Industry

Photography and Media

1927

Charles Sheeler
American, 1883–1965

This maquette is the only surviving version of a seven-by-twelve foot photographic mural created by Charles Sheeler for an exhibition on mural art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Murals, promoted in the Americas and Europe in the 1930s, created a vast new space of display for painters and photographers, who, like Sheeler, freely crossed media boundaries to make the giant compositions. The multiple source photographs in this maquette, all taken by Sheeler, depict the Ford Motor Company’s plant in River Rouge, near Detroit, where the artist traveled in 1927 as part of a commission to make publicity pictures for the company. The left and right sections of the triptych are halves of a single photograph, while the central portion represents a montage of three other pictures taken at the plant. The bold leaps in scale and subject are what made murals of the 1930s—both painted and photographic—impressive in their dynamism.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Charles Sheeler
Title: Industry
Origin: United States
Date: Made 1927
Medium: Gelatin silver collage (triptych)
Inscriptions: Unmarked recto; verso unchecked
Dimensions: 20 × 7 cm (image/paper a); 20.1 × 16.2 cm (image/paper b); 20 × 7 cm (image/paper c); 19.9 × 38.1 cm (overall); 35.6 × 46 cm (mount)
Credit Line: Julien Levy Collection, Gift of Jean and Julien Levy
Reference Number: 1975.1146a-c

Travis, David. 1976. “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget.” Exh. cat. pp. 66–67, cat. 122.
Travis, David. 1979. “Photography Rediscovered: American Photographs from 1900-1930.” Exh. cat. Whitney Museum of American Art. p. 95, fig. 137.
Wollen, Peter, and Joe Kerr ed. 2003. “Autopia: Cars and Culture.” Reaktion Books. p. 129.
Marien, Mary Warner. 2006. “Photography: A Cultural History.” 2nd ed. Laurence King Publishing. p. 253.
Brock, Charles. 2006. “Charles Sheeler: Across Media.” Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington/ University of California Press, pp. 96-97. fig. 23.

Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Permanent Collection,” March 20–May 30, 1976. (Miles Barth)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget,” December 11, 1976–February 20, 1977; traveled to the International Center of Photography, New York, April 21-May 29, 1977; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 4-December 18 1977; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 13-Ferbruary 26, 1978; Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois, March 16-April 30, 1978; and Cincinnati Art Museum, November 17-December 24, 1978. (David Travis)
NY, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, “Photography Rediscovered: American Photographs from 1900-1930,” September 19-November 25, 1979; travel to Art Institute of Chicago, December 22, 1979-February 4, 1980. (David Travis)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Industrial Effects: Twentieth Century Photographs from the Permanent Collection,” July 24-October 17, 1993.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, “Charles Sheeler: Across Media,” May 7 - September 4, 2006; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, October 15, 2006 - January 7, 2007, and The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, February 10 - May 6, 2007.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photography on Display: Modern Treasures,” May 9–September 13, 2009.

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