Precisionism (painting)
Precisionism is a modern American painting style that emerged in the New York City area during the years following World War I, particularly gaining prominence in the 1920s and 1930s. This aesthetic is characterized by precise delineation of edges, a distillation of forms into essential geometric elements, and a focus on industrial and urban subjects, reflecting the rapid changes of the American landscape. Although it was not a formal movement with a manifesto, precisionist works often exhibit areas of unmodulated color, experimental perspectives, and a lack of visible brush strokes, contributing to a clean, sharp appearance.
Artists associated with Precisionism include Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Demuth, each drawing inspiration from various aspects of American life, from nostalgic elements to modern industrialism. The influence of European movements such as cubism and futurism is evident, as precisionists aimed to capture the essence of their subjects through geometric simplification. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. coined the term "precisionism" in 1927, which has since become the accepted label for this distinctively American style. Although its peak occurred in the early 20th century, elements of the precisionist aesthetic continued to influence subsequent generations of artists. Precisionism has been the focus of several significant exhibitions, underscoring its importance in the context of American art history.
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Precisionism (painting)
Precisionism refers to a modern American painting style (based in the New York City area) that began to take shape in the years following World War I and come of age in the 1920s and 1930s. Precisionism was more of an aesthetic than an actual movement. It never published a statement or manifesto, but precisionist works exhibit many shared features, including precise delineation of edges, distillation of form to its more essential geometrical elements, referential subject matter, removal of detail, areas of unmodulated color, experimental perspectives and cropping, elimination of visible brush strokes, and the exclusion of human presence. A brief list of artists who worked in this manner includes Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’ Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Joseph Stella, Niles Spencer, George Ault, Edmund Lewandowski, and Ralston Crawford.
Background
Three European modern art movements are associated with the precisionist aesthetic: cubism, futurism, and purism. Aspects adopted from each of these movements helped determine the formal characteristics of precisionism as well as its subject matter. Cubism had the most direct effect upon the formal properties of precisionist painting. Cubism’s appeal came from the artist’s ability to analyze and reduce a subject into its more essential nature of geometric forms. Futurism and purism inspired precisionists to look to their rapidly changing environment and to consider industrialization, mechanization, and the mundane as appropriate subject matter for their work. In the United States, the urban photography of artists such as Alfred Steiglitz would influence precisionist subject matter.
In the years following World War I and well into the decade of the 1920s, American artists strove to create a distinctly national style of art. Precisionism succeeded in being a distinctly American style of art for two reasons: It drew upon distinctly American subject matter and rendered it in a modern style. What qualified as distinctly American subject matter varied from artist to artist. Some artists looked to items or scenes that held a certain amount of nostalgia for America’s past; others looked to the machine age and advancements in industry. Though precisionism was based in New York City, this search for quintessentially American subject matter took artists to all corners of the nation. Sheeler and Demuth drew inspiration from their home state of Pennsylvania; O’Keeffe settled in the Southwest and used the local landscape, architecture, and found objects for her work; Lewandowski, who hailed from Wisconsin, depicted the Midwest.
Overview
The precisionist aesthetic is most associated with images that reflect the advancements in industrialization. For artists who wanted to be inspired by machine age subjects, the 1920s did not disappoint. New buildings such as skyscrapers, bridges, and factories provided the source for many a composition, the most memorable of which were the works of Sheeler.
Over the decades, Sheeler has become the artist whose work is most synonymous with precisionism. Throughout his career, he applied the precisionist aesthetic to a whole host of subjects, from still life to landscape, as well as from rural and urban sources. His most recognizable precisionist images are paintings completed in the late 1920s. These were painted after Sheeler had obtained a commercial photography commission from the Ford automobile company and visited Ford’s River Rouge plant, located south of Detroit. Sheeler photographed the complex in 1927—the images being used for Ford’s advertising campaign for the newly released Model A. Using the photographs of the River Rouge plant for inspiration, Sheeler created some of the first works that glorified the machine age. One such memorable work that fused this uniquely American subject with the precisionist style is Classic Landscape (1931).
Precisionist artists and their works were promoted by gallery owners such as J. B. Neumann, and at galleries such as the Whitney Studio Club, the Bourgeois Gallery, the Montross Gallery, the Daniel Gallery, the Rehn Gallery, and the Downtown Gallery. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, coined the term precisionism in 1927 to describe this type of art. By the middle of the twentieth century, Barr’s moniker had won out over other names such as magic realism, the immaculates, and cubist realism, which were used to refer to this style during the earliest years of criticism and scholarship.
Though the apogee of the precisionist style occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, the precisionist aesthetic continued on in some artists’ works. Sheeler, for example, would continue to work in this manner for decades. The next generation of precisionist artists included Ralston Crawford and Edmund Lewandowski. Precisionism has been the focus of several major exhibitions and solo exhibitions. Some of the most pertinent exhibitions were The Precisionist View in American Art (1960), The Precisionist Painters, 1916–1949: Interpretations of a Mechanical Age (1978), Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography (1982), Charles Sheeler: Across Media (2006), Edmund Lewandowski: Precisionism and Beyond (2010), and Cult of the Machine (2018).
Bibliography
Brock, Charles. Charles Sheeler: Across Media. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2006. Print.
Flint Institute of Arts. Edmund Lewandowski: Precisionism and Beyond. Flint: Flint Institute of Arts, 2010. Print.
Fort, Ilene Susan. "Precisionism." The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 25. New York: Grove, 1996. 461–462. Print.
Hunter, Sam, John M. Jacobus, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2004. Print.
Lewis, Michael J. American Art and Architecture. London: Thames, 2006. Print.
Lucic, Karen. Charles Sheeler in Doylestown. Allentown: Allentown Art Museum, 1997. Print.
Murphy, Jessica. "Precisionism." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. June 2007. Web.
"Quick intro to Precisionism: America's First Art Movement." Invaluable, 21 July 2021, www.invaluable.com/blog/precisionism/?srsltid=AfmBOorZ‗RNBgVe-gu34YC1uW5u9kAFc81uDx4djWpdqcL‗R45cATCgH. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
Troyen, Carol, and Erica E. Hirshler. Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987. Print.
Ward, Meredith. Streamlined: The Precisionist Impulse in American Art. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1995. Print.