Representations of Railroading

well hello everyone and welcome i'm danny lichtenfeld director of the brattleboro museum so happy to be here with you this evening and really looking forward to tonight's conversation with photographer author and executive director of the center for railroad photography and art scott lotus and then we'll have a q a with all of you this conversation tonight is presented in connection with the exhibit charlie hunter semaphore which opened at the brattleboro museum on june 19th and is on view through october 11th the exhibit features paintings of railroad infrastructure not trained per se but signals semaphores tracks stations and bridges all rendered in charlie's distinctive style so we thought it would be interesting to contextualize charlie's approach to creating railroad themed art within the broader scope of historical and contemporary railroad art uh when we suggested this to charlie he recommended that we contact scott lotus and so here we are in just a moment i'm going to ask scott to join me on screen the plan is that he will present for about 45 minutes or so and then we'll open it up to your questions and comments to submit a question or comment if you're here on zoom please use the q a or the chat button on your screen preferably the q a button you can do that at any time and we'll get to your questions and comments at the end of the presentation if you're watching on facebook live you can type your questions or comments there and we'll keep an eye on that too okay with that bit of housekeeping taken care of i'd like to ask scott lotus to turn on his camera and mike now and join me and now that scott's coming on i'll just tell you a little bit about him scott is the president and executive director of the non-profit center for railroad photography and art and the editor of its journal railroad heritage he's also a freelance writer and photographer concerned primarily with railroads and other transportation networks and how they interact with the land they traverse scott has written dozens of articles and given numerous presentations on railroads and railroad art he's the author or co-author of seven books including the railroad photography of donald w furler which was published this year by the center for railroad photography and art wallace w abbey a life and railroad photography which was published in 2018 by indiana university press and the world's most exotic railway journeys published in 2015 by beaufort publishing for which scott contributed two chapters and the cover photograph scott is originally from saint albans west virginia a town bisected by the railroad he received an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from case western reserve university and he currently lives and works in madison wisconsin scott thank you so much for being here tonight and for doing this for the brattleboro museum well danny it's my absolute pleasure thank you for that lovely introduction and thanks everyone for tuning in tonight uh audio sounding good on your end danny it sounds good to me yeah if anybody's having any problems that you think we can possibly help with just let us know in the chat i'm going to leave the screen right now scott i'm going to let you take it away and then when you're ready for q a just let me know and i'll come back on that sounds great and if you do need to get ahold of me during the presentation for any reason it's probably best to text me once i'm in presenter mode i don't always see the zoom notifications pop up okay what i if i need you for any reason i might just unmute myself and that's perfectly fine to do all right take it away thank you okay thanks again danny thanks everyone for joining us i'm just gonna go ahead and get my screen share started and uh then we'll we'll get rolling here okay so as danny said uh tonight to provide some additional context for charlie hunter's wonderful semaphore exhibition i plan to speak for about 45 minutes about the history and relationships of railroads and art primarily paintings but we'll also look at some other examples too and as danny said i welcome your questions we'll take those at the end uh feel free to send them in anytime though using the q a feature here on zoom or the chat function on facebook i know for a little bit about me as danny mentioned i grew up in west virginia as well as southeastern ohio where i love to watch coal trains and launch model rockets and i went to case western reserve university in cleveland where i received a bs degree in mechanical engineering and if any of you have seen the movie october sky my childhood had at least a few parallels with homer hickams although mine occurred about 30 years later and i was definitely into trains more than rockets either way i think jake gyllenhaal was a great choice for the lead role in that film now as a child i love to draw and i took as many art classes in high school as i could fit into my schedule i stopped drawing though when i when i was in college when i realized that my talents or lack thereof weren't reaching the visions i had in my mind for my drawings but that led me to discover photography which i have come to love deeply and it also put me on this strange and surprising path that led me to the center for railroad photography and art so let's get started here and uh just as a little bit of background about the center for rubric photography and art uh i just let's see oh shoot there we go i just want to give you a little bit of background about our organization of the center for railroad photography and art we're a non-profit organization based in madison wisconsin and our mission is to preserve and present significant images of railroading we don't have a museum or gallery space of our own that's a model that has always served us well especially though over the past 18 months we host regional and national conferences we prepare and circulate traveling exhibitions to go to museums and galleries all over the country we publish books in a quarterly journal and we maintain a growing archive that now houses about half a million images like the brattleboro museum and art center we've pivoted to online programming and our events are free to anyone who'd like to attend via zoom you can view all of our past presentations on our youtube channel at youtube.com railphotoart or you can check our website braillephotodashart.org or you can follow us on facebook instagram or twitter for details about our upcoming programs we are at rail photo art on all of those platforms but today we're going to talk about representations of railroading and art and so let's get started with that and i mentioned both trains and rocketry in 2019 we celebrated milestones in both rocketry and railroading the 50th anniversary of the first apollo moon landing and the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad now i think it's fitting that we marked both of these achievements at the same time the apollo project was the literal moon shot of the 20th century and the first transcontinental railroad was every bit as much the moonshot of the 19th century science and technology made possible both of these moonshots but art can help us understand i'd like to share a quote from the new york times book reviewer who wrote the following about the apollo program the day of the first moonwalk my father's college literature professor told his class someday they'll send a poet and we'll find out what it's really like and that i think is what art aspires to it helps us make sense of the world and to better understand the impacts of all the amazing science and technology we create now we still haven't sent a poet to the moon but railroads exist right here on terra firma and they've been inspiring poets and artists of all sorts