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(Go to the NY Times website to see a slide show on blue-collar art.)
“Poor art for poor people.”
In the 1930s, the painter Arshile Gorky wielded that phrase like a
weapon, disparaging what he saw as propagandist figurative art, art that
often depicted and ennobled the American worker. And Gorky was far from
alone in his scorn, as painting raced toward the purities of Abstract
Expressionism. In his essay “Abstract Art Refuses,” Ad Reinhardt listed
the numerous noes of his work, which included “no vested interests”; “no
art history in America of ashcan-regional-W.P.A.-Pepsi-Cola styles”;
and, most certainly, “no involvements.”
But the arrows of history and taste bend in mysterious ways. And with
Labor Day at hand, New York finds itself — partly by happenstance,
partly by design — in the middle of what might be described, with
apologies to Gorky, as a rich moment for art about the working class,
whose embattled existence is once again an issue in a presidential
campaign. Over the last several weeks, I took myself on a rambling
blue-collar art tour of the city, with help from a few curators and
historians, visiting labor-themed art I’ve known for years — like the
Josep Maria Sert murals at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where I send visiting
family to stand beneath the crotch of the colossus, who seems to be
working not in a loincloth but in Fruit of the Looms — and finding
dozens of pieces I’d never seen before, some because they’ve been in
museum storage for years, or just acquired from private collections.
full:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/arts/design/where-blue-collar-art-is-having-its-moment.html
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