Collection showcases works that company made affordable for masses
Picture a work by Thomas Hart Benton hanging above your fireplace or a piece by Grant Wood adorning your front hallway.
The point is: You needn’t be a high-rolling art collector to own such work.
Through a company called Associated American Artists, art aficionados of all means had the option of obtaining the work of artists of import — Benton and Wood included — simply by stopping into a department store or placing an order in the mail.
The company, in business from 1934 to 1981, sold limitededition prints and lithographs of original creations by notable artists.
“It was a really innovative approach to sharing artwork with the masses,” said Erin Shapiro of the Springfield Museum of Art, which in 2015 presented an exhibit of Associated American Artists pieces pulled from its permanent collection.
The Springfield exhibit, “Associated American Artists: Art by Subscription,” is now on view at the Schumacher Gallery on the campus of Capital University in Bexley.
The works, which Shapiro said were originally priced at $5 apiece, proved popular with consumers.
“It created a whole new group of budding collectors who weren’t collecting art initially but were attracted by the price and by owning something original,” she said.
The 70-plus blackand-white pieces displayed at the Schumacher Gallery allow the viewer to appreciate the company’s appeal: The works — all but a handful were produced in the 1930s, ’40s or ’50s — include both portraits and landscapes, rendered in styles ranging from ruggedly realistic to intriguingly impressionistic.
Such diversity notwithstanding, many works feature rural settings — an acknowledgment, perhaps, that potential customers of Associated American Artists didn’t necessarily reside in East Coast or West Coast cities.
“There was imagery that . . . had in mind the audience as opposed to just depicting urban or city scenes,” Shapiro said. “It was more inclusive than that.”
In Benton’s 1941 lithograph “Arkansas Evening,” for example, the outline of a windmill and a barn frame a farmer closing a gate to lock in his horses.
Doris Lee’s 1944 lithograph “Country Wedding” shows a congregation pouring out of a white church situated in a bucolic village.
Asa Cheffetz’s 1951 wood engraving “Winter Weather” presents a far-lonelier landscape: Several squatty structures are visible in the distance, practically engulfed by an accumulation of snow.
Equally evocative is Churchill Ettinger’s 1947 etching “November Morning,” presenting a man being helped into a rowboat (the reflection of which is rendered in uneven black lines in the water). So, too, is Gordon Grant’s 1952 lithograph “Snug Harbor,” showing silhouetted figures walking beside a harbor in winter; the dark water, white snow and gray sky make the image look very cold.
Beyond such moody landscapes, the show includes the witty Joseph Hirsch lithograph “Coffee” (1961), which might be the exhibit’s highlight: A woman’s face and torso are hidden by the newspaper she is reading while sitting in a comfy armchair. The work’s title comes from the saucer and tray — presumably containing a certain caffeinated beverage — placed beside her shoes.
Also powerful is Benton’s 1940 lithograph “Instruction”: A middle-aged AfricanAmerican man uses his hand to make a point to a young boy — perhaps his son? — as they pore over a book together.
Above all, this striking survey reflects the riches sold by Associated American Artists.