from their very beginnings now my focus for this presentation is railroads and art and to look at them we need to come back from the moon and go back to 1829 when the sturbridge lion the first steam locomotive to operate in the united states arrived in new york harbor and like a children's christmas toy it came with some assembly required that took place outside in the open air of the west point foundry association under the direction of a man named david matthew he wrote that the locomotive became the object of curiosity to thousands who visited the works from day to day now put yourself in the shoes of an early 19th century new yorker think of the otherworldly intrigue you would have felt upon seeing a 15 000 pound mass of metal being assembled and fired up for the first time these early locomotives were rock stars of their day every bit as awe-inspiring as the saturn v rockets would be 140 years later now 1829 predated the invention of commercially viable photography by a decade so if we want to know what this scene looked like we have to rely on artists this print made nearly 90 years after the fact depicts the lion's first trial run on august 8th 1829. i don't know how truly accurate it is it clearly has patriotic overtones but the details look believable and i think it captures something of the energy of that moment and that is the aim of this painting rain steam and speed in 1844 masterpiece and oil three feet by four feet by the british artist jmw turner we've crossed the pond england cradle of the early railroads and this is a scene from their great western railway as its name implies the great western struck out from london to the west it was built for speed straight and flat with a broad gauge of seven feet but it's more than two feet wider than most of today's railroads the locomotive here is of a type called the firefly and these were absolute marvels of their day their two driving wheels one on each side were seven feet tall when they were introduced in 1840 they began pulling scheduled trains at average speeds of 50 miles per hour now average speeds include time for station stops which means these trains surely hit 60 and above now think about that all of human history up to that point people could travel no faster than a horse could run and then almost overnight you could go a mile a minute journalists of the day struggled to write about this for they simply did not have the language to convey that kind of speed the turner gives us a sense for what it was like with this wonderfully impressionistic work even today almost two centuries later steam locomotives can still draw crowds as to commemorate the transcontinental railroad sesquicentennial union pacific restored one of its big boy locomotives among the largest ever built and sent it on a nationwide tour it came through wisconsin in july of 2019 and here it is on a thursday morning making a brief stop in the town of freisland wisconsin with a population of 200 where the center staff and well over a thousand other people came out to see it and you might even wonder whether we still need artists today when everyone has high definition cameras on their cell phones as we can see in this picture spoiler alert i absolutely think we still need artists and i also think it's worth noting that even though the allure of the steam locomotive persists the emotions they stir have changed the sense of wonder endures but the 1829 excitement for the new has turned completely around to a nostalgic longing for what once was in the railroad we have the full arc of steam technology and here we see the great pull of nostalgia we'll come back to that first though i want to return to the mid 19th century and hear what three of our early writers had to say about the railroad nathaniel hawthorne was born in 1804 in salem massachusetts he was best known for his novels like the scarlet letter and the house of the seven gables he also provides us with one of the first literary considerations of the railroad one morning hawthorne sat in a new england forest writing in his journal describing his tranquil setting in great detail until as he wrote hark there is the whistle of the locomotive the long shriek harsh above all harshness for the space of a mile cannot mollify it into harmony it tells the story of busy men citizens from the hot street who have come to spend a day in the country village men of business and short of all and quietness and no wonder that it gives such a startling shriek since it brings the noisy world into the midst of our slumberous peace now someone who grew up loving trains the steam whistle is music to my ears it's difficult for me to relate these to these words but let's keep going ralph wado emerson led the transcendentalist movement of the 19th century he also wrote about the early railroads and what he perceived they would mean the following passage comes from one of his journal entries he said i hear the whistle of the locomotive in the woods wherever that music comes it has its sequel it is the voice of the civility of the 19th century saying here i am it is interrogative it is prophetic and this cassandra is believed pew pew pew how is real estate here in the swamp and wilderness ho for boston who you i will plant a dozen houses on this pasture next moon and a village anon emerson writes with a driving force that echoes both the cadence of the locomotive and the impending changes it will bring to the land as protege henry david thoreau is now considered a founder of environmental writing thanks largely to his book walden the thoreau lived in a log cabin on walden pond near concord massachusetts from 1845 to 1847 which was right after the fitchburg railroad had completed its main line along the far side of the pond now you might expect thoreau to build on his mentor and lash out further against the encroaching railroad and its shrieking trains so perhaps then you will be as surprised as i was by what he had to say when i hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder shaking the earth with his feet and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it thoreau was awed by this new technology yet he did not allow his awe to blind him to what he saw as the prophet driven intentions of the early railroad builders intentions he went on to criticize resoundingly in wall now whether i agree with his criticisms or not my lesson here is that i study and even celebrate the relevant or any form of technology i also need to step back and consider how it's being used hawthorne emerson and thoreau were among the first group of writers to develop a distinctly american voice our nation was still young the british empire's still large and european notions of art and culture prevailed though this nation set down clear ideas about what subject matter was acceptable for artists the new technology was not on that list the great painters of that age had been trained in figural landscape and genre work the majority of the world's population still lived in the country not the city painting a product of industry like a factory or a locomotive was simply not something a proper artist would do yet as we've just seen in literature the railroad was such a force of nature that it practically demanded artistic consideration as we look at some early railroad paintings keep in mind that the western world was grappling with the sweeping changes of the industrial revolution while artists were grappling first with whether to even approach industrial subjects and then with how to actually go about painting them so when the railroad does begin to appear in art it first appears in the background this is the first of a few paintings i'll be showing from our board members uh peter moss's remarkable collection peter wrote an extensive