Workers On The Land Analysis

On display in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art are two works painted within about a decade of each other. At first glance, they seem to have little in common other than the fact that they each depict four human beings. One would not expect to be able to draw a meaningful commonality between the two based solely on this, and if the viewers make their observation merely on the surface level of the works, they will not. However, the existence of these two sets of people, the essence of humanity that they embody, is a powerful thing to examine when we observe how each artist arrives at his interpretation of humanity. The first painting is Street Scene by Joseph Hirsch, painted in oil on canvas in 1938. This painting depicts four white men huddled on the street during the Great Depression. The second painting is Workers on the Land (Dirt Farmers) by Robert Gwathmey, painted in oil on canvas in 1946. This painting depicts four African American sharecroppers working the land on a geometric landscape. Both paintings depict subjects which are very much tied to their particular moment in history, and each evokes a sense of sympathy for the subjects by drawing attention to their humanity. However, Gwathmey accomplishes …show more content…
Gwathmey depicts a group of African American sharecroppers toiling in a field, while Hirsch depicts a group of white men shielding themselves from the cold during the Great Depression. What is so interesting about comparing these two works with regards to their context is that we see a reversal of expectation. In America, we would tend to expect to see white people in positions of dignity and pride, and black people in positions that we would pity in historical depictions. However, in these paintings these roles are reversed. This largely has to do with the way each painting conveys the humanity of its subjects and the level of agency that it assigns to