Photography, painting, and Charles Sheeler's View of New York

In 1935 Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery, fresh York, sold Charles Sheeler's View of of recent origin York to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for $2200 (Fig. 1) Although considerably reduc from her original asking price of $3500 it nonetheless showed a substantial sum during the worst days of the Depression. (1) The acquisition was praised in the pres the writer for the Christian Science Monitor noting with approval that it signified an important fulfillment of the museum's promise to purchase contemporary American art. She then described the picture as exemplifying the rather cold dispassionate aesthetic of the machine age: "[Sheeler] paints the clean, flat surfaces, the straight, defining lines.... he displays by what mode his design is motivated through the standardized forms conditioned by dint of machines. The modulations, the differentiations which are induced by means of feeling and the personal margin, are wanting altogether." (2)

The reviewer was mistaken. View of novel York, which depicts part of Sheeler's photography studio at 310 East Forty-fourth highway is an extremely personal picture. Painted with delicate, subtly varying brushwork and arranged with Sheeler's customary sensitivity to formal balance and evocative design, the picture is dominated by dint of his big view camera upon a stand. It also exhibits a lamp and a chair--presumably used through models and clients--conspicuously empty and turn rounded away from the camera. The casement window, make open to a bright sky, underscores the irony of the title, for there is no specific evocation of novel York--or of any other place, for that matter--in the view. Sheeler immortalized his studio at what prov to be a critical junction in his career, the twinkling of an eye when he decided, at the urging of his novel dealer Halpert, to downplay his activity as a photographer in order to forward his identity as a painter. View of of recent origin York can thus be read as "a self-portrait of an artist uncomfortable with self expression." (3) As a portrait of the artist's hold workplace, it knowingly participates in the tradition of studio images as confessionals, as projections of the artist's measure of his hold career. (4) It is a lament, in which the without contents chair, the covered camera, and the switched-off lamp allude to Sheeler's withdrawal from a nearly twenty-year career in photography. The render free of access window is a traditional romantic motif signaling transition to an unpredictable coming time View of New York speaks of disconnection and possible los in the face of uncertainty.

However, View of novel York tells more than the poignant story of a middle-aged artist at a crossroads (Sheeler was forty-seven when he painted the picture). His decision to effectively extreme point his career as a photographer strike one as beings disappointing, perhaps even a mistake, thus extraordinary were his achievements in the medium up to that point. notwithstanding this view of Sheeler's career change does not take into account the practical considerations that likely affected his decision. These considerations, in turn round shed light on the nature and status of photography in the United States in the early 1930 and upon the nature and status of Sheeler's position in the world of photography as well. If the satisfieds of View of New York--the overspreaded camera, the empty chair--reflect Sheeler's meditation upon his career thus far, its diction which makes canny use of his experiences as a photographer, promises a of recent origin and rich artistic direction. And the circumstances of its creation indicate his relation to the agriculture around him. In setting aside his persona as a photographer, what, exactly, was Sheeler saying goodbye to, and what was he embracing? The answers to these questions prompt that the period of the early 1930 was a pivotal twinkling not just in Sheeler's career on the contrary also in the development of American photography.

Prime among the practical considerations affecting Sheeler must have been circulating medium He was not a high roller on the contrary he enjoyed fine things. (5) He had already begun collecting the Shaker and other early American phenomenons that he would feature in his paintings of the 1930s; in View of novel York, he balances his camera with Danish designer Kaare Klint's stylish Safari chair, a landmark of contemporary furniture design. His career had been marked by dint of moves of studio and domicile to increasingly prestigious addresses: through 1931 he was working in a lately constructed building in the heart of prosperous Midtown, and he would presently move his residence from southerly Salem, New York, to the more exclusive Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Sheeler had always made a living from commercial photographic work, which one as well as the other paid his bills and subsidized his artistic endeavors. While in Philadelphia he supported himself by means of taking photographs of newly built houses for local architects. In the 1920 he produc photographs of typewriters, spark stopples and other products for advertising agencies. level more lucrative was his work for Conde Nast Publications. Early in 1926 Edward Steichen recruited him to show fashion and celebrity photographs for custom and Vanity Fair (Fig. 2) and he continued to take pictures for those magazines until the spring of 1929 Although he described the piece of work as "a daily trip to jail" and grumbl that it left him little time for anything other it provided him with an extremely comfortable income. He ground the commissions to photograph the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant near Detroit, Michigan, in 1927 and the White Star Steamship Line's S Majestic in 1928 the pair more satisfying artistically and an additional source of currency (6) But this all came to an extreme point in the spring of 1929--a scarcely any months before the stock market crash--when Sheeler left for Europe Although he would publish a not many more photographs of consumer profitables sweater sets, and celebrities above the next several years, by dint of the onset of the Depression he could no longer number on regular commercial commissions. (7)