Januszak on small town America

[bungeejumper]

Episode 3 (?) of Waldemar's Big Sky, Big Art season. Flipping heck, that was one of the best art documentaries I've ever seen. I'm going to keep it permanently on my VCR and revisit it whenever I need to remind myself how good an art prog can be.

The challenge for Mr J was to talk about how the repressive spirit of small town rural America expressed itself into the way that American art developed. The problem he had to tackle was that it was so disparate.

I mean, everyone knows about American Gothic (famous pic of stern couple with pitchfork), but he also took it right into Henry Ford's Dearborn factory and talked about how the arrival (and subsequent departure) of big steel had impacted on rural and rustbelt attitudes. Some surprising stuff there, such as how Edsel Ford was prepared to allow subversive anti-industrial art, and to pay for it as well. And how important the Post Office murals became in the 1930s. (Many of them also quite subversive.)

Tightly focused, totally convincingly argued. A gem. Don't think it's on iPlayer yet, but keep an eye out for it.

BJ