Charles Sheeler, Upper Deck, 1929, oil on canvas, 28 ¾” x 21 ¾”, Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, currently on view in the Cult of the Machine exhibition.
This is the last week that the exhibition Cult of the Machine will be on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. If you can’t see it there, you will be able to catch it at the Dallas Museum of Art beginning September 16th.
Cult of the Machine is a survey of Precisionism, an American interpretation of Cubism and Futurism adapted to subjects from American life. These artists, working in various media, used a modernist “machine aesthetic” to celebrate the advances in technology that occurred in the early 20thcentury.
The exhibition includes art created by many of the most important American artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Demuth, but the real thrill is seeing many of Charles Sheeler’s stunning paintings from various collections in one setting. His meticulous manner of working and the surprising colorfulness of his compositions are elements that only can be fully appreciated in person.
