Fralin Catalog (6-21-23) - Flipbook - Page 75
The interior
Labor & Leisure
I
nterior spaces within the architectural environments that we
occupy became a sharp focus of study and inquiry of modernity
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Environments for
social entertainment, political gatherings, and workplace tasks
took on a new interest, and are reflected and celebrated by artists of
the time.
The Noble Experiment, a monumental life-size figure painting by George
Luks, reveals a mix of social classes during the raucous 1920s at the
height of the Prohibition Era. From the properly tuxedoed and tophatted swell standing at the bar to the uniformed day laborer seated
in the foreground, the clandestine and illegal drinking establishments
known as speakeasies provided a range of encounters between
different socio-economic classes. In Guy Pène du Bois’ 1919 Dining Out,
we enjoy the meticulously mannered sophistication of an upscale New
York City restaurant, while in John Steuart Curry’s 1927 Paris Café, we
are delivered to a boisterously bohemian mix of the fashionable and
the exotic for which the Roaring Twenties is best known.
The pandemonium and revelry characteristic of national political
conventions is acutely observed by Samuel Johnson Woolf in The Voice
of the People. Crowded tiered balconies overlook a vast arena with
confetti flying and state delegations caucusing, while a lone speaker
attempts to gavel the unruly crowds to order.
Interiors can also provide intriguing glimpses into the world of labor
and industry. In a testament to careful observation and mark of its
realism, the artist Jonathan Eastman Johnson provides a veritable
inventory of the accoutrements and objects of the trade in Shoemaker
Hagerty’s Shop. The ordered cleanliness and more brightly lit and
well-worn interior of a small textile factory in Walter Gay’s The
Weavers seemingly illustrates a more organized factory for handmade
productions that conveys not only quiet tedium, but also the great
dignity of labor.
Opposite: detail of Walter Gay, The Weavers, 1885, illustrated page 74
75