article about his collection for our journal and i'll be drawing on his remarks this is a two foot by three foot oil painting by arthur pitts william t which he incorrectly titled a view on the london to birmingham line uh peter says it actually it does show the dutton viaduct and which peter says is actually located on england's london to liverpool line now it's erroneous title notwithstanding this is a beautiful work but is very much in the style of the pictorial landscape paintings of the era with the pastoral scene of cattle at the edge of the stream dominating the foreground the viaduct is in the distance and the train itself is tiny but it's interesting to me that the railway the new form of transportation is bathed in sunlight while barely visible at the far right is the old way the footpath where a woman in red and a child walk in deep shadow almost as an afterthought though if we look at examples from american art we see similar themes this is progress by ashford b durand the six foot wide oil painting from the theme of manifest destiny and the train is even smaller here it's crossing that low trestle way down at right but as with tate's work the railroad and all of the instruments of industrial progress are in the sunlight while a group of american indians watches from the shadows left durand was part of the hudson river school the first distinctly american art movement founded by thomas cole the hudson river painters drew from romanticism but there are some key differences the romantics were reacting against the industrial revolution and they tended to glorify the past the hudson river school was somewhat more embracing of change and while they glorified the dramatic landscapes of new england they also sought to reconcile the march of industrial progress much of their work strives for harmony between nature and technology within that vein but also transcending it is one of the most important railroad paintings of all time the lackawanna valley by george ennis this was a commission by the delaware lackawanna and western railroad we often think of corporate art as containing propaganda or at least clear biases but today the lackawanna valley stands as the most critically acclaimed railroad painting of the 19th century we see many elements of the hudson river school warm light pastoral landscape a reclining figure in the foreground but here the train is larger more prominent and the view includes much more of the railroad particularly the round house like almost like a cathedral in the distance the foreground is littered with stumps looking more like a recent battlefield than a harmonious blending of nature and technology ian kennedy former director of the nelson atkins museum in kansas city wrote that dennis could not conceal his unease at the price of material progress in the spoliation of nature by a new technological system i'll be coming back to kennedy's insights a few times i have one more painting uh from this era to show and it's my personal favorite the jasper francis crapsy's storaka viaduct from 1865.

its namesake subject opened on the new york and erie railroad at lanesboro pennsylvania in 1848 but compared to the lackawanna valley this painting presents a more typically harmonious view of the railroad in the landscape but there are some key differences that make it a standout those paintings from the hudson river school are set in the spring in the morning signifying the dawning of the new age here it is autumn and since this view looks south the light coming in from the right shows that it's afternoon dark clouds rolling in from the west they pretend not so much the beginning of something but to its end let's investigate that notion by looking quickly at two more paintings by thomas cole they comprise a narrative series a popular motif of the 19th century the first one called the departure shows a great warrior confidently setting out from his castle accompanied by his knights in attendance on horseback it is spring in the morning and spirits are high this is the second painting the return here it is autumn the sun is setting and attendance carry the ailing warrior to a church while this deed follows behind with its head down the campaign did not go well and what was beginning in the previous painting is ending in this one i see parallels in crops east director viaduct multiple multiple art critics have compared its depiction of the railroad to classical european paintings that portray remnants of the roman empire to me cropsy alludes to a preemptive nostalgia with depression implication that while the age of steam was then rising someday it would also fall nostalgia though can be a funny thing and i'd like to keep in mind that whatever we might listfully long for today had once been new and modern well this is another painting from peter moss's collection it's called the last of the manchester defiance it's an 1864 copy by w.r.b shaw of an 1859 painting by another artist note the two trains in the background left peter provided a wonderful excerpt from the illustrated london news of april 23 1859 when the original painting first appeared and i'd like to share it with you the author called this work a striking illustration of the march of enterprise and civilization which distinguishes the present age the old manchester defiance which was once the marvel of the traveling world has been put off the road by the superior powers of steam and there the old wreck lies voiceless and wheels with the door off its hinges a place for fowls to rest in in a dilapidated in-yard the ends themselves where extortion and incivility was the rule have long been shut up and deserted with a glass of ale or brandy and water with which the desperate outsider tried to console himself and infuse warmth in his drenched and chilled frame during the brief interval occasioned by the change of horses is now dispensed with and a man may arrive sober and comfortable and collected at the end of a 200 mile journey without having moved from his snug seat inside his first class carriage but again nostalgia is a funny thing ten years later mark twain would have nothing of the commentary found in the illustrated london news traveling by train through europe in 1869 twain had this to say in the innocence abroad it is hard to make railroading pleasant in any country it is too tedious stage coaching is infinitely more delightful once i cross the plains and deserts and mountains of the west in a stagecoach from the missouri line to california and since then all of my pleasure trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolic again nostalgia is fickle and minds can change just two years later in 1871 twain went west on our new transcontinental railroad an event he chronicled in roughing it published in 1872 where he wrote we rolled out of the station at omaha and started westward on our long jaunt a couple of hours out dinner was announced an event to those of us who had yet to experience what it is to eat in one of pullman's hotels on wheels so stepping into the car next forward of our sleeping palace we found ourselves in the dining car it was a revelation to us that first dinner on sunday and though we continued to dine for four days and had as many breakfasts and suppers our whole party never ceased to admire the perfection of the arrangements and the marvelous results achieved incidentally this print is perhaps the best of the many that featured our first transcontinental railroad fannie palmer an english immigrant was one of our best and most prolific printmakers courier and ives published many of her works including this one whose full title is across the continent westward the course of empire it takes its way one hallmark of these views of the transcontinental railroad is how the