A realistic painter as well as a photographer, Sheeler rarely failed to uncover harmonious coherence in the forms of indigenous American architecture. His series of photographs of the Ford plant near Detroit was commissioned by the automobile company through an advertising agency. Widely reproduced in Europe and America in the 1920s, this commanding image of technological utopia became a monument to the transcendent power of industrial production in the early modern age.
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Inscription: Signed in pencil on mount, recto, beneath image: "Charles Sheeler."; inscribed in pencil on mount, verso, top right: "EL 78.232"; bottom left: "Charles Sheeler 'River Rouge' 1927"
[...]; Van Deren Coke, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1944); John C. Waddell, New York (March 18, 1984)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
Whitney Museum of American Art. "The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-2000," April 22, 1999–September 5, 1999.
Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno. "Maquinas," September 19, 2000–November 19, 2000.
Fundacio La Caixa. "Maquinas," December 19, 2000–February 4, 2001.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Photography of Charles Sheeler," June 3–August 17, 2003.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "Charles Sheeler: Across Media," May 7, 2006–August 27, 2006.
Art Institute of Chicago. "Charles Sheeler: Across Media," October 7, 2006–January 7, 2007.
de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "Charles Sheeler: Across Media," February 10, 2007–May 6, 2007.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art. "Reimagining Modernism - Photographs Rotation 1," July 21–November 16, 2014.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography between the Wars: Selections from the Ford Motor Company Collection." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Spring 1988). p. 22.
Hambourg, Maria Morris. The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. frontispiece.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. p. 445.
Use viewing questions and a debate activity to investigate the relationship between art and community values, techniques artists use to convey ideas, and strategies for interpreting an American painting in the Museum's Modern and Contemporary galleries.
Charles Sheeler (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1883–1965 Dobbs Ferry, New York)
ca. 1927
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