Name: ________________________

Social Realism Lecture

1. What is Social Realism?

a. Social Realism was an art movement that kicked off in American during

the 1930’s.

b. Social Realism was used as a way to depict the hardships of life.

i. Examples: Racial injustices, economic problems, working

conditions.

ii. In the paintings, satire would often be used to express the issue the

painting was addressing.

c. Social Realism existed very heavily all around the world, centered mainly

in the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.

d. Social Realism developed as early as the 1850’s in Europe, but didn’t

make its way into America until the turn of the century. Even then, it didn’t

really take off until the 1930’s, when the Great Depression kicked in.

e. While the movement declined over the years and was considered “dead”

in most countries, the movement wasn’t officially declared over until the

fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

2. Influenced by:

a. The biggest influence on American Social Realism was the Regionalism

art movement, which depicted suburban life. Regionalism depicted similar

problems, and used a similar art style, but used much more color in the

art, and didn’t have the same mood that Social Realism had.

b. Gustave Courbet is also credited for having an influence on Social

Realism, because his art would sometimes depict hardships of life, and

used little color, unlike Regionalism.

3. Major Artists:

a. Dorothea Lange

b. Walker Evans

c. Ben Shahn

d. Thomas Hart Benton

4. Dorothea Lange

a. Dorothea Lange became a major artist during the Great Depression.

b. She preferred photography as her style of art.

c. One characteristic she had was not naming her pieces. For whatever

reason, she preferred to not name her art pieces.

d. Major Art Pieces:

i. Migrant Mother

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ii. Yuba County, California

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iii. Arizona Highway 87

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5. Walker Evans

a. Not unlike Lange, Evans became a big name during the Great

Depression.

b. Also like Lange, he was a photographer.

c. Often times, his pieces were more like assignments, because he would be

given a job to take pictures of a certain area or event.

d. Major Art Pieces:

i. Allie May Burroughs Portrait

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ii. Frame House

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6. Ben Shahn

a. Shahn was a strange artist who didn’t really prefer one specific type of art

style. Instead, he experimented with multiple types, including drawing,

painting, and photography.

b. He used his art as a way to express his political views on things that were

happening in the country at the time.

i. As a result, a lot of his art pieces had something to do with racial

injustices, and why they were so wrong.

c. Major Art Pieces:

i. Public Sale

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ii. Cotton Pickers, Arkansas

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7. Thomas Hart Benton

a. He was one of the biggest American painters of the social realism

movement.

b. As a child, Benton was encouraged by his father to go into law, rather than

going to into painting. Nonetheless, Benton convinced his father to let him

go to an art school.

c. He was a very influential artist for the time, known by most everyone. In

fact, he’s known as the first artist to ever make it onto the title of Time

magazine.

d. Later on in his life, he moved to Kansas City, to become a teacher for the

Kansas City Art Institution.

e. Major Art Pieces:

i. Plowing It Under

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ii. Hollywood

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iii. Fisherman at Sunset

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8. In Today’s Culture

a. While Social Realism as an art movement is technically considered dead,

there are still films coming out that are considered to be Social Realism,

although most of these films are British films.

b. Some artists are claiming that a rebirth to social realism, as they’re calling

Contemporary Social Realism, has begun. This movement depicts general

aspects of life, rather than using the depressing aspects used in the last

movement. Similar styles that were seen in Social Realism are used in this

movement too, though.

c. A lot of the original art from the movement is being portrayed, and

parodied, in a lot of today’s popular culture.