tracks invariably run arrow straight across the land a symbol of destiny and permanence it's also interesting to note that palmer took artistic license to depict our first transcontinental railroad as a double track main line i can assure you it was a single track in the 19th century palmer's work is layered with additional symbolic meaning the tracks quite literally divide the industry of new civil civilization on the left with the untamed natural world on the right where two american indians on horseback watch helplessly was the smoke of the iron horse in gulfstream railroads helped usher in the industrial age and regardless of whether the people impacted one of these changes or not artists portrayed this both subtly and overtly even more symbolic than palmer's print is american progress by john gast from 1872 here we have an allegorical female figure symbolizing the american nation stringing telegraph wires and carrying the book of education as she flips westward with settlers who travel first on foot then by covered wagon and stagecoach and finally by train they drive off american indians bison and other wildlife even the weather patterns seem to be reversed as the light dawning in the east appears to be pushing off the clouds lingering over the mountains to the west now if these last two images appear a bit heavy-handed in their symbolism remember that the civil war had ended just a few years earlier the nation was reunited but the union was tenuous on hostilities festered particularly in the south these images spoke to renewal in a new union with a new economy defined not by north and south waterborne transport and animal power but defined instead by east and west iron roads and the power of steam i should note that we were not alone in our use of allegorical female figures to illustrate our railways this poster from 1900 portrays switzerland's gothard railway as the unifier of northern and southern europe the figure here stands on the winged wheel of the railways while her hands clutch the mini lines of france belgium and germany zurich is right on the top of her heart while the many spiral tunnels and loops of the gothard line seem to form her intestines below them is the lake district and the great italian industrial and financial city of milan now while we're in europe let's consider the work of french master claude monet founder of impressionism and widely acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of all time monet made several railway paintings in the 1870s including a series inside a paris train station in 1877. i have to share a brief aside from a brochure published by the art institute of chicago about monet's work they wrote that to convince the station master the busiest train station in paris to give him permission to paint in the station and train yard monet put on his best suit fluffed out his ruffled cuffs and carried a gold-tipped king monet gave his card to the station master and announced that he wished to paint there not only did monet get permission to paint but the engineers ran the trains in and out of the stations as many times as monet wanted it was this series of paintings that fully elevated the railroad to a subject worthy of the fine arts i think about that for a moment we've read several excerpts by great writers who discussed the railroad and while trains show up frequently in literature the great railroad novel that you might expect to find in 19th century american or british literature simply does not exist and it's much the same for these paintings we've been looking at there are many that include the railroad but usually as a small element off in the distance yet when you stop to consider the greater context of 19th century art with its dictums of what was proper subject matter and what was not the very fact that the railroad shows up as much as it does is nothing short of remarkable and a testament to the railroad's great power and appeal monet was the tempi point he was the first significant painter according to ian kennedy again to record the locomotive with any degree of physical presence and the station scenes from paris brought the railroad completely into the realm of fine art the overall impact was even greater in part because of the railroad everyday objects and common people finally started becoming to become acceptable subjects for artists of all kind and while we didn't get the great railway novel of the 19th century walt whitman did give us a great railway porn to a locomotive in winter which he wrote in 1876 the same time that monet was making his railway paintings i think it's only fitting to show a few more monets while reading whitman's poem v for my receditive the in the driving storm even is now the storm the winter day declining v and by panel plea and i measured dual throbbing and i beat convulsive my black cylindric body golden brass and silvery steel by ponderous sidebars parallel and connecting rods gyrating and shuttling at thy sides by metrical now swelling pant and war now tapering in the distance thy great protruding headlight fixed in front by long pale floating vapor pendants tinged with delicate purple the dense and murky clouds out belching from thy smoke stack by knitted frame by springs and valves the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels thy train of cars behind obedient merrily following through gale or calm now swift now slack yet steadily careering type of moderate emblem of motion and power pulse of the continent for once come serve the muse and merge in verse even as here i see thee with storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow by day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes by night thy silence signal lamps to swing fierce throated beauty roll through my chant with all thy lawless music by swinging lamps at night by piercing madly whistled laughter by echoes rumbling like an earthquake rousing all while thyself complete if i known track fully firmly holding no sweetness dubbing air of tearful harp or glimmed piano thine thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills returned launched with the prairies wide across the lakes to the free skies unpimped and glad and strong from that point forward the railroad appeared more frequently in more dominant roles in art of every form we're going to look at just a few examples before returning to paintings we'll start with the then brand new medium of the motion picture we'll stay in france for one more slide a frame from one of the very first commercial films in the world it features the railroad of course this is a rival of the train made in 1895 by the lumiere brothers the 19th century may not have given us the great railroad novel but the 20th century gave us plenty of great railroad movies and there's something fitting about that it took a new form of art the motion picture to fully embrace the transformational technology of the railroad this is buster keaton in his 1926 silent film the general initially a flop at the box office today it is widely considered a classic of the silent era it also helped establish the cinematic pairing of trains and western landscapes while the plot is based on the great locomotive chase of the civil war which took place in georgia directors keaton and clyde bruckman filmed their chase scenes in oregon where high bridges and steep mountain graves provided a more dramatic setting and we'd be here all night if we dug very far into railroads in the movies and while that would be a lot of fun i'm not prepared to go any further right now except to say that 1964 is the train starring bert lancaster and directed by john frankenheimer ranks as the top ranks among the top five in every list of great railroad movies i've ever seen it's an extraordinary film so