Modern and Contemporary Art Painting IV (Mechanical Abstraction) 1916 Morton Livingston Schamberg, American, 1881 - 1918 Oil on panel * Gallery 181, Modern and Contemporary Art, first floor 1950-134-180a The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 |
LabelThis painting is one of a series of nine exquisitely crafted images of individual machines that Morton Schamberg made in Philadelphia in 1916. These austere pictures reveal the artist's appreciation of the formal beauty of machinery and industrial manufacturing. They can be viewed today as an important precursor of the Precisionist aesthetic developed by Schamberg's lifelong friend Charles Sheeler, among others, in the 1920s. The immediate inspiration can be found in Marcel Duchamp's precisely rendered chocolate-grinder paintings and Francis Picabia's schematic portraits, although Schamberg's depersonalized mechanical abstractions do not exhibit the sexual symbolism found in the work of his French colleagues.* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit. |
