Art in the Age of Steam

• Introduction
  • The Formative Years in Europe
  • Human Drama
  • Crossing Continents: America and Beyond
  • Impressionists and Post Impressionists
  • States of Mind
  • The Machine Age
• Comment Card
• Exhibition Catalogue
• Library Resources
• Community Partners
• Group Services
• Press Room
• Sponsors

• Return to Exhibition List ...

States of Mind

States of Mind, which covers the late 19th and early 20th centuries, portrays the railroad less realistically in order to evoke feelings and ideas associated with the railroad and with railroad journeys. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's painting presents a harsh urban industrial environment carved up by railroad tracks. The melancholy and alienation induced by rail travel are depicted by the Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico and in the more realistic works of Edward Hopper. Thomas Hart Benton's subject dreams of a nightmarish railroad accident. Paintings by Paul Delvaux eerily juxtapose the female nude and the train, while Henri Magritte, in his celebrated Time Transfixed, uses the locomotive as a symbol of passing time temporarily brought to a halt.

	Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944 Winter Landscape, 1911 75.2008.3
	Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880-1938 View from the Window, 1914 75.2008.2
	Paul Delvaux, 1897-1994 The Last Carriage, 1975 89.2008
	Edward Hopper, 1882-1967 Approaching a City, 1946 93.2008
	René Magritte, 1898-1967 Time Transfixed, 1938 126.2008