if you're looking for one train movie to watch i highly recommend this one now we'd also be here all night if we started digging into railroads and music like movies the vast number of train songs offers further evidence of just how pervasive the railroad had become in 20th century life you won't find many railroad references in classical music but in so many of the musical genres that developed from the late 19th century right up to today the railroad is everywhere even in musical theater which we covered in the center's journal in 2014 the author aviva gilman is a uw graduate who who interned with us for several years it never occurred to me that you could feel even a page about railroads and musical theater but aviva had a great interest in the subject and she found more than enough material for a feature article she begins with the opening number from the music man where traveling salesman howard hill sings aboard a passenger train on the rock island railroad to music that mimics the clifty clack with steel wheels on jointed rail this photograph incidentally is from a 2011 production by the skylight music theater in milwaukee wisconsin but let's get back to paintings now that railroads have come fully into their end with the rise of modernism in the early 20th century the conflict of technology and nature faded in artistic dialogue the city replaced the wilderness as the central theme occupying the national imagination modernist painters use railroad imagery to portray the progressive vitality of the modern world with images of trains evoking the notions of speed and power george lux painted round houses at high bridge in 1910 in which to quote ian kennedy again he depicted an everyday occurrence in a non-descript location and found in an unexpected grandeur as foreshadowed by george ennis more than a half century earlier industrial capitalism is shown here as the national religion in the smoking roundhouse has replaced st peters as the basilica of the new world when the depression era public works of art project asked artists to depict the american scene many of them tackled industrial subjects including railroads austin mecklen left his home in rural woodstock new york and traveled to the industrial hudson river port of kingston where he painted his dramatic engine houses and bunkers a large format oil painting featuring a locomotive shop as its centerpiece the work vividly portrays man-made objects while humans appear very small and nature is pushed to the boundaries meanwhile back in england we find similar trends by now there was no question that the railway was worth the attention of the nation's best artists this painting completed by stanhope forbes in 1925 was a study for a larger work peter moss acquired this one the final version which is a much wider landscape format resides at the national railway museum in york england as with mecklen the built environment occupies nearly all of the composition here though the people are far more prominent and we see all walks of life mingling on the station platform evidence of the democratizing force of railway travel democratizing but often still segregated as we see in this artist's take on the platform scene this is train station a 1935 painting by black artist walter ellison it's small but just 8 by 14 inches executed in oil on cardboard and it resides today at the art institute of chicago the artist composed his work in a w after his first name ellison was born in georgia in 1899 and this painting is set in macon on the left affluent white passengers board a southbound train for vacations in miami and other beach resorts on the right black passengers head for northbound trains with destinations of new york detroit and chicago this is part of what we now call the great migration many railroads offered deeply discounted tickets for group travel that helped make this possible and i think the railroad's reasons were probably more opportunistic than altruistic the trains undeniably played a significant role in the many mass migrations of blacks from the south to the north midwest and west railroads became popular subjects for black artists who have considered everything from their exploitative and often discriminatory labor practices to their symbolism as pathways to new lives and greater freedom but for all their power to transform society railroads also introduce new risks some artists question these directly in their work thomas hart benton a regionalist painter who came from the modernist school and celebrated rural american life and much of his work trains were frequent subjects at least two of his paintings present concerns over safety this one the engineer's dream from 1931 shows a nightmare or a premonition at lower right we see an engineer asleep in his bed fully dressed for duty with his railroad lantern and his alarm clock beside he dreams of a wreck where his speeding train cannot stop in time to avoid a washed out bridge we see him attempting to jump to safety but his chances for survival do not look good at right the signalman's red flag is wholly inadequate against the powerful locomotive perhaps a commentary on the safety systems of the day or even a broader statement about humanity in the face of onrushing technology ultimately though the modernist embrace technology and for the steam locomotive the most significant modernist painting is this one charles schieler's 1939 rolling power it is a close-up precisionless study of the wheels rods and valve gear of the new york central hudson locomotive that pulled the 20th century limited the railroad's flagship train between new york and chicago while the locomotive features streamlining by noted industrial designer henry dreyfus the shielder chose to focus on the least streamlined most raw mechanical elements more race of photographs of popularized views like this one in railroad imagery but rolling power was nothing short of groundbreaking in its day it has been hailed as a radical departure from previous artistic representations of trains for the way it redefines beauty in the image of a functional object we've been watching artists for more than 100 years grapple with what the steam rail movement so it's almost ironic to me then but in 1939 on the eve of its replacement by diesels the steam locomotive finally transcended the societal questions surrounding it freed from context is a thing of beauty unto itself the steam locomotive was the single most compelling icon of the railroad after diesel's replace dean artistic representations of the railroad changed greatly and after our next artist the critical commentary also begins to run dry the academic community has yet to take on a major consideration of railroads and art in the past 70 years but i think there's still plenty to see one of the most famous american artists to approach railroads was edward hopper he painted them ian kennedy pointed out because they were part and parcel with his experience of american life he also painted them with enough frequency that they must have held some special meaning yet despite growing up in the age of steam hopper focused on railroad subjects other than locomotives one consistent theme throughout almost all of hopper's work is the loneliness and alienation he felt was an ever greater part of modern american life i'm sure we can all relate to that in our own recent lives you certainly see it here with the railroad signal tower standing alone and empty against twilight sky and i see some echoes of hopper's work in some of charlie's paintings and i'll come back to that at the end alienation is a central theme of what some critics and scholars consider the greatest american novel of the 20th century the great gatsby it directly confronts what author f scott fitzgerald considered