Visions of America Abstraction
Beatrice Harvey
Art/125
October 5, 2015
Dawn Sealy
Visions of America Abstraction
The Ashcan School painting depicted the urban landscape with their social dashes of realism being a tab bit grim. However, as always there is always another side of art. That movement was called Futurism or sometimes Precisionism. That look upon the urban landscape not with encouraging but with moving, confident outlook, reveling in the rising skyscrapers, the showy neon colors, the noise, the continuous motion, and the enormous scale that was the American cityscape. To see machines and figures in motion together is what made it come to life. The thing about this is that most of the people who created work during this period were imported. Like Joseph Stella, he was born in Italy where he moved to America at the age of 19. One of Joseph Stella work of arts that caught my eye is his different version on the Brooklyn Bridge. But the one like the most is the Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an old theme, even though it abstracts work you can see the bridge up close and personal as well as a far away with the city in the background. You can see the city skyline, steel cables going all over the bridge. It like your almost at the top of the bridge, looking at buildings that are almost at your eye level. I love how the colors are vibrant but yet still precise; he captures how the city never sleep, the lights are still shining brightly even at night. I love how he at the bottom of the painting shows the bridge and the city it's connecting to. It's like yeah it's a painting and yeah its abstract but I still want you to not only appreciate the attractiveness in his painting but also respect the beauty of what is real.
References
http://www.humanitiesweb.org/spa/gai/ID/265