Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine Details
About the Author Karen Lucic is Professor of Art and Program in American Culture, Vassar College. She is the author of At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression. Read more
Reviews
The author, Karen Lucic, by her title implies that Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine are related. Perhaps they are, in the public mind, and Lucic provides some evidence of that. However, Sheeler's embrace of the industrial age was much more nuanced and tentative than her title would lead one to believe. There was fascination over modern machinery and technological advances, but the term cult is too strong. Maybe her editor insisted she use it. The abstract forms provided by industrial equipment and industrial shapes provided Sheeler with a rich source of material with which to craft his own, American solution to the modernist challenges offered by Cezanne, Braque and Picasso. Setting that mild criticism aside, the author offers a balanced view which reveals Sheeler as a careful, sensitive craftsman with a keen eye for design - an artist's artist, a photographer's artist, and not a propagandist or an illustrator. Far from it. Reading this book will reward one with a keener appreciation of the state of Modern Art in America as it learned to adapt to a technological age with its wonders and absurdities.