to be the excesses of an over-materialistic culture of the 1920s prophetically perhaps the automobile is the dominant and highly symbolic mode of transportation in the book but there is a poignant passage about railroads at the end in a flashback scene for nick carraway the novel's narrator he recalls when we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow our snow began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows the dim lights of small wisconsin stations moved by the sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air we drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before melting indistinguishably into it again that's my middle west not the wheat or the prairies or the lost swede towns but the thrilling returning trains of my youth i said we'd be getting back to nostalgia and here we are the nostalgia is the dominant theme of most rovered paintings of the last 60 years which has seen the rise of a distinct genre of railroad art its hallmark is a literal style of scenes that no longer exist but the steam locomotive is the central figure this one by the talon and prolific gil bennett from 2008 shows the milwaukee roads hiawatha passenger train steaming up the minnesota side of the mississippi river on its run from chicago to the twin cities nick carraway would have been on this route in the great gatsby gill presented at our annual conference in 2019 he lives in utah and works almost entirely on commissions taking his clients fondest railroad memories often from their childhoods and rendering them on canvas or paper in oils or watercolors michael flanagan painting from his own memories was perhaps the apex of this style his work reimagines a steam era baltimore and ohio recovered that he barely knew yet once clearly longed for a flanagan wrote and illustrated a novel called stations published by pantheon in 1994 with backing by none other than jacqueline kennedy onassis stations is a beautiful and evocative portrayal of flanagan's longing for the steam railroads he saw as a child this fictional narrative and photorealistic paintings of old imaginary photographs comprise a multi-layered exploration of human passion and obsession you can find used copies today for a song and you don't have to be a train lover to appreciate this beautiful book now i said earlier that nostalgia is a funny thing and it might be hard to having to ima it might be hard to imagine having nostalgia for relatively modern diesel locomotives but we have arrived at that point especially for the generation who grew up with these muscle machines of the 1960s and 70s mike daniman who lives just outside of denver is part of that generation who longs not only for these now retired tunnel motor diesels but also for the denver and rio grande western railroad itself one of many railroad identities merged out of existence and now part of the sprawling union pacific system it's hard to pick a favorite among the many great recent artists for me of railroad paintings but i think that ted rose who grew up in milwaukee would have to be part of that discussion ted settled in santa fe new mexico when he found success in its competitive art community with his watercolors imbued with emotion through his mastery of color and form ted painted contemporary and historic scenes and i don't think it's fair to say nostalgia was the driving force behind his work i think as much as anything he was motivated by a great fascination with the railroad environment all areas but nostalgia certainly played a role in some of his paintings like this beautiful scene of milwaukee's railroad shops and yards as they appeared during his childhood that's the 35th street viaduct at the top and today almost nothing below it remains our nostalgia is strong in england too as we can see here thanks to peter moss's collection terence cunio is considered the greatest of england's many fine railway artists and this painting from 1990 touches on nostalgia not only for the steam locomotive but also the manually operated signal boxes and yes that is a mouse sitting on the operator's chair at lower right the mouse became cuny's trademark and one appears in nearly all of his works as a playful mark of authenticity today the standard bearer of british railway artist is john austin who attended our conference in 2014 as a guest of peters and returned as a presenter in 2018. this painting shows a great western locomotive the king john pulling a passenger train at dalwish on the south coast around 1960 and while nostalgia is a great motivator of current railway artists on both sides of the atlantic it's far from the only motivation behind recent railroad art the late tom feywell created advertising art for general motors for more than 20 years it's tempting to dismiss commercial art in the context of what we've been talking about today but feywell style is so incredibly bold and strong that i think he warrants our consideration these gp 38-2 locomotives are about as utilitarian as locomotives come yet with feywell they are bigger than life faster and twice as powerful tom presented at our conference in 2012 when he told us about landing his assignment with gm he said an account rep named john callahan from the marsteller agency had noticed his work and thought he might be a good fit for one of their clients the electromotive division of general knows john gave tom the specs for the ad blueprints the locomotive some rough copy and said do whatever you want music to any artist ears now the initial presentation to emd did not go well in fact the managers laughed at tom's work they said it has no wheels the sky is too rough the train looks like it's going to fall over they threw him in the trash but callaghan the ad rap wasn't deterred he made sure some of trump's drawings made it upstairs to emd's corporate office where he prevailed on the executives to give it a try after the first had hit visibility skyrocketed and the rest is history now another example of commercial art that i'd like to briefly mention is j craig thorpe he's an illustrator in seattle who frequently paints concept art where he gives visual form to transportation projects often as a means of helping them get off the ground his paintings are frequently used in town hall meetings to convince skeptical residents of what a proposed project will look like and he loved that he's still doing these actually intangible paints rather than digital renderings craig calls this painting the possible that is a powerful example of how today's railroad art looks not only back at the past but also ahead towards the future in 2013 the center conducted a survey of current railroad artists in north america which we published in our journey peter moss put us in touch with roger watt a british artist who lives in vancouver british columbia where he makes exquisitely detailed graphite drawings they might still rely on nostalgia but it's a different take what does not try to recreate the past and he embraces the weeds that are slowly reclaiming the steam locomotive he's also made some very contemporary rail theme drawings including times square from 2013 a study of a new york city subway station and a train in motion motion is a frequent theme in adam normand's work another contemporary artist and another connection via peter moss adam lives in los angeles and paints modern railroad subjects and acrylics with photorealistic precision when we interviewed adam he had this to say about his fascination with freight cars to me they are objects that are made to be functional they are not made to be beautiful they are made to serve a purpose it's only through use and time that they become beautiful or interesting as they develop a patina this graffiti and grime and rust and all of these components