ARTISTS
Not being an art historian, an art critic, nor even artful, the Jazz Age Junkie can only suggest avenues of exploration in this realm of culture that was so active in the Jazz Age. Here are some possibilities:
Tamara de Lempicka
Art Deco artists are mostly known as designers and illustrators, such as Romain de Tirtoff (Erté), Paul Poiret, René Lalique, Jean Dunand, Georges Lepape, Sonia Delaunay and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. But Tamara de Lempicka stands out as a true fine artist who developed her own unique style that can only be described as Art Deco. By combining elements of cubism and certain features of Mannerist painters of the 16th century, de Lempicka became a sought-after portrait painter among the wealthy in Europe and America. She was also known for her bohemian Parisian lifestyle and sartorial style. The Jazz Age Junkie admires her for her many hats – she is said to have had more than 200!
The Green Turban (1930)
Georgia O’Keeffe
Another unique artist of the Jazz Age was O’Keeffe, who doesn’t fit within any major art movement. She has been called the “Mother of American Modernism,” and is known for her paintings of flowers and the desert environment, but she began her career in Chicago and New York.
Radiator Building – Night, New York (1927)
Muralists
Los Tres Grandes
Of the three muralists dubbed Los Tres Grandes – Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros – it is Rivera who holds a special place in San Francisco history.
Diego Rivera/Frida Khalo
At present, none of Rivera’s three San Francisco murals is available (for various reasons) to the public, but the Jazz Age Junkie will rejoice and let you know when they again find their way into the public eye. Here they are with brief descriptions
The Allegory of California
Rivera was hired by Timothy Pfleuger to paint a fresco on the grand staircase in the Pacific Stock Exchange Lunch Club (today’s City Club), and arrived in San Francisco in September 1930 with his wife, Frida Kahlo. It was a sort of working honeymoon for the couple, who stayed at the studio of sculptor Ralph Stackpole next door to the legendary Montgomery Block and its coterie of artists. It was quite the controversy to hire an avowed communist to paint anything inside a building dedicated to capitalist pursuits, but Pfleuger prevailed and San Francisco gained a masterpiece.
The Making of a Fresco
Filling an entire wall in a gallery in the former San Francisco Art Institute, the subject of this 1931 fresco seems like a masterclass for the art students who attended the institute over the years. The school closed in 2021, but a non-profit bought it along with the Rivera fresco in 2024, so there is a pretty good chance that the public will once again be able to view this gem of San Francisco art in the future.
Pan American Unity
This may be the largest of Rivera’s murals, created for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. It was displayed in the foyer of City College of San Francisco’s performing arts theater from 1961 until recently, when it went on display at SFMOMA for two years. It has now been returned to City College, but is not on display at present.
Cubists
Cubism was an art movement that reduced images to two-dimensional sculptural shapes. It came and went in a flash before the Jazz Age, but it left an indelible geometric mark in the design world (in the shape of a zigzagged lightning bolt?) that morphed into Art Deco. It all began in Montmartre, Paris, led by:
Juan Gris
Guitar and Clarinet (1920)
Georges Braque
Houses at Estaque (1908)
Pablo Picasso
Three Musicians (1921)
Salon Cubists
A group called the “Salon Cubists,” who exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and Salon des Indépendants included:
Robert Delaunay
Guitar and Clarinet (1920)
Jean Metzinger
Guitar and Clarinet (1920)
Fernand Léger
Guitar and Clarinet (1920)
Surrealists
Surrealism reared its dreamily illogical head in Paris in the early 1920s and its proponents began immediately arguing with Dadaists and among themselves, creating scandals and inciting riots in Montparnasse’s legendary watering holes. It has been reported that one night at the Closerie des Lilas, Andre Breton (author of the Surrealist Manifesto) started a brawl that saw people flinging food, leaping on tables, hanging from chandeliers and ripping a window from its frame. Breton, who initially conceived of surrealism as a literary movement, was in constant conflict with anyone who didn’t meet his surrealism standards, and will probably roll in his grave at the list of artists I’m referencing here.
Some Surrealists and Their Art
Rene Magritte
The Lovers (1928)
Frida Kahlo
The Two Fridas (1939)
Joan Miró
Dutch Interior (l) (1928)
George Chirico
The Red Tower (1913)
Max Ernst
The Angel of the Home or the Triumph of Surrealism (1937)
Man Ray
Le Violon d’Ingres (1924)
Salvador Dalí
Lobster Telephone (1938)
Social Realists
The Social Realist movement was a response to the economic hard times of the Great Depression, the growing racial conflicts and the rise of fascism in the Jazz Age. Here are a few of the artists whose works are identified (sometimes loosely) with this school.
Thomas Hart Benton
Self Portrait With Rita (1922)
Edward Hopper
Chop Suey (1929)
John Steuart Curry
Baptism in Kansas (1928)
Ben Shahn
Double Self Portrait (1933)
Raphael Soyer
Office Girls (1936)
Margaret Bourke-White
Bourke-White on Chrysler Building eagle (1934)
Grant Wood
Stone City, Iowa (1930)
Archibald Motley
Saturday Night (1935)
Hale Woodruff
Picking Cotton (1926)
Automakers
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when the beholder is the Jazz Age Junkie, automobile beauty reached its pinnacle in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Beauty in cars, just as in most everything else, can be greatly enhanced by great piles of dough-re-mi. Here are a few examples of the vehicular pulchritude that money could buy in the Jazz Age.
1930 Stutz Model M Monte Carlo
1930 Cord L-29
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1928 Bugatti Type 43 Roadster
The original was deep blue. For her 1928 self-portrait, Autoportrait,…
1928 Pierce-Arrow Series 36 sedan
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1930 Packard Custom Eight 745 Roadster
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1928 Duesenberg Model J
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If you’d like to see a 1933 Duesenberg SJ Convertible Coupe by Walter M. Murphy Co. or a 1938 Delahaye Type 145 Coupe by Chapron in the flesh (or cold steel), you need to visit the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.