MSOE Exhibition Depicts Change from Rural to Urban
| Published: 12/14/2005 |
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Through the works of 16 European artists, Changing Skylines: From Rural to Industrial, 1845 to 1963 portrays the dramatic impact of industry on once rural skylines. The exhibition opens Friday, Jan. 20, 2006, 5 to 9 p.m. as part of Gallery Night.
Artists who painted the rural landscape portrayed the romantic idealism of rural life and its values of hard work, home schooling and cottage industry. All of the effort and hard work are rewarded by the harvest, a joyous time. The men and older children performed the hard chores while the women and young children performed the lighter chores, cooking, home schooling and weaving and other crafts. The skylines are clear, except for natural clouds and weather effects.
Rural skylines include those painted by Julien Dupré (French, 1851-1910). In Stacking Grain Sheaves, Dupré paints in the style of the Barbizon school, which promoted and popularized the rural lifestyle. In keeping with those paintings, the woman wears the French national colors.
Trained as a glass designer before taking up painting in later life, Otto Pfeiffer (Alsatian, 1882-1955) depicts a rural scene in the Ice Block Transport. In addition to his rural scenes, he painted wildlife and is exhibited at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum in Wausau.
Also featured is the 1901 work by János Pentelei-Molnár (Hungarian, 1878-1924), The Potato Harvest, depicting a family harvesting potatoes on a blustery fall day.
In stark contrast to the idealism of the rural landscape painters, painters of industrial skylines portray the realism of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Tremendous social changes occurred when families moved off their farms, giving up the lifestyle of rural areas and moved into the cities where men, women and children worked in the mills, shops, factories and coal mines, often for low wages.
Industrial skylines include those painted by Erich Mercker (German, 1891-1973), such as Large Steel Mill. Educated as an engineer, Mercker understood the workings of steel mills, foundries, forge shops and rolling mills as well as other industrial scenes, and also was a landscape painter.
Also are works by Erich Keller (1903- ), Giant Dragline 240, Soft
Coal Strip Mining, Pit Jonny Scheer I and Paetzold, Steel Mill
Row. Keller and Paetzold use different lenses to look at their subjects:
Keller uses anthropomorphism (applying animate characteristics to the inanimate)
to portray his dragline, capable of removing mountains and relocating towns as
rearing up to attack the earth. Paetzold portrays the blast furnace and its
effluent as black, obviously concerned with the environmental impact of this
industry.
Other upcoming exhibitions in conjunction with Gallery Night
include Inside Industry, 1850 to 2002, opening April 21, 2006, and
Natural Forces: Medieval Industrial Revolution, 800 to 1300, opening
July 28, 2006.
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Man at Work: The Eckhart G. Grohmann Collection at Milwaukee School of Engineering is a collection of European and American paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures depicting various forms of work -- from manpower and horsepower to water, steam and electrical power -- is the world's most comprehensive collection of its kind and numbers nearly 600 pieces made between the 17th and 20th centuries. It was gifted to MSOE in 2000 from the collection of Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, a Milwaukee businessman, collector and MSOE Regent, as a teaching tool and as an object lesson in the integration of aesthetics into a curriculum that increasingly includes the humanities.