build up it creates a very unique persona to each particular freight car for that he says is something i identified with but something that i hope life is that as we gather more experience in life the more interesting it becomes the more interesting we become i really like that parallel that notion of the weathering process of time on industrial subjects also appears in charlie hunter's work the 20 art that 2013 art survey we conducted was my introduction to charlie he's since written an article for us about the boxcars exhibition he curated here at the brattleboro museum in heart and more recently he presented at our 2019 conference about his plein air painting tour through the southwest by amtrak by the time he'd finished i think everyone in the audience was ready to head to union station and board the next train to santa fe with him charlie calls this style contemporary realism and i know that in the wider world of art it's on the more literal representational end of the spectrum within the railway community though it's still pretty expressiveness expressionistic and that's something i really like about it we've had quite a few talented railroad artists doing literal and representational work the selections i've shown you tonight are just the tip of the iceberg so it's exciting for me to see someone like charlie approaching railroad subjects a little differently and doing it so well and there are others too and charlie has introduced us to some of them his boxcars exhibition included this six foot wide piece by tim satternow featuring featuring a bridge a new york city's high line which is an elevated freight railroad that's been turned into a wildly popular urban trail another artist doing more impressionistic railroad work is catherine gibbs i have to admit that i have never heard of her until this painting miles to go before i sleep won best in show at an art exhibition in 2016. we've since published an article about her railroad work and there's a lot i like about it i'm especially drawn to the bold brush strokes and vibrant colors and i like that she's tackling today's freight railroad looking neither backwards nor forwards but as it exists right now the railroad for all its utilitarianism is still an endlessly fascinating subject charlie understands that too his paintings in this exhibition explore a fascination with railroad hardware and particularly signals but the ones that warn motorists and pedestrians of approaching trains at railroad crossings and the ones like this that govern the movements of the trains themselves many artists share this fascination we've already seen several examples tonight from railroad artists like michael flanagan and terence cunio to pillars of the art world like claude monet and edward hopper in this painting of charlie's i can especially hear the echoes of hopper's railroad sunset there's the formality of their compositions the dignity they both afford to these structures and a certain sense of isolation there's beauty here but it's solemn contemplative railroad signals exist for safety as well as efficiency while the earliest signals required human operators most of them from the past several decades have been automated they have enabled railroad companies to eliminate jobs like crossing guards and operators stationed in signal towers yet these signals particularly the older ones have a certain sense of character we sometimes call them signals for their unwavering guard duty through the days the seasons the years in today's depopulated railroad landscape signals provide some of the only visual clues about whether a train is coming the only way for an outsider to glimpse into the inner workings of the railroad now many of these old soldiers are being retired and replaced by new models this wireless communications continue to improve railroads may not even need line side signals at some point in the future for the ones that still stand they remind us as charlie says stop look and listen and for a few people like charlie hunter they beg for something more photograph the sketch through a trip home for brushes and pigment in a plein air painting session and another piece in the nearly two-century tradition of railroads and art that concludes my presentation tonight thank you so much for tuning in and thanks again to the brattleboro museum and art center for inviting and hosting me i'd be happy to take any questions god i'm speechless that was just phenomenal thank you thank you danny thank you so much you know we we have ideas sometimes about what will make a useful event in connection with an exhibition that we have up you know a useful presentation and then we think that we've lined it up and um you know i would say like about 50 of the time it kind of isn't exactly what we we had in mind this was exactly what we hoped for and more what a phenomenal presentation and bringing us right up to charlie hunter's work i um i don't yeah i can't thank you enough and um maybe maybe my reaction is colored a bit because um i love trains so much and uh and railroad art and uh so exciting for me to see some of the work that you share that i was unfamiliar with who is the name of the artist the british artist who's in vancouver roger roger watt yes his charcoal drawings are just phenomenal wow amazing and he actually presented he actually presented at one of our online conferences you can find his presentation on our youtube channel and i strongly encourage you to check it out i will absolutely do that and the other artist whose work i was not familiar with and uh just loved his ted rose oh my gosh ted rose is a pillar of the robert art community and of course a local heroed us in wisconsin being from milwaukee originally ted's watercolors just he captures something about the essence and the poetry and the emotions of railroading that i think he does as well as any artist who's ever approached the subject um ted grew up in milwaukee in the 50s and 60s when you could turn tune in on the am radio to those uh great southern music stations uh blasting the blues up from the south and and i think the the those blues musicians really spoke to ted and and informed his sensibilities as an artist um and i i did have the we we have a traveling exhibition of ted's mainly photography he was a photographer only for a few years as a young man in his late teens and early 20s his black and white work is phenomenal and it showed a lot of his kind of young sensibilities that would come out later in his paintings there are i think we have four watercolors and one charcoal drawing in that show too uh and it's just it's so much fun to get that one out and see those works up on the walls and i that was out of the colorado railroad museum most recently it was actually there last year during the pandemic and i got to do a presentation to them about ted's work there and that was that was really meaningful to me to get to think more about ted and his work is ted still living no he sadly died uh pretty young uh he was i think only in his early 60s uh and when cancer claimed him i believe that was in 2004 and i went out to visit his widow polly in santa fe a couple of times and she still has a number of his works uh and as she was showing them to me i was just astounded by how many of them he had completed in 2004 i mean he was literally painting right up to the end like you know it wasn't like he was it wasn't like he was you know out of out of time it was like he was this you know musician up on the stage for an encore just just playing his heart out until until the final note strong i mean it was it was really really that was very emotional for me to see how much of that work he did so late in his life when he knew he was dying but just had to keep painting well i i can't wait