by Joan K. Yanni
Blogger’s Note: A painting by John Steuart Curry on loan
at the time (1992) to the MAG inspired the Blogger/Author to write the
following article for the Docent Newsletter:
As the Hudson River
School painted the glories of America's wilderness, and the Ashcan painters
recorded scenes of the city, so the American Regionalists championed the
Midwest. The triumvirate of Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Grant Wood
(1892-1942), and John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), painted pictures that the
public could understand and enjoy, and for a decade, focused attention on the
people and places of Middle America.
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| Boomtown |
MAG has an excellent
Benton; Boomtown (51.1) was part of the Benton retrospective
that traveled around the country last year. Now we have on loan a
remarkable painting by Curry, installed next to Boomtown.
The Bathers shows three men, probably farm hands, and
two boys cooling off in a water-filled animal trough. The farm in the background
looks brown and hot. A tractor sits idle, and two pigs may be heading for
the shade of trees in the far right side of the picture. The men, two of
whom are dousing each other with a pail of water, look unusually clean and
groomed for farm hands; but they have the tan of outdoor laborers on their
faces and forearms. The young boy with his hands above his head, about to jump
into the water, is said to be the youthful Curry. As a second-grader pointed
out, the figures are "not wearing shorts."
The painting is dated
1928, the same year as Curry's well-known Baptism in Kansas, and
its men are splashing in the same round animal trough being used for a baptism
in the latter picture. The Bathers is
said to be the last of Curry's major works still in private hands.
John Steuart Curry was
born on a farm in Kansas. After high school he decided to study art, for
a brief time in Kansas City, then at the Art Institute of Chicago. He
became a successful magazine illustrator, contributing to Boy's Life, The
Saturday Evening Post and other Curtis publications, but he wanted to produce more serious art. He
went to Paris to study for a year, and returned to his studio in
Westport, Connecticut, to paint what he knew and loved best—the Midwest.
He received his first recognition as an important American painter when Baptism
in Kansas was exhibited in a show at the Corcoran Gallery in 1928.
By 1929 the Great
Depression had begun, and people were yearning for better, happier times.
The cities were poor and dirty; Curry's scenes of the manicured, abundant
farmlands of the Midwest supplied reassurance and hope. Some of his
paintings, like Wisconsin Landscape, are quiet panoramas of the
land; others, such as The Tornado, depict the violence of
nature. He injected movement, vibrant color and melodrama into his works.
During the '30s Curry
increasingly turned to mural work where he could comment on social problems and
reach even larger segments of the population. His murals are on the walls
of the Department of Justice and Interior in Washington, the University of
Wisconsin in Madison, and the Kansas State Capitol Building.
In 1936, after teaching
at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union in New York City, he returned to
the Midwest to become artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, where
he stayed until his death in 1946.
Curry and Grant Wood met
in 1933 and remained friends throughout their lives. They also knew Benton.
All three had independently rejected the European art of the Armory Show,
believing that America should have an indigenous art, realistic and
nationalistic. Their art flourished until the late 30s and the coming of
World War II, when interest in Regionalism ended and Internationalism captured
the attention of the public.
Sources:
Czestochowski, Joseph S.: John Steuart Curry and
Grant Wood, A portrait of Rural America; Eliot, Alexander:
Hundred Years of
American Painting
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