Cult of the Machine: Precisionism and American Art

by Emma Acker, Sue Canterbury, Adrian Daub

A fresh look at a bold and dynamic 20th-century American art style

Characterized by highly structured, geometric compositions with smooth surfaces, linear qualities, and lucid forms, Precisionism fully emerged after World War I and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. This insightful publication, featuring more than 100 masterworks by artists such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth, sheds new light on the Precisionist aesthetic and the intellectual concerns, excitement, tensions, and ambivalences about industrialization that helped develop this important strand of early American modernism. 
 
Essays explore the origins of the style—which reconciled realism with abstraction and adapted European art movements like Purism, Cubism, and Futurism to American subject matter—as well as its relationship to photography, and the ways in which it reflected the economic and social changes brought about by industrialization and technology in the post–World War I world. In addition to making a meaningful contribution to the resurging interest in Modernism and its revisionist narratives, this book offers copious connections between the past and our present day, poised on the verge of a fourth industrial revolution.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in association with Yale University Press

Exhibition Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young
(03/24/18–08/12/18) Dallas Museum of Art
(09/16/18–01/06/19)
 

Genres: Art

244 pages, Hardcover

Published April 10, 2018

Reviews

[William West · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent exhibit that put the Precisionist movement in historical context in relation to Cubism, Russian Formalism, and Dada. Somewhat ironically, the Precisionists were striving to create an "authentically" American painting style, even with the obvious influence of the above listed European schools.

As has been noted in depth by far more knowledgeable people than I, it is striking how much the avant-gardes of early twentieth century America and the USSR reflected each other. In both cases, industrialization was seen as a road to an ultra-modern utopia. In the Utopias of both Precisionism and Formalism, there seems to be little place for the human. Charles Scheeler, perhaps the most paradigmatic example of a Precisionist, and the artist most on display here, is noted as having said, "I strive to show how beautiful the world would be if only there were no people in it."

If the exhibit has the most quantity of Scheeler, his works were not, for me at least, the highlights. Early, urban works by Georgia O'Keefe convinced me that I might actually respond to her work. (I must say I've always struggled to appreciate her later, more iconic style.) But the great discovery for me in the show was the work of George Ault, one of the few Precisionists to take a decidedly dim, even apocalyptic view of modernity. His America seems almost magical-realist, but in a dark way, as if his landscapes are littered with mystical monsters.

As the exhibit points out at the end, Precisionism came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War II. With the revelation of the mass murder that industrialization had made possible, its utopian promise quickly seemed hollow. The dominant American painting style became Abstract Expressionism, which rejected the tenants of Precisionism about as radically and absolutely as possible.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

My agenda in reading this exhibition catalogue was to get a better sense of how "Precisionism" related to other art movements. Considering how much its practitioners were influenced by Dada (Marcel Duchamp was a direct influence since he was residing in New York at the time) and Futurism, you could write the Precisionists off as a down-market expression of European trends. Still, the argument is also made that while World War II destroyed the more benign beliefs in the supremacy of the machine, the movement still contributed to Minimalism and Pop Art, among other American artistic genres. That it was demonstrated that this art was not merely some sort of dead end was what I was looking for.

There is also something of an irony in this book, in as how the assorted essayists want to link Precisionism, with its fascination with the high technology of the time, with contemporary obsessions relating to digital technology. These people are now caught like insects in amber, as the COVID epidemic, and the Russo-Ukrainian war, basically broke the globalist economy, putting a severe dent in those enthusiasms.

Also, granted that the contributors are mostly concerned about the relationship between art and technology, it does seem that there was a missed opportunity to write about Precisionism in relation to other American schools of epic landscape painting.

Finally, as a last word, I particularly like the observation taken from Georgia O'Keefe on the New York cultural scene of the the 1920s, and how while the denizens of the salons talked about creating the "Great American Novel," or the "Great American Play," no one was talking about creating the "Great American Painting." If that isn't a declaration of "challenge accepted," I don't know what is.

[Tracy]

I read two of the essays, which I found interesting, framed in the same light I came to the book -- considering our relationship with modern technology, and comparing that to the past. They weren't excessively long, though did take me a bit to get through. I appreciated that the artwork was clearly labeled so the essays could reference the plates. The art seemed well-curated, demonstrating variety of styles, artists, and mediums while feeling like the works belonged together. The book was beautifully designed, with silver endpapers and ink highlights, and organized neatly into sections.