Charles Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

“American painting in the 1930’s,  the Age of Anxiety » seemed like the perfect topic to cover today, on Election day 2016. Never has the mood in France and in the US been so nervous during the week preceding the vote and the potential tsunami of Donald Trump’s election is setting back all the clocks. A beautiful exhibition of art of the Depression years, gives a good sense of America’s energy and power to surge again. And the Musée de l’Orangerie (which is now part of Musée d’Orsay), is a perfect frame for this enchanting show.

William H. Johnson, Street life, Harlem, circa 1939, THE Art Institue of Chicago

October 29 1929, the crash takes place in New York and all around the country. Hoover has been president for a year. America reacts immediately and the large scenes of industrial dynamism, agricultural revival and entertainment are beautifully portrayed in this exhbition which concentrates on America’s energy and identity.

Edward Hopper, New York Movie, 1939, Museum of Modern Art MoMA

Charles Demuth and Sheeler’s industrial and architectural frescoes are especially interesting to the French public but so is Oswaldo Louis Guglielmo’s communist declarations. The unsteadiness of economy precipitated an artistic creativity which lasted all through the second world war. While Europe was witnessing the rise of Nazism, America was building a new strength. Often with artists who had lived in Paris but also with Aaron Douglas one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance movement.

Charles Green Shaw, Wrigley’s, 1937, The Art Institute of Chicago

From Thanksgiving by Doris Lee, 1935 to New York Paris 1931 by Stuart Davis, we travel to the New Mexico with Georgia O’Keefe and to the deep south of cotton pickers with Thomas Hart Berton.

Grant Wood, Young corn, 1931, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art

Whatever comes out of the vote, America will rise again and this show is a good illustration of its energy and talent… (until January 30th, closed on Tuesdays). And take advantage of being in this marvelous museum to revisit the two Monet waterlily rooms which are so soothing that one of the charming guard admitted to sometimes napping on the couch on Tuesdays, when the museum is closed!