HISTORY & THEORY 2: Reading Comprehension 7

For this reading comprehension, you will visit the GREENSBORO COLLECTS show at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. That show has been divided into seven themes by the curators; take the opportunity to review ALL the themes and the artwork in the show before settling in on the theme assigned to your discussion group.

Within the theme of the exhibit assigned to your group, select ONE work and draw a diagram of the work, using the principles and elements of design. Write a 250-word annotation for your diagram to the themes of the EXPLORATIONS unit and the readings assigned for this unit. In your annotation, analyze and include at least one other work of art in the theme you have been assigned, make 3-5 appropriate citations from the readings, and consider SCALE (artifact, space, building, and place) as you complete your work.

The work that I chose to diagram was the one that struck me as soon as I walked into the Intimate Moments section of the gallery. It is a photograph of a woman and her children, titled Migrant Mother, by Photogravure/Jon Goodman, Nipomo, California 1936.

Below is the photograph itself:

Migrant Mother- Photogravure, Jon Goodman

My abstract representation of photograph

The picture is harmonious in terms of principles and elements of design. It is balanced, with the mother being the focal point, flanked by her three children. The photo is made more powerful from the contrast in the black and white image. There is an emphasis on her expression and it is the first thing your eye is drawn to upon first viewing the image. The picture as a whole is very well composed, with the forms being clear to see and your eye moves around the picture in a logical manner.

I believe that this work is a wonderful portrayal of the feelings experienced during the time period we have discussed in the Explorations unit. The woman in the photograph is pictured with her hand on her face and a discerning expression. This is a look of uncertainty and questioning, much how designers and the rest of the world looked upon the looming question, What is it to be modern? This theme encompasses the Explorations unit as people try and unravel the answer to this inquiry and the different reactions that they had to it.  One of the reactions was the creation of a profession unheard of in previous decades, the interior decorator. Unsure and confused, much like the woman in the photo, people needed somewhere to turn for ideas and the pathway to what was considered as "good design." Massey states, "The rise of the interior decorator during the twentieth century was the result of changed social and economic circumstances" (Massey 123). The woman in the photograph appears to be searching into the distance for some sort of answer to the riddle of what she will do for herself and her family from that moment forward. People of this time were looking to these interior designers to answer some of the very basic questions of living. "The role of interior decorator has always been one of adviser and even confidante" (Massey 123). The woman in the photograph may also be showing signs of distress because, inferred from the title of "Migrant Mother", she has come upon a place and things that she is not familiar with. This unfamiliarity was expressed at this time in the world of design as well, with the emergence of new and unseen reactions to the question of modernism. "The earnest social utopianism of the original modernism was abandoned, replaced after 1945 by a bland, standardized aesthetic, sleek, machine-like, stripped of traditional ornament" (Roth 567). To this change, many designers turned, much as the children in the photograph are, away from it all, confused and disoriented by the sudden shift to such cold and rigid structures. 

This introduction of new ideas and ways of thinking reminded me of another work that was present in the Intimate Moments show, Danys y Lieths, a Color lithograph made in 2005. It depicts an African American woman embracing her small child. Upon reading the description of this work, it turns out that this was turn of the century art, one of the first to depict African American women. The never before explored content of this work parallels with the new ideas that modernism brought forth. It was about branching out from anything that had been seen before and exploring new ideas, Explorations, see? It was about designers, "adopting new approaches that address the complexity, revolutionary changes, plurality, and rampant consumerism of their time" (Hardwood 804).