To love a painting is to feel that this presence is… not an object but a voice.
~ Andre Malraux ~
Gray and Gold
By
John Rogers Cox
This has long been one of my favorite paintings. Twenty years ago, Kate introduced me to Cox, when she brought home a print of Gray and Gold, and I instantly feel in love with this bold, deep image, which to me so completely captured a piece of the Mid-West. The painting hangs at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and though we had both seen it separately, in the past, during this trip we made time for a stop at the museum, to see Gray and Gold together.
It was painted in 1942; a year after the United States entered World War II, and was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on December 7, 1942, on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, as part of the “Artists for Victory” exhibition.
The Regionalist American artist, Cox, from Terre Haute, Indiana, which is called “The Crossroads of America” because of intersection of major north-south and east-west highways, painted Gray and Gold, from memory, capturing a location near his home.
The accompany placard, in the museum, reads: “amber waves of grain threatened by ominous storm clouds likely has symbolic overtones. The painting’s foreground features an intersection of two dirt lanes, as well as a telephone pole emblazoned with political campaign posters. The artist seems to imply that American democracy is at a crossroads during this time of combat against the spread of fascism in Europe and Asia.”
A word on The Cleveland Museum of Art — http://www.clevelandart.org/ — free! Museum admission is always free, and their collection is massive. Currently, the Museum is underdoing the end of a major renovation and expansion project, which will further enhance your visit.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
~William Blake ~
