“Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster,” curated by Dr. Betsy Fahlman. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Through Oct. 14.
In the Dallas Morning News, Charissa N. Terranova writes that the show is small but exquisite. She reports: “Lancaster’s economic livelihood was rooted in tobacco processing and linoleum manufacturing. The paintings are proof of a deep synthesis of place and artistic work. Not only do the paintings represent the architecture of industry, they embody it as well. Demuth executed these works on Masonite. A factory-made floor material that was especially suitable for his industrial paintings, Masonite was mass-produced in Lancaster. Demuth brought his experiences living in Paris among avant-garde artists and the literati to bear on his interpretation of the industrial landscape. An American strain of modern painting called precisionism was the result. Precisionists such as Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper developed an abstract language for painting that was rooted in the American specificity of place.” Read more.
