Charles Sheeler Sheeler01 pre.indd 1 31/10/2007 14:12:33 Sheeler01 pre.indd 2 31/10/2007 14:12:33 Charles Sheeler Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction Mark Rawlinson Sheeler01 pre.indd 3 31/10/2007 14:12:34 Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Mark Rawlinson 2008 The right of Mark Rawlinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, eletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the proior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 970 1 85043 901 1 (hb) 970 1 85043 902 8 (pb) A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Sheeler01 pre.indd 4 31/10/2007 14:12:34 Contents List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 1 Musing on Primitiveness 8 2 A Photograph, a Drawing and a Painting: Sheeler’s New York Series 44 3 The Disappearing Subject: Self-Portrait 77 4 Is it Still Life? Sheeler, Adorno and Dwelling 99 5 Between Commission and Autonomy: Sheeler’s River Rouge 128 6 Late Work/Late Style 164 Afterword 180 Notes 182 Index 207 Sheeler01 pre.indd 5 31/10/2007 14:12:34 Sheeler01 pre.indd 6 31/10/2007 14:12:34 Illustrations Black and White Figures 1 Side of White Barn, Bucks County 9 2 Barn Abstraction 10 3 Doylestown House: Stairwell 36 4 Doylestown House: Stairway with Chair 37 5 Doylestown House: Interior with Stove 40 6 New York, Park Row Building 46 7 New York 47 8 Dan Mask, Female Style, Ivory Coast 56 9 Frances Picabia, Here, This is Stieglitz Here (Ici, C’est ici Stieglitz) 82 10 Morton Schamberg, Mechanical Abstraction 84 11 Morton Schamberg, Telephone 85 12 African Musical Instrument 105 13 Still Life and Shadows 107 14 Cactus 108 15 Tulips and Etruscan Vase 115 16 Criss-Crossed Conveyors – Ford Plant 130 17 Ingot Molds, Open Hearth Building – Ford Plant 131 18 Ingot Molds, Open Hearth Building – Ford Plant detail 135 19 Upper Deck 149 20 Canal with Salvage Ship – Ford Plant 157 21 Rolling Power – Power-series 167 22 The Artist Looks at Nature 171 23 Ballardvale Mill, Close Up with Raking Shadows 174 24 Counterpoint 177 25 Ore into Iron 178 Sheeler01 pre.indd 7 31/10/2007 14:12:34 viii Illustrations Colour Plates appearing between pages 88 and 89 1 Flower Forms 2 Church Street El 3 Skyscrapers (formerly known as Offices) 4 Self-Portrait 5 View of New York 6 Interior 7 Home, Sweet Home 8 American Landscape 9 Classic Landscape 10 Ballardvale 11 New England Irrelevancies 12 Aerial Gyrations Sheeler01 pre.indd 8 31/10/2007 14:12:34 Introduction The identification of familiar objects comprising a picture is too often taken for an appreciation of the work itself and a welcome opportunity for a cessation of investigation. Charles Sheeler1 Charles Sheeler’s work has been lauded as exemplary and Precisionism, the art historical category with which his work is synonymous, occasionally accorded the distinction of being the first original modern art movement in twentieth-century American art. Equally, Sheeler’s precisionist art and Precisionism as a wider art historical movement have been derided as derivative; a weak and stylised interpretation of Cubism, bereft of the latter’s intellectual core, and too much in the sway of the culture industry’s mythologising of American monopoly capitalism. Situated somewhere between these oppositional accounts is yet another Sheeler: avant-garde in his principles, yet resolute in the pursuit of a form of realism over pure abstraction; unashamedly bewitched by the technological advances of his age, yet fearful of their consequences; a man with one eye on modern design and architecture, the other fixed on traditional crafts and architecture, especially those of the Shaker communities. Consequently, what distinguishes the artist’s attitude towards American modernity is neither criticism nor hyperbolic proselytising but ambivalence. And this seems a fair assessment. Sheeler’s self- commentary reveals an artist often conflicted, unable to resolve fully the more incompatible aspects apparent between his intellectual position, aesthetic sensibilities and working practices. On paper, the tensions across Sheeler’s work and practice seem suggestive of a more complex series of issues at work in the works themselves. And actually, when one looks very closely at Sheeler’s work, it is exactly these tensions that, I will argue throughout this book, reveal the works themselves as being far from ambivalent. My emphasis in this volume, then, is not to offer yet another critical biography of Sheeler but to focus much more on the Sheeler02 intro.indd 1 31/10/2007 14:13:25