"Work and Leisure in American Art: Selected Works from the Collection" on view at the Montclair Art Museum
Work and Leisure in American Art comprises
over 60 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works on paper that explore the
universal themes of labor and leisure in America from the 18th century to the
present day. The works on view range chronologically from Benjamin West’s
exposure of political corruption in the painting
Oliver Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament (1782)
to scenes of
industrial and urban labor in the 20th century by Thomas Hart Benton,
Stuyvesant Van Veen, and others. Their rural counterparts are seen in the wood
engravings of Winslow Homer from the 1870s, as well as the prints of Clare
Leighton in the 1930s, the cotton pickers of William Gropper in 1952, and
others. In her three prints entitled Executive
Tower, West Plaza, 1982, Ida Applebroog features self-absorbed
business people, as she explored issues of contemporary urban identity in terms
of isolation, alienation, and dehumanization.
Images
of leisure in the exhibition encompass children at play, with Eastman Johnson’s
Sketch for In the Hayloft,” c.
1877–78,
Homer’s See Saw, Gloucester,
Massachusetts, 1874,
Winslow
Homer (1836-1910)
Seesaw – Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1874
Wood engraving
Sheet: 9 x 14 in. (22.9 x 35.6
cm)
Montclair Art Museum: Gift
of Elaine and Julian Hyman, 2002.18.4
and Currier and Ives’ American Homestead-Spring (1869),
Currier
& Ives
Ives,
James Merritt, American, 1824-1895
Currier,
Nathaniel, American, 1813-1888
American Homestead – Spring, 1869
Hand-colored
lithograph
Montclair
Art Museum: Gift of George Raimes Beach, 1989.52
and
Montclair art colony artist Lawrence Earle’s version of the popular string game
Cat in the Cradle (1891).
Lawrence Earle
Cat In The Cradle
Media: Watercolor
Signed: Lower Left
L C EARLE '91
Size: 25 1/2" x 18"
Collection of the Montclair Art
Museum
The
theme of sports is represented by various works, including images of horse
racing at Saratoga by Winslow Homer, as well as Jon Corbino’s Race Track (1936) and golf in 1932 by
Orrin White, based in Pasadena, California.
The beach and
bodies of water as the locus for leisure activities is featured in the 19th-century
work of Winslow Homer, as well as the early 20th-century artists Jane Peterson
and Hayley Lever, with Justine Kurland providing a contemporary perspective in
her photograph
Frog Swamp(Covington, Louisiana), 2001.
Justine Kurland (b. 1969)
Frog Swamp (Covington, Louisiana), 2001
Satin laminated C-print, Ed.
4/6
Montclair Art Museum: Gift
of Patricia A. Bell, 2004.17.1
Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes
& Nash.
Another section of the exhibition is
devoted to images of music and dance, ranging from late 19th-century works by
Arthur B. Davies and Charles E. Proctor to the era of the 1940s as seen in
Hilde Kayn’s Swingtime (1945) and Weegee’s photograph Calypso (At a Club in Harlem) (ca. 1944).
Irving Couse’s early 20th-century painting Indian
Courtship featuring a flute-playing Native American also relates to
the themes of friendship and romance,
as evidenced in other works in the
exhibition, including Navajo painter Harrison Begay’s (1917–2012) Old Friends Meeting (n.d.), John Ahearn’s
monumental sculpture of a man from the Bronx and his dog, Toby and Raymond (1986), as well as Andy
Warhol’s small 1972 photo album of his friends and associates, some of whom
starred in his movies.
Photographs of
urban life and leisure range from John Sloan’s Bonfire Snow (ca. 1919)
to works by Garry Winogrand and Joel
Meyerowitz in the 1960s, to Faith Ringgold’s monumental quilt Tar Beach 2 (1990) and Dawoud Bey’s
beer-drinking Smokey, 2001.
Their more suburban, domestic counterparts can be found in the works of
Will
Barnet (Old Man’s Afternoon, 1947),
Roger Brown’s print of television-watching people, Talk Show Addicts (1993),
