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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 8
Lesson 9: Social Realism- Raphael Soyer, Dancing Lesson
- Strange Worlds, immigration in the early 20th century
- Hale Woodruff, The Banjo Player
- Grant Wood, American Gothic
- Alexandre Hogue, Crucified Land
- Revisiting the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree
- Vertis Hayes, The Lynchers
- Vertis Hayes, Juke Joint
- Cheap Thrills: Coney Island during the Great Depression
- Ben Shahn, Contemporary American Sculpture
- A mine disaster and those left behind: Ben Shahn's Miner's Wives
- Ben Shahn, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
- Romare Bearden, Factory Workers
- Hopper, Nighthawks
- Hopper, Nighthawks
- Horace Pippin's Mr. Prejudice
- Josiah McElheny on Horace Pippin
- Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter
- Eldzier Cortor, Southern Landscape
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Cheap Thrills: Coney Island during the Great Depression
Reginald Marsh's 1936 painting, "Wooden Horses," captures the lively atmosphere of Coney Island's Steeplechase Park during the Great Depression. The painting showcases a mix of classes, races, and genders enjoying leisure activities. Marsh's use of tempera paint and vibrant colors brings the scene to life, highlighting the thrill of the amusement park ride and the objectification of women in the entertainment culture of the time. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Around, when that little person showed the women's "business", was that staged or real? 1:34
If that little thing had pulled up my dress, I would have beaten that sucker up so bad that he would have been seeing stars, birds, and planets for weeks.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(light music) - [Man] We're in the Wadsworth Atheneum looking at a painting by Reginald Marsh. This dates to 1936, in the
middle of the Great Depression. - [Woman] Reginald Marsh's Wooden Horses is set in Coney Island's Steeplechase Park at a time when Coney Island
was known as the Nickel Empire, when a nickel could give you a subway ride to the longest boardwalk in the world, a Nathan's hot dog, or enjoying
some of the amusements, such as the racing derby we see before us. - [Man] Coney Island had started out as a reserve for wealthy people who wanted to go to the sea shore, but by the 1930s, it was this
amazingly permissive place where all classes mixed. - [Woman] Coney Island was
a place where you could mix with different races,
classes, and even genders. We have a older gentlemen
clutching a younger woman. - [Man] An unusually intimate
display in a public place. - [Woman] These emerging
leisure activities, often for cheap thrills, dance halls, strip tease performances, and the attractions at Coney Island where you could escape from the anxiety caused by the Great Depression. In this Amusement Park Ride,
women are objectified and the source of entertainment, particularly the woman in
the center of the painting. He did have a knack for depicting women, some of whom were
inspired by buxom blondes that you could see on the movie screens. Part of this new, pleasure-seeking culture where men would pay to see women perform. - [Man] We see voyeurism
here in Coney Island where the sexualized observation of women was so much a part of the exhibits. - [Woman] Some of these
women worked day jobs and then continued to
earn their own living working at night in dance
halls and in this scene, we have blonde women with these red lips that were known as Marsh types. It is a little bit
uncomfortable to modernize that you have an older gentleman riding so closely to what may
have been a complete stranger, whose hemline is somewhat risque. - [Man] I think most
people are probably not familiar with a steeplechase. This is a little different
from a merry-go-round, from a carousel, here, the
horses are not going around a central point, they're
actually on a track that is moving around the
entire amusement area. - [Woman] This scene is set within one of the many gated amusement
parks at Coney Island, Steeplechase Park. The beams you see in
the upper right corner are part of the Pavilion of Fun, so you do have what was, at the time, a large area in which
a crowd could gather, but Marsh pushes us right
up close to the action. - [Man] That's an important reminder. These were not rides for children. These were rides for adults. - [Woman] This was meant to
imitate actual horse races. There were four horses across. Each horse was controlled
by a cable underneath, so riders were unaware
that they didn't actually have control over who won and
so you have these individuals who are anxious and
excited, thinking that they can rear their horse
ahead of the next person. - [Man] But like the title reminds us, these are carved, wooden horses. - [Woman] Many of them
were carved by immigrants, and, over time, these craftsmen
tried to outdo one another and so you would see
carved exotic animals, like camels and giraffes. - [Man] This is not oil
paint as we might expect. It's tempera. Marsh liked the fact that
tempera dried very quickly and this allowed him to
have defined lines remain and one of the reasons, I think, that this painting looks so active is that it's made up of all
these little hatchings and lines that really activate the surface. - [Woman] It was something
of a more transparent medium where the underdrawing, or
the initial composition, was something he laid down first and then he painted over it. So this looser, gestural brushwork helps convey the dizzying
speed of this mechanical ride and he highlights the figures, the horses using primary colors, blue and red. - [Man] And the blue
and the red sit uneasily on the surface of the
canvas and create an image that feels like it's vibrating. It feels as if the horse on
the left is coming right at us. - [Woman] It feels as if this entire scene is going to spin out of
control at any moment and that is, in large part,
due to Marsh's brushwork and the way this beautiful blue outlining sits on top of the painting. - [Man] This is an artist
who focuses on the streets, on the activities of the working class in New York, in the 1930s. - [Woman] Marsh is part of a documentary impulse in the 1930s. Artists, even photographers,
were interested in capturing life realistically. Someone like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, many of these documentarians
were in rural areas, but for Marsh, it was the urban scene that really inspired him. This painting makes it easy to realize why Reginald Marsh said the best show is the people themselves. (light music)