Western Industrial

Charles SheelerWW-1955-013501

1955·Oil on canvas·58 × 73.5 cm (22 7/8 × 29 in.)

<p>Often associated with the American artistic group known as the Precisionists, Charles Sheeler was both a painter and a photographer. This late work, <em>Western Industrial</em>, depicts the Inland Steel plant in East Chicago, Indiana. Evident here is the artist’s interest in line and overlapping shapes, his restrained painting style, and his use of subdued color. The many diagonals leading the eye to various points in the composition give the impression of an active industry; however, the plant is devoid of humans. Indeed, a critic once referred to one of Sheeler’s works as a “depopulated landscape.”</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1955
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 58 × 73.5 cm (22 7/8 × 29 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Charles Sheeler

Artist

Charles Sheeler

Painting

A leading figure of the Precisionist movement of the 1920s – 30s, Charles Sheeler is known for his crisply-articulated interpretations of the modernizing American landscape, from the urban monoliths of the New York City skyline to the sprawling factories of the industrial Midwest. In his carefully balanced compositions, Sheeler explored aesthetic and conceptual tension, chiefly between abstraction and representation; objectivity and subjectivity; painting and photography; and the past and present. Sheeler employed a novel process for creating paintings based on his photographs, once observing: “Photography records inalterably the single image, while painting records a plurality of images willfully directed by the artist.” The process-driven dialogue between media and object endures as one of Sheeler’s greatest contributions to American modernism.

Philadelphia, PA, USA

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