The American Landscape

The American Landscape Report

The “American Landscape” by: Charles Sheeler

The painting entitled “American Landscape” by Charles Sheeler is an interesting piece of artwork. In order to understand this report you first have to know what a landscape is. According to Wikipedia.com “A landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical element such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions and human elements for instance human activity on the built environment. Landscape may also signify the object around one in a structure.” In other words, a landscape is something that brings together visible things and activities that are happening along an area of land.

The “American Landscape” painting that was created in 1930 using oil on canvas. The painting’s size is twenty-four by thirty-one inches. . In this painting I see things like:

1.      railroads,

2.      steam pipes,

3.      smoke,

4.      a ladder,

5.      a house

6.      cranes

7.      wood

8.      sports stadium

9.      clouds

10.  rain

11.  construction work going on and also,

12.   Water that is reflecting the whole scene.

I saw the process of something going from what it is to what it will become. In my opinion, I thought this was an outlook on what was going on in 1930, considering that this was the time of the great depression.  When I looked at the painting for the first time, I thought it looked like it was missing something and, at the same time I also saw a lot of inner strength. The reason why I also see inner strength is because; within the painting there is some sort on construction going on which symbolized. That could mean one of two different things. Something devastating has just happened and, the place where the devastation occurred is trying to come back and it’s trying to come back stronger than it was before or, that place that is under construction could be trying to take what they already have and make it better.

I would have to agree with the first option solely because of the time when the painting was created. It was created during the great depression. The “American Landscape” and the time the painting was created almost perfectly displays what people went through at that time. They were hit very hard and the future was uncertain. Basically, Charles Sheeler created the “American Landscape” based on what people were going through when they were dealing with the great depression.