to uh to find to discover more of that work he did a book that was just a quick uh note on that ted did a book uh with indiana university press about his paintings called in the traces which came out in uh just a couple years before he died maybe in 2002. and that's certainly one i i i highly recommend if you have any and you can find used copies of it pretty easily in the traces is the name of that fantastic i will go out and do that right away i have a um there's a comment here from arvied saying ted rose painted with watercolors and he could capture the steam oil and coal smell amen yeah that evident from just that one uh one piece that that scott shared uh charlie has been charlie hunter's been providing a running commentary on the in the comments on facebook live stream excellent hi charlie uh but he also asked um was the piece by what a conscious reference to scheeler's rolling power that is something we would have to ask roger and it's something i'm afraid i did not think to ask him i'm sort of embarrassed now that i didn't then i'd be very interested to know that um i'll see if i can find that out charlie great yeah thank you uh roy asks any comments about the railroad artist griff keller hmm absolutely now griff did some phenomenal work for the pennsylvania railroad uh and in fact one of our board members kevin keith has recently blogged uh about some of griff teller's work if you uh if you want to check out uh kevin's blog on the train or classic trains magazine website um you know griff teller was really uh did some you know again like some of these other artists he was commissioned by the railroads but you know i think in several cases his work rose above the the merely commercial realm to something more uh he was certainly someone who who understood the essence of railroading and was able to capture it in his work thank you i encourage all of you out there if you have other questions or comments please type them in at any time and we'll we'll get them to scott um scott a question that came up for me yeah now i'm not sure if i was interpreting everything correctly and and you know of course you're only giving us a slice uh you know of the bigger picture of railroad art but i began to have the sense that a lot of um current railroad art seems to be like there were a lot of there was a lot of what you showed us where it's living artists today depicting historical scenes yes and um and it made me think that's really a really different thing than what charlie yes i mean charlie is really um you know warts and all this is what railroad railroad infrastructure looks like today and i i love charlie's work that and i think it's almost it is is charlie an outlier in that respect i would say that you know in the overall mainstream trend of railroad artists there are probably more people painting with sort of that nostalgia driven sense of the past uh but there are certainly some that are like charlie that are looking you know holistically and critically and holding up that mirror to the to the contemporary railroad landscape uh it's exciting for me to find them because you know they are probably i don't know that i call them outliers but i'd say they're probably in a significant minority um compared to what's you know what we see in some other railroad work and so it's you know i mean i'm i'm someone who you know while i love all of our historic photographs uh in our archives at the center um when i go out to photograph trains i i usually don't go to the museums to photograph the historic steam locomotives even though i love them i go out to photograph the contemporary operations and railroads as they exist today because they they're still interesting to me even though the the technology has changed it's a it's an industry that relies far more on on technology and on capital and far less on humans and uh in a labor-driven environment and so there's been just all of those changes that people who love trains and railroads have had to to grapple with you know i mean we're at a point now and especially since 9 11 um you know which is now 20 years ago but that's really been you know the majority of my adult life where it's been very difficult to approach the railroad at close range there's been security concerns there's been liability concerns um you know the railroads generally haul freight and they operate out of the public eye and they're pretty happy that way and you know don't really with some exceptions union pacific certainly has done some nice events uh uh with their historic steam locomotives norfolk southern and some others you know have done you know events that do some public outreach but by and large the railroads occupy you know they they operate out of sight out of mind for the majority of the time um and so it can be challenging to to be able to get up close to them other than great crossings um but i still think they're they're beautiful they're interesting they're significant uh they're powerful um that power is wielded to great effect both you know for good and ill and i find all of it fascinating and i'm glad to see artists like charlie who were who were looking at the the railroad as it exists now and interpreting it in contemporary art and i'm glad for the artists who look backwards and you know give us some views of the past that we might not be able to see but we can we can see it through their eyes and through their paint so i mean i think there's a place for all of it and it's it's exciting to have different things to be able to talk about wonderful wonderful what a fun job you have oh it is a delight absolutely um charlie's asking about a leslie reagan uh it's another another great uh artist of the past uh one i am not quite as familiar with so i can't i can't i mean i'm certainly familiar with with reagan's work um i believe uh it's some really significant works for the new york central if i recall correctly but uh outside of that i i don't want to say uh something without being better informed so i'll have to i'll have to uh pass on on critical commentary there for the moment um any thoughts about thomas wolfe and his writings about trains yes no i was so for a brief period of my life i after after engineering school i worked at an engineering magazine for a couple of years where i discovered that i really enjoyed the writing and the the magazine design work more than the engineering subject matter and that was sort of the first step that led me to to my life at the center for regular photography and art um but in the process of doing that i i realized i liked writing so much i started going back to our local community college to take literature classes because i wanted to know more about this and so i was exposed to some of the great uh you know american and british authors and some others and you know in the course of this came across thomas wolfe and you can't go home again which has some i think some of the most beautiful passages of robert his records and literature that have ever been written particularly his description of of watching the the long-distance passenger train between you know his home and i think in nashville north carolina going north and or coming you know south from new york city uh and that that feeling of longing to be on board the the clash of class and cultures between the the well-heeled travelers and the pullman cars and the you know the sharecroppers watching it go by from their fields i mean it just encapsulated so much of of the the contrast and the dichotomies that railroads introduced to the world at large um and you know brought that sort of modern world of the cities of the east you know into the into the most rural communities all over the count

2021-09-02 13:19

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