For Fans of American "country" paintings a la Grant Wood I thought it was Thomas Hart Benton who did those rolling hills and farms landscapes in the 1920s and 1930s but then I bought a book on Grant Wood. most famous for his Mr. & Mrs. farmer painting , entitled American Gothic, a couple in front of a barn. In that book there's several country scenes by Wood in the style of Thomas Hart Benton (typified by puffy trees that look likr cotton candy) so my question for art connoisseurs is: who was copying who, which of the two started that style first and did it irritate his rival? Besides the countryside paintings I think Wood's "Death on the Ridge Road" is a powerful painting. Like to hear more if anyone else thinks they were tit-for-tat rivals?
Wood's depiction of a Farmer & Daughter in front of tiny house with Gothic window & Barn to the side was quite a comment on Victorian America. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J727A using FerrariChat.com mobile app
Since my first viewing of Grant Wood's "Death on the Ridge Road" 50 + years ago at the Williams College Museum of Art, I have made many pilgrimages back to Williamstown, MA to see that powerful painting. To me it is far more interesting than "American Gothic". Perhaps the fact it is owned by a small New England College rather than some large Metropolitan Museum has kept it in the shadows. See for yourself... Image Unavailable, Please Login The telephone pole as the gravestone cross portends the inevitable. If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Berkshires of Western MA, the Clark Art Institute, also in Williamstown, is outstanding with its very large collection of French Impressionists. clarkart.edu
I have a book on Grant Wood and it reveals in there that he had to be careful not to overdo it and look like he was making fun of the bumpkins, making characteratures. My local bookshop has a book on Thomas Hart Benton waiting for me so I am eager to see whether he got along with Grant Wood. I have been trying to find what automotive painter of today shows the people as part of the narrative in the same way as Hart and Benton showed the people as part of the country life but so far found only Tom Fritz whose "characters" in his hot rod paintings always seem to be the same teenage boys having fun in the prewar days of hot rodding. Guys like Phil Remington, Shelby's chief mechanic, ho only a couple years later was mechnic on a bomber in the war. As a general comment, I appreciate comments on art in Fchat. It may be because I am an artist but I think art collecting by car collectors is way behind what one would expect...
There is a book I read many years ago about Route 20 crossing the US from MA to OR. Image Unavailable, Please Login The tale of that road as a conduit for western emigration by religious groups who felt persecution from the Puritan ethos. Names like Shakers, Oneida, Maytag, Amana, Chautauqua, Hill Cumourah, are stops on the way to western expansion and the creation of Middle America. Similarly, names like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hermann Melville, Susan B. Anthony, W.E.B. Dubois, Edith Wharton, Nathanial Hawthorn also dot that western pathway. Route 20 as it passes beneath Interstate 90 in MA and NY is a bucolic landscape worthy of Wood or Benton or Curry. I had often thought of a motorcycle road trip on Rt. 20 as very little of the Interstate system has supplanted it (unlike Rt 66). But I gave up bikes years ago. I do remember in my early college days, skydiving in Western, NY and thinking as I floated down under an open canopy, that this diorama below me was a Grant Wood painting. Image Unavailable, Please Login https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-West-Great-Across-America/dp/0791474690
Grant Wood's "death" painting is a little scary, like a movie poster for a '50s horror film. I will lookup Curry. Meanwhile here's a Tom Fritz hot rod painting and one of my own, the Cobra painting, , the only one out of 100 paintings of cars I made where I had the people part of the action. It's Charlie Agaipou, Bob Bondurant (at the wheel) and Phil Remington on the passenger side, talking over testing the 289 Comp somewhere in Europe. At least I got a print to Charlie, Phil has passed on. I think that I will do more paintings with people but they have to be doing something useful. Most automotive artists leave the people out but I'm going to include them if they tell the story better. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Alpintourer, you wrote: "I had often thought of a motorcycle road trip on Rt. 20 as very little of the Interstate system has supplanted it (unlike Rt 66). But I gave up bikes years ago." Well, if you don't take the trip on a motorcycle, how about an Ariel Atom? Image Unavailable, Please Login
Good idea. A friend is thinking of selling his. I had also once thought of a vintage Harley Servi-car (3 wheeler) as an XC vehicle. One trip I did do about 15 years ago was down the Continental Divide using a Mountain Bike route mapped out by the ACA. More likely to redo that in a Jeep vs my Dual Sport KTM 950. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Have never been on an Atom but I do think it is more stable than a two wheeler, and you have that much more contact with the road
American Country Paintings????? What happened???? There are other threads for mechanical vehicle crap.
I like the Bondurant Cobra a lot; you definitely should do more in this idiom. Was this a commission, on spec, or for yourself?
