American Regionalism

アメリカン・リージョナリズム / 1930–1943 / Style / American Modern Art

A movement in Depression-era America that refused the European avant-garde and painted the farming and labour of the Midwest in realist terms. Rolling hills, stylised figures and legible narrative became national imagery by way of murals, magazines and postage stamps. The classic case of a region turned into a style.

American Regionalism — Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

American Regionalism — Detail of a Thomas Hart Benton mural (Truman Presidential Library) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · © Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada — Detail of a Thomas Hart Benton mural (Truman Presidential Library) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · © Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada

At a glance

Visual cues

Compositions of rolling hills and farmland
Stylised, plain-spoken figures
Scenes with a clearly legible narrative
Colour keyed to the earth

Best used for

Civic and cooperative identity for agriculture, regional food and public utilities, where a place has to look as though it belongs to the people who work it
Large-format mural and packaging illustration that must tell its story from across a room

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Dictionary entry

Type: A sturdy slab or heavy-stemmed grotesque, set in short declarative lines like a mural caption.
Composition: A single figure or task at mid-height, the ground curving behind it in bands, the horizon high and the sky small.
Material: Earth pigments of ochre, umber and oxide green, printed on stock warm enough to keep the whites off white.
Caution: Borrowing the rolling fields as nostalgic wallpaper strips away the labour that is the actual subject and leaves folksy pastiche, and figures simplified too far erase the specific land into generic countryside.
Further study: The difference between Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton / Its relation to the public mural programmes / The critique of its nationalism

Related entries

Mexican Muralism (メキシコ壁画運動)Shared effects: Trust.Compare American Regionalism and Mexican Muralism
WPA Poster (WPAポスター)Shared effects: Trust / Intimacy.Compare American Regionalism and WPA Poster

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Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/american-regionalism
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