Domestic Building

Richard Blauvelt Coe

About 1935

  • Titles Domestic Building (Descriptive)
  • Artist Richard Blauvelt Coe, American, 1904 - 1978
  • Medium etching
  • Dimensions sheet: 6 3/16 × 9 1/4 in. (15.7 × 23.5 cm) plate: 5 1/4 × 7 7/16 in. (13.3 × 18.9 cm) mat: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
  • Credit Line Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of John Peter Crook McCall and Doy Leale McCall, III, AFI.112.2017
  • Work Type print
  • Classification Prints

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One pyramidal wing of this two-part sculpture shows three male figures standing above a mass of figures. The three men wear robes and one holds a microphone. They reach down toward a figure wearing a crown of coins. That figure is surrounded by others, including an nude woman and a man on whose head he rets his hand. Among this tangle of people are the wheels of industry. On the alternate side of this wing figures in bowler hats holding ticker tape, as other individuals (in some cases distinguished as African American by attributes of their appearance) turn the wheels of industry. On the other pyramidal wing of the sculpture, three men stand above another tangle of figures. The man on the proper right reaches down toward the figures, resting his hand on a cascade of coins that runs to the base of the sculpture. Divided by that cascade of coins are two figural groups. On one side a bridge is represented, as are bolts of lightning (likely suggesting electrification). One man uses surveying equpiment, another holds shovels. On the opposite side of the sculpture, men progress away from the base, seemingly working together. Above them stands an academic, and below them are the wheels of industry. At the base of the sculpture the initials of New Deal organizations are included: FERA, NRA, PWA, CWA, WPA.
A black and white photograph of a surface with multiple layers of paint that are cracked, curled and peeling. Light creates shades of gray and black in the layers of paint. The lighter color paint has cracks and a rough texture, while the dark colored paint is peeling in abstract shapes and has a vertical element to its texture.
Animal Locomotion, Eadwaerd Muybridge, collotype
Seated Male Nude Playing Pan Pipes, Lucille Douglass, charcoal