dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: Stuyvesant Van Veen
titel: Pittsburgh Panorama
jahr: 1937
adresse: Federal Courthouse and Post Office (Court Room), Grant St, Pittsburgh PA, USA
+: Funded by The Treasury Section of Fine Arts
«The artist presents what at first seems like a rather benign bird’s eye view of the Pittsburgh skyline. Carefully manipulating the scenery to highlight various strata of the city, van Veen included a hidden, but important political symbol. In the foreground, van Veen shows Pittsburgh’s industrial base: railways, mills, mines, foundries and barges fill the banks of the river. From there, the city’s modern skyline rises in the distance, suggesting the fruits of that industry. Framing the scene, then newly inaugurated George Westinghouse Memorial Bridge (1932) arches over the city and its rivers and provides a raised platform for the parade of people and vehicles crossing the bridge. The artist described the groups as: “Smart cars and smart people, trucks and laborers, tramps and buses, everyone who made up the population of that industrial melting-pot of nations and classes.” As anyone familiar with Pittsburgh knows, van Veen’s depiction is anything but topographically accurate. Instead, he manipulated the bend in the river, so that the finished image would resemble a hammer and sickle, a well-known communist symbol. Van Veen later admitted that he intentionally inserted this symbol to antagonize his federal patrons.»
(Sylvia Rhor)
