The Ashcan School Period Influencing The Abstract-Expressionism Movement

During the Great Depression, art was affected along with the crumbling economy. Artists began to express and expose the realities of the working class during this time in their own ways, whether they celebrated previous triumphs or attempted to reform through their art. Influenced by the painters of the Ashcan School period, the art movement Social Realism evoked a variety of responses from artists who contributed it, later influencing the Abstract-Expressionism movement. The Social Realism movement was set in motion around the 1930s, during the Depression era. During this time of utter poverty and hardship, people began to think about the social, economical, and racial conditions that affected the lives of the working class and the poor. The movement consisted of American paintings, pottery, literature, prints, drawings, and sculptures that depicted the unsophisticated realities of everyday life. Themes of unemployment, poverty, political corruption, injustice, labor-management conflict, and American materialism were explored by artists while creating works. The Social Realism movement was primarily found only in literature at first, but artists began to criticize the harsh conditions of the lives of the working class. Many

A possible interpretation of the painting based on background information could be that the house is for a working family. Social Realist Thomas Hart Benton created what seems to be a man walking away from his parents for work. These artworks are both similar in that the colors are dulled and the objects in the work resemble what they are meant to be. There are subjects in both pictures, and the subjects may both relate to the working class and Great Depression. Both paintings can be interpreted to extend to the viewer a more melancholy emotion, as the landscape appears to be empty and even