Going into the 20th century, many were fueled by a world dedicated to new discoveries as industrial advancements continued to soar. Many found hope in this evolving world, and as the demands for these newfound inventions heightened, the need for working people exploded. Just as swiftly as the rise of an industrial world, came the crash that will forever rock history.
Homelessness. Starvation. Desperation.
The Great Depression hit hard in 1929 when Wall Street investors traded an estimated 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. This was not over a long period, rather, the 16 million shares were traded in a single day on October 29th. Suddenly, billions of dollars vanished, crumbling the industrialized world. Suddenly, the economic growth and widespread prosperity of the Roaring '20s had dissipated. By 1933, 25% of the United States population would fall into the unemployment trap. Millions begged for jobs to have enough money to put a roof over their head, or food on the table. People of all ages flooded the streets as these "luxuries" were no longer achievable. Even those who were fortunate enough to continue working experienced dramatic pay cuts. This catastrophe influenced the entire globe as every continent ultimately fell into the wrath of the economic crash. Hope was lost, and the artwork of the Early Modern Era only underlines this lost hope of the worst economic downturn in history.
The invention of photography boomed in the 19th century. As cameras evolved going into the 1900s, there is an intense shift in their abilities. By the start of the Great Depression, the subjects of the photograph no longer had to be still for long periods of time. The availability of this technology throughout the economic crash allowed for exact moments frozen in time and truly understanding the hardships of living throughout this era. Photos caught the real-life impacts that the crash took on society, from seeing thousands of people crowding around food banks just to keep from starving to parents selling their children out of true desperation.
Photo of Robley D. Stevens, 1931.
Depicting true desperation, a man named Robley Stevens stands on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, willing to toss out his own dignity to keep from starving to death. The sign tied around himself states, "I AM FOR SALE. I must have work or starve." The photographer of the work is unknown. At the time the photo was taken in August of 1931, the unemployment rate in the United States was 15.9%. Stevens had fallen victim to the circumstances of the Great Depression. The space of the photograph depicts himself on a busy street where he knows many will catch sight of him. The background depicts a crowd of people as he poses for them, praying to be chosen for work. It is almost as if he is a doll in the front window of a shop, hopeful that he will be bought by one of the onlookers that can afford him. The value of the image creates depth as the vibrant shade of the sign is where the eye immediately focuses on it, taking the attention completely away from the man. This only emphasizes his representation of an object for sale rather than a human being. Although color was not available during the time of photography, the black and white depiction of the image only enhances the mood of the era: dreary, dispiriting, and demoralizing.
This photograph is truly heartbreaking in that this is just one of the millions of people who were willing to "sell" themselves to have access to basic human essentials. In this decade, over 12 million people suffered from unemployment. Additionally, many of those people having families that needed to be provided for. The photograph of Stevens really just gives a voice to all those who did whatever they could, during this time of despair, to keep their family and themselves alive.
While the Stock Market Crash of 1929 is widely associated to have caused the Great Depression, there are many additional factors that only worked to accelerate the deep economic downturn. Regardless of the modernized Industrial world, farming was still a very essential workforce that provided the entire United States population with food on their plates. In the 1930s, the regions that brought in the most farming, from Texas to Nebraska, were suffering from intense droughts. As a result, millions of living things were impacted.
George Biddle's, Sand (1936) does little to conceal the true hardships of the droughts that rocked the southern states. Known as the Dust Bowl, combining a lack of precipitation and dust-filled air led to deadly consequences. The color of the work once again reflects the dark times that this disaster caused. There are no indications of the lively, thriving colors that would normally depict a farmland scene: yellows for the crops, greens for the trees, warm browns for the wood-built barns. Rather, the lack of color only underlines the death that occurred. The space within the work is like a scavenger hunt for references to the Dust Bowl. Most notably, in the foreground, we the skeletal remains of farm animals. Livestock, crops, and people all suffered the trials of the wasteland that the Dust Bowl transformed the landscape into, and much of living things did not make it out alive. There are wheels at the center of the work, symbolizing the halt of progress in farming during a time of already disastrous events. The lack of crops being farmed only resulted in the prices of food rising during a time when food was already costly for much of the United States population. In the background, the sky is smothered in dust. This is executed through texture as the sky gives an illusion of air filled with fine particles, executed through intricate stippling motions. Overall, the details in Biddle's piece lead to a deep emotion of despair, exactly how the world population felt throughout the entirety of the Great Depression.
A land once pure and untouched, many American colonial texts daydreamed about the American land being "a virgin or bride, waiting to be conquered and mastered," (Arthur, n.d.). There was this idea of the beauty of a land believed to be unscathed by man. It was a world of fresh starts for the pioneers that would flock to its soil, hope clenching their spirits.
As people from many different cultures and backgrounds rapidly fled to the newfound land in the 19th century due to its land being perceived as an economic opportunity, cities began to take the form to catch up with the overflowing population. The natural world slowly began to be erased from history as industrial advancements took over the land. Gradually, this once-pure landscape became mutilated and deformed by human touch.
Erosion N.2 - Mother Earth Laid Bare, 1936.
Alexandre Hogue was passionate about the impacts of the man-made world and that it was a destruction to all life. Erosion N.2 - Mother Earth Laid Bare (1936) is a direct hit to his beliefs. The artwork depicts a typical farm landscape; however, there is not a crop in sight. Directly ahead of the landscape, a plow towers over the land, symbolizing man's disruption of the grasslands and soil home to the United States. Beyond the man-made creation rests the curving lands mutilated by it. Within the curving lines of the land lays a feminine figure. The artist utilizes these curves to highlight to the audience the presence of Mother Nature herself. The feminine form takes up dramatic space within the landscape, illustrating just how much land has been destroyed by human creation. The lack of color across the native grasslands emphasizes the way that Mother Earth was stripped bare, leaving her exposed as a result of careless farming techniques.
Deep plowing of the virgin soil ultimately removed much of the natural crops that once thrived from it. Once the drought of the 1930s struck, little was left to fasten the soil to the ground as moisture was stripped from the landscape. Crops were desolate, and the people of the land starved as a result. The metaphoric artistry presented by Hogue during the Great Depression brings home the karma that careless farmers faced, impacting millions of innocent people worldwide, and ultimately became the most devastating, historical event of human suffering.
What an intense post! I really like the amount of historical context you gave to each of the works presented, it made learning about each piece so much easier. I greatly enjoy that photograph, it's such a shame that the original photographer is lost, but the message stays the same, great post!
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