Sheeler, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1965
Place of death Dobbs Ferry , New York