Art as a Reflection of

1920s Culture and

Society

18th Century American Painting

Benjamin West, The Treaty of Penn with the Indians, (1772)

18th Century American Painting

John Trumbull, The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775 (1786)

18th Century American Painting

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, (1778)

Romanticism

19th Century American Painting

George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, (1845)

19th Century American Painting

Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, (1863)

19th Century American Painting

Winslow Homer, The Coral Divers, (1885)

Realism

Landscape

Impressionism

The 1920s

George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, (1924)

Thomas Hart Benton, Boomtown, (1928)

Ben Shahn, Sacco and Vanzetti, (1926)

John Held, Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks, (1926)

John Steurt Curry, Baptism in Kansas, (1928)

Unknown, “Don Juan,” Starring John Barrymore, (1926)

Self Portrait (1920)

Archibald John Motley, Jr.

Palmer C. Hayden “Bal Jeunesse,” (1927)

Cloyd Lee Boykin, Charles Lindbergh, (1927)

Howard Thain, The Great White Way-Times Square, N.Y.C., (1925)

The streamlined, brightly colored, overlapping and repeating geometric design elements typical of Art Deco style were in many instances inspired by the movement of machines and the great industrial growth of the 1920’s.

For many Americans during the 1920’s, Art Deco symbolized the period’s optimism about the future of technology, industry, and the modern world.

Art Deco derived its name from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris to celebrate modern technological growth and innovation.

Art Deco

Chrysler Building - NYC

Empire State Building - NYC

Rockefeller Center - NYC

City Hall – Buffalo, NY