South of Scranton (1931) gathers various scenes that artist Peter Blume (1906 – 1992) encountered during an extended road trip in the spring of 1930. Setting out from his residence in Pawling, New York, Blume drove through the coalfields of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and then headed south toward the steel mills of Bethlehem. Blume then traveled further south to Charleston, South Carolina, where he witnessed several sailors performing acrobatic exercises aboard the deck of a German cruiser ship in the harbor. In an account of the painting’s origins, the artist stated, “As I tried to weld my impressions into the picture, they lost all their logical connections. I moved Scranton into Charleston, and Bethlehem into Scranton, as people do in a dream.” Blume’s crisp technique heightens the painting’s surreal appearance.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931) prominently displays the three colors of the American flag. Painted at a time when American artists, musicians, and writers were interested in identifying a uniquely American style and subject matter for their work, Georgia O’Keeffe offered a dissenting opinion about what images could best symbolize America.
Rather than paying homage to the lush agricultural landscape as the Regionalist painters did, or uncovering urban problems like the American Scene painters, she used a weathered cow’s skull to represent the enduring spirit of America. Although she made it as a joke on the concept of the “Great American Painting,” the picture is a quintessential icon of the American West.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Cow’s Skull: Red, White and Blue is part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
