Precisionism

Precisionism was a modernist art movement during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, in which painters produced a ‘‘machine aesthetic’’ by rendering precise, geometrical forms in their works. A group of American painters originally called ‘‘The Immaculates,’’ the Precisionists celebrated new industrial landscapes of skyscrapers, factories, bridges, and other mechanized phenomena. Although they were never a formalized school and worked without a manifesto, Precisionism reflected both the exciting dynamism of the ‘‘Roaring Twenties’’ as well as the streamlined simplicity of the Great Depression. Their images produced an ambivalent attitude toward mechanization, at once praising its efficiency while condemning its dehumanization. Appearing immediately after a host of other influential modernist movements such as Cubism and Futurism, Precisionists merged the impulse toward abstraction with a photographically realistic eye. While no artist worked exclusively as a Precisionist, there were several for whom it was a formative style. Perhaps the most prolific artists who produced Precisionist works were Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Together, these three painters and several others created a distinctly American brand of imagery that was a celebration of nationhood as much as a celebration of mechanization.

Fabricating Discipline and Progress in São Paulo, Symphony of a Metropolis

A common focus of the international cinematic avant-garde during the 1920s was the power and excitement of cities, something that gave rise in both Europe and the United States to a genre of films known as "city symphonies." Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta (1921), André Sauvage's Études sur Paris (1928), Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), and Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie Der Großstadt (1927) were examples of this genre. Such films inspired São Paulo: A sinfonia da metrópole, which is analyzed here. Made by Hungarian filmmakers, Rodolfo Lustig and Adalberto Kemeny, the Brazilian film typically documents a day in the life of São Paulo, exalting its urban dynamic as a sign of the city’s and country’s modernity. In examining São Paulo: A sinfonia da metrópole, this chapter shows that while it expresses the city’s speed brought by the experience of modernity, it also departs from its international inspirations to triumphantly project the discipline of labor, projected as a sign of order and progress, which is ultimately projected by the state.