‘South of Scranton’, Peter Blume

On my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week, I encountered a lot of pieces/works that attracted me such as “The Furniture Factory” by Bumpei Usui, The Three O’Clock Sitting by Henri Matisse, etc. while searching for the one I was finally going to write about, “South of Scranton” (1931) by Peter Blume. “Peter Blume (1906-1992) was a famous painter and sculptor. His works contained elements of folk art and surrealism.” (MoMA) During the 1930’s and 1940’s, the popularity of Blume’s dreamlike paintings, filled with obsessive details, made him one of America’s best known artists.

“South of Scranton gathers various scenes that the artist encountered during an extended road trip  in spring 1930. Setting out from his residence in Pawling, New York, Blume drove through the coalfields of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and then headed south towards the steel mills of Bethlehem.  Blume then travelled further south to Charleston, South Carolina, where he witnessed several sailors performing acrobatic exercises aboard the deck of a German cruiser ship in the harbour. In an account of the painting’s origin, the artist stated, “As I tried to weld my impressions into the picture, they lost all their logical connections. I moved Scranton into Charleston, and Bethlehem into Scranton, as people do in a dream.” (MoMA) 

The moment I read about this piece, it clicked to me that very second that, “this is the one!” I found it funny, as it appeared to me and relatable at the same time as I literally had a dream one time a couple of months ago that I still remember in which I mixed the rooms of my house, such as the bathroom was in the place of basement, kitchen was where my parents’ bedroom used to be, etc. and when I woke up, it seemed so surreal as I realised that dream, it has been a in my memory since. Blume’s crisp technique also heightens the painting’s surreal appearance. Surrealism in art is basically the idea of producing imagery or effects by unnatural or irrational combinations and contrasts. 

As a matter of fact, ‘South of Scranton’ was included in the Thirty-second Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1934. Eight years later, in 1942, it was acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art after it won a prize in the major exhibition “Artists for Victory”.

I came across this work in the Art of Americas gallery within Modern and Contemporary Arts section which had other works associated with Modernism from the African and Greek regions too.