Art/Work

Life begins with labor, and it remains a constant. Without work in all its forms, with all its travails and triumphs, there is no existence. Artists know this and always have. Their profession, now with a sheen of stardom for those who excel, was long governed by guilds with apprenticeships, rules and dues. This week, just ahead of Labor Day, we take a look at how artists across centuries and cultures have worked to portray work. 

It's been said that art is life with time removed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the perfect place to witness this. From an ancient Egyptian scribe waiting to take the pharaoh's dictation, to fisherman patiently dangling hooks on thousand-year-old Chinese scroll paintings, to ballerinas eternally dancing, the business of life plays out endlessly. 

Petrus Christus painted "A Goldsmith in His Shop" in 1449. It's a masterpiece of Northern Renaissance art, exquisite in every detail. This is a painting that asks us to work, as well. No 10-second stroll-by will reveal its rewards. Notice the little shelf with goods on the right — a rack of rings, some polished pitchers, a piece of bright coral. 

"A Goldsmith in his Shop," 1449, by the Netherlandish artist Petrus Christus is on view at The Met. Photo courtesy of The Met

Observe the sumptuous garments his customers wear, the care with which he balances his weights, and the two window shoppers checking out the business in the mirror at the far right. Johannes Vermeer's "A Maid Asleep" (ca. 1656–57) documents too much labor. The bone-tired woman dozes at the table. Recent analysis revealed that there was once a silhouetted man in the doorway, watching. Thank goodness the artist erased him, allowing her a moment's quiet rest.

Thomas Hart Benton's "America Today" is a 10-panel mural commissioned by the New School for Social Research in 1930, meant to celebrate American achievement and the hard work that went into it. 

Drillers, loggers, farmers, entertainers

Here you'll find, in grand scale and brilliant color, railroads and airplanes, oil drillers and filmmakers, shipbuilders, loggers, farmers, and entertainers. In the panel titled "Steel," five workers smelt metal, while at the far right a lanky figure leans into his work. Benton asked one of his students to pose for the piece. It was a young Jackson Pollock. 

Opening Sept. 7 is "Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s" which includes a careful look at the labor movement of the early 20th century and features Elizabeth Olds' powerful portrait, "Miner Joe."

Elizabeth Olds, "Miner Joe," 1942, Screenprint, 18 3/4 x 12 3/4 in., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Courtesy of The Met

When the Met’s refurbished European Paintings 1300-1800 galleries reopen on Nov. 20, visit Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Harvesters" from 1565. After cutting wheat, it's lunchtime for a group of men and women under a tree. Others carry away carefully gathered sheaves. In the distance, ships wait to take the harvest to market. Details abound, but the overwhelming impression comes from the grand wash of golden color that paints the entire scene. This, I think, is what the artist wanted to tell us. The real gold is the fruit of the earth and of labor. That's the richness that allows us another meal, another day, another season.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted "The Harvesters" in 1565. It will be on view at The Met in November. Photo: Courtesy of The Met

The New-York Historical Society presents "Women's Work" through July 7, 2024. Forty-five objects open windows onto the kinds of jobs, both paid and unpaid, women have held in America and how they've changed due to political, legal and historic events. You'll find a New York City tavern license issued to Mary Dickson in 1784; labels from shampoo made by Madame C. J. Walker, America's first female self-made millionaire; and a campaign button for Shirley Chisholm. 

There are also photographs by fearless female street photographers like Jessie Tarbox Beals and Jane Hoffer documenting New York policewomen, entrepreneurs and more. 

Jane Hoffer, "Officer Walker,"1975, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, Courtesy New-York Historical Society

At the American Folk Art Museum, "What That Quilt Knows About Me" looks at how fiber artists have used quilts to express ideas and tell stories. From biblical tales to personal histories to abstractions that hide secret messages, quilts cover a lot. 

A highlight is Hystercine Rankin's "Untitled Family History Quilt." Rankin was a Mississippi sharecropper's daughter who started making quilts at age 12. 

Fifty years later, she was teaching, exhibiting her quilts as art, and had been recognized with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Anyone who's ever held a needle can almost feel the countless jabs Rankin must have endured, crafting straight stitches into text and pulling thread through layers of cloth to "paint" a moving portrait of her family picking cotton and plowing fields. The quilts will be on view through Oct. 29. 

Finished work

From its beginning in 1929, the Whitney Museum has been dedicated to exclusively 20th and 21st century American art. Here, you'll see George Bellows' paintings of boxers, George Tooker's dazed, angst-ridden subway riders, Ilse Bing's photographs of street vendors, and Charles Demuth's 1927 "My Egypt" which monumentalizes a Pennsylvania grain elevator. 

Charles Demuth, "My Egypt," 1927. Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

Also on view is Jay DeFeo's abstract painting, "The Rose." How can an abstraction be about work? It revelas something about the work of artists.

DeFeo began the work in 1958, envisioning something with a strong center. What she didn't foresee was an eight-year obsession, during which she worked over and over on the piece, adding layer upon layer until it blossomed into a behemoth over 10 feet tall, weighed down by more than a ton of paint, that needed a hole cut in the side of her building and a crane to remove. Artists often grapple with the question of when a piece is done. For DeFeo, this epic work took the better part of a decade. 

At the Museum of Modern Art, visit "Legacies of Resilience and Resistance: Jacob Lawrence and Elizabeth Catlett." Catlett (1915-2012) was a highly accomplished artist and educator who chose to make her work simple, preferring woodcuts and prints so that the people she depicted — here, female agricultural and domestic workers — could afford to own the pictures she created. Lawrence (1917-2000) created a 60-panel "Migration Series" in 1940. It pictures African Americans traveling north in the early 20th century. Moving to find work is a story that's both timeless and timely, and Lawrence — a Harlem born child of migrants — tells it touchingly. 

Jacob Lawrence, "The migrants arrived in great numbers" 1940-41, Museum of Modern Art. Photo: © 2022 Jacob Lawrence/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

And, since nobody goes to MoMA without stopping to see Vincent van Gogh's paintings, visit his "Portrait of Joseph Roulin" from 1889. Note how the artist elevated his local postman through pose, setting, and gorgeous details — like the background tapestry filled with flowers — to the kind of portrait once reserved for monarchs, saints and popes.