A Favorite Painting 28

Charles Sheeler, River Rouge Plant 1932

Growing up in a rust-belt city makes one particularly sensitive to the unique aesthetic and social qualities of an industrial landscape. When Sheeler chose this topic for several works in the 1920s and 1930s, these structures stood as evidence of the nation's modern economic might. Today their remnants signal a massive change, if not entirely of the nation's fortunes, than certainly of its drift from a production powerhouse to a consumer-oriented economy. What's striking about Sheeler's depiction of that earlier, unarguably more dynamic period, is that his industrial landscapes, as in the above image, are largely at rest. The structure and scale of his buildings suggest their potential, but there's little hint of actual work being done (not so much as a thin wisp of smoke escaping in this one). The pristine facade of his buildings belie their actual grimy machanistic purpose, and the placid water in the foreground suggests more a rural swimming hole than a busy shipping byway (or worse, industrial sewage receptacle). In a way, such a scene is now more a reflection of the contemporary situation in places like Buffalo and Cleveland and Detroit-- hulking shells of once booming industries, rendered silent and empty, abandoned and neglected, and representing no longer potential, but decay. I wonder if Sheeler anticipated these changes, imagined a silencing of the machines, and the toll that would take on communities. Or, alternatively, maybe he just had the capacity to strip these places of function for the purpose of celebrating the interplay of shapes and planes and light in a context where few others saw art or beauty. Maybe it's just me, but I find that something worth thinking about.