The Midwest Scene Comes of Age

Until 1930 it was generally true that aspiring middle western painters, when they were really ambitious, moved on to the East. When the depression broke, however, the situation changed abruptly. On the one hand the procession to New York halted; on the other a number of other painters who had already jumped the gun, finding themselves now suddenly destitute, returned to their homes. Out of this reunion a new generation formed, and it is the question now to ascertain what, during the past seven years, it has done.Even so recently as a year ago it would have been easier to find an answer. For then the subject still seemed on the ascendant. The movement inspired originally (or at least immediately) by the Mexicans, and fostered by such homecomers as Grant Wood, to paint what was familiarly around one, was then still flowering into record after record of red barns and tall windmills and lush haystacks, which constituted almost exclusively the “American scene.” It was on to this bandwagon that young men like J...