Nighthawks, Cliff Dwellers and Millard Sheets

Who knew that Millard Sheets created a painting, "Beer for Prosperity", which is strikingly similar to Edward Hopper's famous work, "Nighthawks"?  (Or perhaps it is the other way around.  "Beer for Prosperity" preceeded "Nighthawks" by 9 years.)

Who knew that Sheets painted his own version of George Bellow's 1913 famed work, "Cliff Dwellers", a scene of N.Y. tenement street life in the early 1900s.  Sheets' entitled his 1934 painting "Street People".

And who knew that Sheets for a very brief period of time dabbled in impressionism? (Thank heavens he gave up that style quickly!) 

Millard Sheets is, after all, one of the most viewed California artists even today, over 20 years after his death. Every day thousands of people walk by and admire his huge mosaic murals on the exterior walls of what are now 80 Chase Manhattan Banks in California. (These murals were originally commissioned in 1963 by Home Savings of America.) For most people, the murals and his famous painting "Angels Flight"  at LACMA are the most defining of Sheets' art works.

So the exhibition "Millard Sheets: The Early Years 1926-1944" at the Pasadena Museum of California Art is revealing.  During this time Sheets was a young artist with growing influence whose work, especially his watercolors, came to define California Regional Art. 

One sees an increasing simplification in his watercolors and oils. Fewer details.  More broad strokes of warm, golden colors -- California colors that seen to minimize the negative aspects of his subject matter.  Even his paintings of migrant worker camps in the heart of the Great Depression or Los Angeles tenements are infused with light and a sense of the benign that seems to distance the viewer from what was, no doubt, the harsh and ugly realities of the scenes.  

One other issue:  Sheets was obviously painting to sell to people who wanted art for their homes. And in that era people wanted beauty on their walls. There was plenty of ugliness and harsh realities outside their doors.

The show is worth seeing.  If you are taking the Gold Line, get off at the Memorial Park station in Pasadena.  Their website is http://www.pmcaonline.org/

 A companion exhibition, The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River, is in the back gallery at PMCA.  More about this provocative show to come...