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PPMjIMIXFwo Special Shows in BrooklynMassive ExhibitLooks At TheMachine InThe MuseumBY LIZ KOCHFive panels by Joseph Stella hang in the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum as part of its exhibition, %u201cThe Machine Age in America 1918-1941.%u201d Portraying New York during the 1920%u2019s as a vital environment, the paintings are animated with a frenzy of color and repetitive lines that reflect a growing fascination in America with the exciting, sleek and sharp style of the urban jazz age.In one panel, the Brooklyn Bridge soars to exuberant heights with an amplified swing of its giant steel cables. A radiance of colors bursts forth from behind a cage of repetitive steel girders and trusses. In another, Times Square is depicted with a prismatic crisscrossing of lines and colors.On the wall above, a quote by Walter Dorwin Tequey states, %u201cEvery man who plans the shape and line and color of an object %u2014 whether it is a painting, statue, chair, sewing machine, bridge or locomotive %u2014 is an artist.%u201d Conspicuously proving that point is a sleek gray 1926 Airflow Coupe, its nose aimed at the lobby doors. The voluptuous curve of its fender, the repetitive lines in the grill and the shining chrome wheels %u2014 in short, its sleek, efficient, menacing and sexy styie %u2014 are duly reflected in Stella%u2019s panels and the art and artifacts that fill the galleries.MACHINE BECAME A RELIGION%u201cThe Machine Age in America 1918-1941,%u201d emphasizes the all-pervasive impact of the machine %u2014 the cogs, turbines, smokestacks and factories %u2014 on American culture, from its fine arts to decorative arts, from its industrial to architectural to household design. The exhibit proposes that America in the 1920%u2019s and 1930%u2019s responded to the machine in all its manifestations in a manner uniquely its own. The potential of the machine became a religious icon for a nation naively swept away by an awe of power and speed and fervently faithful to the dogma of unrestrained material progress. %u201cOur factories are now our substitute for religious expression,%u201d artist Charles Sheeler said in 1938, less than two decades after Henry Ford first introduced America to mass production with his automobile assembly lines.Diane Pilgrim, one of the curators of the show and the decorative arts curator at the Museum, explains the reigning sentiment of the machine era: %u201cIt wasn%u2019t God that wasgoing to make life better, it was the machine. We%u2019re not talking about one machine, we%u2019re talking about machine with a capital M,%u201d she says, adding, %u201cAt one time Christ, the Madonna and the Virgin Mary were legitimate subjects for artists; during that era the machine %u2014 from the clock to the turbine %u2014 became a legitimate subject matter.%u201dThe exhibit is saturated with this sentiment of awe. As religion, the ideology and iconography of the machine prevailed outside its relegated realm of the functional. In the kitchen, chrome plated, stepped back serving trays were used to carry cocktails to the living room, where rugs decorated with abstracted skyscrapers covered the floor. Electrolux Corporation manufactureda steamlined, chrome-plated vacuum cleaner ideally suited for those skyscraper rugs.ARTISTS TOOK THEIR CUEArtists also took their cue from what the machine had to offer visually, but most importantly, psychologically, diaries Murphy, in his 1925 painting %u201cWatch,%u201d celebrated the intricate workings of the small machine, its tiny cogs magnified a hundred times. He placed an emphasis on the unambivalent, even perfect, relation between these geometric forms in the construction of the watch. In the section of the exhibit entitled %u201cThe Vertical City,%u201d John Storr%u2019s sculpture %u201cStudy in Pure Form,%u201d lingers on the heroic quality exuded by skyscrapers which then began to fill urban skylines.One of the striking features of the exhibit is a relative absence of a critical posture or questioning sentiment in the paintings, photographs and decorative objects alike. America at that time was ravaged by an economic depression with millions of people out of work. The assembly line and factory that in the exhibit offer such a vision of efficiency and control, in actuality gave violent birth to the labor movement and American communism. Yet the exhibit, with only a few exceptions, clearly conveys a sensibility untainted by doubt or criticism.A UNIQUELY AMERICAN RESPONSEPilgrim makes the point that, unlike similar movements in Europe, such as the Bauhaus %u2014 an unquestioningly intellectual approach to the machine %u2014 the emotive and effusive response of Americans was one uniquely their own. She argues %u2014 and the exhibit supports her point emphatically %u2014 that American art and design of this era is a movement of its own and not a poor imitation, not only in look but in cultural significance.%u201cI was sick and tired of everyone regarding the Bauhaus movement in Europe as the machine age and that everything only happened in Paris,%u201d Pilgrim says of the impetus for creating the exhibit. %u201cThere is a big difference between Europe and America. Europe did not have mass production. They made very expensive handmade objects. America had mass production,%u201d she points out, adding that Europe during World War I had experienced the destructive capabilities of the machine, nurturing a much different sensibility from this side of the Atlantic. Pilgrim blames the Museum of Modem Art for perpetrating this Eurocentric notion of the era. %u201cFrom their point of view, the American works are debased modernism %u2014 their one form of modernism being Bauhaus %u2014 but our stance is that this is another form of modernism,%u201d she says.The nature of the objects in the exhibit, however, are more than hopeful and optimistic. An awe of power and time and aContinuedModernism Show Leaves A New Impression At MuseumBY MADELINE LEE%u201cIf there%u2019s one thing in all the world I believe, it%u2019s painting with color,%u201d said Arthur Beecher Carles, one of the American Post-Impressionists whose work is shown in %u201cThe Advent of Modernism,%u201d the recentlyopened exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.Color runs rampant through the exhibit. Primary reds, blues and yellows are used in ways that seem fresh even today. Simplified composition, flattened forms and vibrant lines characterize these paintings dating from 1900 to 1918, the first works by North Americans to break from the mold of Nineteenth Century romantic and impressionist styles.Most of these expatriate American and Canadian painters went to Paris in the early years of this century. They discovered European Post-impressionist worx at tne Salon d%u2019Automne and at the home of Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo Stein, collectors of modem art.This is the first time these paintings have been shown in this context: until now PostImpressionism in America has been largely Maurice Prendergast%u2019s \overlooked. This show explores the beginnings of modernism among American painters such as Maurice Prendergast, whose huge %u201cPicnic,%u201d which dominates the show, recalls Matisse. Landscapes by Thomas Hart Benton, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Maurer and Charles Sheeler are interspersed with portraits by Stuart Davis and B.J.O. Norfeldt and still lifes by Patrick Henry Bruce, Arthur B. Carles and Man Ray. Canadian painters include Emily Carr, James Wilso; Morrice and Tom Thomson, whose work has also been overlooked here.The influence of Cezanne is apparent. He rejected the Impressionist%u2019s work in favor of strong brushstrokes and sharp color planes. Carles and Anne Goldthwaite were particularly affected by his still lifes inwere oftendistorted.Van Gogh, Matisse and Gauguin also influenced the Americans in Pans after 1900. They experimented with vivid colors not seen in nature and in simplified lines.ContinuedD ecem ber 25, 1986, T H E PHOENIX, Page %u00a3