Workers and Paintings
Honoré Sharrer
American, 1920–2009
1943
An oil-on-board panoramic scene in which Honoré Sharrer assembles a streetful of working people—men, women, and children—each holding or displaying paintings, to collapse the distance between everyday laborers and the art world.
The painting greets you with a long, cool-toned urban tableau: blocky buildings recede behind a line of stoic figures and bright-eyed children, their varied expressions and poses punctuated by small framed pictures ranging from classical portraits to jagged modernist canvases.
Made in 1943, the work fuses social realism with references to modernism to argue that art is a public possession, sharpening wartime debates about class, taste, and who has access to visual culture.
Medium
Oil on board
Dimensions
11 5/8 x 37" (29.5 x 94 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Lincoln Kirstein
Accession
17.1944
Palette
Exhibitions
