Editing Precisionism (section)

== An American movement ==
[[File:NY Met demuth figure 5 gold.JPG|thumb|left|[[Charles Demuth]], ''[[I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold]]'', 1928, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]

While influenced by European modernist artistic movements like [[Cubism]], [[Purism]], and [[futurism (art)|Futurism]], Precisionism focused on the themes of [[industrialisation|industrialization]] and modernization in the American landscape,  using precise, sharply defined [[abstract art|geometrical forms]]. Precisionist artists embraced their American identity and some were reluctant to acknowledge European artistic influences.<ref>[http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/prec/hd_prec.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art]</ref>

There is a degree of reverence for the industrial age in the movement, but social commentary was not fundamental to the style. Like [[Pop Art]], Precisionism has on occasion been interpreted as a criticism of the de-natured society it portrays, though its artists did not often feel comfortable with this reading of their work. [[Elsie Driggs]]' ''Pittsburgh'' (1926) illustrates this gap in perception.<ref>For a fuller discussion of ''Pittsburgh'', see Constance Kimmerle, ''Elsie Driggs: The Quick and the Classical'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 31-33 and John Loughery, "Blending the Classical and the Modern: The Art of Elsie Driggs", ''Woman's Art Journal'' (Winter 1987), p 24.</ref>  A painting of black and gray steel-mill smokestacks, thick piping, and crisscrossing wires, with only clouds of smoke to relieve the severity of the image, viewers have been tempted to see this dark painting as a statement of environmental concern. To the contrary, Driggs always claimed that she intended an ironic beauty in the image and referred to it as "my [[El Greco]]." Upon seeing the painting, Charles Daniel dubbed her "one of the new classicists."<ref>Kimmerle, p. 32.</ref> More often than not, Precisionism implicitly celebrated man-made dynamism and new technologies.  Possible exceptions to this statement are some of the darker, more claustrophobic city paintings of [[Louis Lozowick]] and the comic anti-capitalist satires of [[Preston Dickinson]].

Varying degrees of abstraction are found in Precisionist works. ''[[I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold|The Figure 5 in Gold]]'' (1928) by [[Charles Demuth]], an homage to [[William Carlos Williams]]' imagist poem about a fire truck is abstract and stylized, while the paintings of [[Charles Sheeler]] sometimes verge on a form of [[photorealism]]. (In addition to his meticulously detailed paintings like ''River Rouge Plant'' and ''American Landscape'', Sheeler, like his friend [[Paul Strand]], also created sharply focused photographs of factories and public buildings.<ref>[http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/16202 Charles Sheeler photo, retrieved online November 9, 2008]</ref>)  Some Precisionist works tended toward a "highly controlled approach to technique and form" as well as an application of "[[hard-edge painting|hard-edged]] style to long-familiar American scenes".<ref>[http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/prec/hd_prec.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art]</ref>

Precisionist artists often focused on urban imagery: office towers, apartment houses, bridges, tunnels, subway platforms, streets, the skyline and grid of the modern city.  Other artists, however, such as [[Georgia O'Keeffe]], Charles Demuth, Niles Spencer, [[Ralston Crawford]], [[Sanford Ross]], and [[Charles Sheeler]], applied the same approach to more pastoral settings and painted starkly geometric renderings of barns, cottages, country roads, and farm houses.  [[Stuart Davis (painter)|Stuart Davis]] and [[Gerald Murphy]] painted still life compositions in a Precisionist style.