Dream and Perspective: American Scene Painting in Southern California
by Susan M. Anderson
The arts which today have most vitality for the average person are things he does not take to be arts: for instance, the movie, jazzed music, the comic strip, and, too frequently, newspaper accounts of love nests, murders, and exploits of bandits.
JOHN DEWEY [1]
In 1932 when Thomas Hart Benton, the most active participant in the American Scene movement, introduced Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters into one of his panels for the Whitney Museum of American Art mural, The Arts of Life in America, he demolished the usual boundaries separating "high" and "popular" art. In the same mural, he alternately celebrated various aspects of American culture and "thumbed his nose" at the political world.[2] Benton's artistic act, considered brazen at the time, gave visual form to a direction for American art that became established coast to coast and that continues to lend vitality to contemporary art today. Nowhere was the merger of "high" and "low" so compatible in 1930s and 1340s America as in Los Angeles, an irreverant city in which popular culture and fine art went hand-in-hand, and where art and artists played a dual social role: they reflected a growing awareness and concern about social issues, while they participated in the American dream by projecting an image of optimistic faith.
In the 1920s, Southern California seemed the promised land
of perfect climate and beauty, and of fortunes to be made in real estate,
movies, tourism, and oil. Local plein air painters were making images of
this golden land at the very moment that impressionism was first becoming
widely appreciated by publics in Europe and America. In Europe impressionism
was popular due to its simultaneous and seemingly contradictory projection
of the nostalgic aura of "paradise lost" in the wake ofthe destruction
of World War I and the "radicalism" of modern culture. In the
United States, Depression-era paintings of the American scene, rather than
impressionist scenes, would mirror the
developing machinery of modern, and hence, mass culture, while at the same
time reflecting a sense of nostalgia for the agrarian past.
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Southern California artists still came mostly from distant areas and studied in schools outside the region. In general, the art scene was conservative, and art-making devoid of ideological underpinnings. While a few artists explored new forms and techniques and worked in a modernist vein, the majority broadly interpreted impressionism and focused on pure landscape. There was no strong regional tradition other than impressionism in the visual arts, and there were few institutions -- schools, museums, and galleries -- to support the arts.
In the 1930s artistic activity in Southern California shifted to Los Angeles. A greater openness to modernism developed, and painters who had been inspired by impressionist models consolidated their findings. Concurrently a younger generation, largely regionally-bred and trained, came to the fore. This essay examines the contribution of these younger painters and the American Scene movement of which they were a part. Like painters associated with the movement elsewhere, Southland artists articulated personal visions of their native land, creating both positive rural and urban views (commonly called Regionalism) as well as scenes incorporating social and political commentary (called Social Realism). And although the artists depicted a specific time and place -- Southern California in the 1930s and 1340s -- in their best work they made broader comments on the human condition.
No single individual or group of artists wholly dominated the American Scene movement in Southern California. There were the government art projects and the presence of the Mexican muralists which contributed to a strain of Social Realism in the region. Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Lorser Feitelson, who were actively experimenting with modernist forms, were highly influential as the directors of the federal art projects in the area. Barse Miller, Fletcher Martin, Paul Sample, Phil Dike, Millard Sheets, Hardie Gramatky, Emil J. Kosa, Jr., Phil Paradise, Ben Messick, Lee Blair, Rex Brandt, and others formed a loosely-knit group often referred to as the California School, which interpreted the American scene in a uniquely Southern California way.
The California School created mainly positive Regionalist images epitomizing the proclivity to American dream making of the era, although its artists sometimes also painted mild social commentaries. Watercolor, unabashedly traditional and popular, was a major vehicle of expression for artists of the California School. The special climate of the region afforded artists an outdoor existence, encouraging use of the medium in the field. They developed a plein air approach that allowed for improvisation and gestural freedom; completing their paintings in one session, they applied broad strokes of fresh color quickly and spontaneously. The picturesque Southern California landscape and its quality of light drew the artists outdoors to paint, and the power of the land shaped their consciousness, but for the most part, they rejected the traditional painted landscape. They were concerned with the rawness of the Southern California urban and rural landscape, and they incorporated narrative and diverse aspects of popular culture into their art as well.
The merging of traditional art with popular or democratic notions about art occurred in the United States during the 1930s in the midst of political and economic turmoil. Many regions throughout the country forged their artistic identity under the influence of the New Deal. Southern California art reflected the national American Scene movement, but grew out of the existing cultural fabric of the state. It was the unique product of the particular historical condition and economic circumstance of the region. Southern California, with its Hispanic legacy, large population of Pacific Asians, and influx of European emigres, was conditioned by its multicultural nature. Murals and paintings of the California scene such as Tom Craig's Plaza Los Angeles, 1935, reflected that reality. During this period the region grew to over two million inhabitants, first emerging quickly from its rural status, then suffering the collapse of its boomtown image. The area witnessed the arrival of whole populations from the Midwest and other points in the United States harder hit by the Depression, who were seeking Southern California's mild climate and healthier economy.
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