The sharp-edged path

I am going to write a bit about a group of artists I have only recently discovered; I should expand a little on that: what I really mean is that I have known some of these artists already but I was not aware that they formed part of a  group called the Precisionists by Alfred Barr, of the Museum of Modern Art.

Here are two of the most prominent members and a link to a piece from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York about them

Charles Sheeler -Water 1945

 

Charles Demuth -After Sir Christopher Wren 1920

 

:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prec/hd_prec.html

They were tightly focussed on the machine age in America and one of their members - Paul Strand, a photographer - made a documentary paean of praise to his city in 1921 -'Manhatta':

 

Of note in this are strong remblances to Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' and if you watch very carefully you will see a skyscraper that might have been an inspiration for some of Philip Johnson's later work.

There is a cerain innocence about the film to our slightly cynical post-postmodern eye but some of the images are very sharply made  - after all they were new then.

It  is not realised perhaps that Georgia O'Keefe was a longtime participant in the group ideal right up to the 1960s long after it had ceased to be a coherent movement.
Another thing that caught my attention was that the Met piece described their work as 'hard-edged'.
There you are - it just keeps appearing.

Now  -announcing a new feature :

The Spot Diary

This will appear daily (or almost) without comment (hard for me) or as in French :

Sans Parole.