Description
A startling juxtaposition of images, The Rock depicts a shattered red rock resting on top of a base that is being demolished by workers below. Peter Blume labored for years to complete this painting, which was commissioned in 1939 by the Edgar Kaufmann family for Fallingwater, their Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home in Pennsylvania. Although the complex imagery resists easy interpretation, it may point to devastation and reconstruction, reflecting the turbulence of World War II and its aftermath. In the end, The Rock proved too large for Fallingwater and it was never displayed there.
Provenance
Commissioned by Edgar Kaufmann, from 1948 to 1955; by descent to Edgar Kaufmann Jr., from 1955 to 1956; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1956.
Accession Number
56682
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
146.4 × 188.9 cm (57 5/8 × 74 3/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of Edgar Kaufmann Jr.
Tags
Painting Early Modern (1901–1950) Oil Painting Canvas
Background & Context
Background Story
Peter Blume (1906-1992) was an American painter known for the precisely observed, surreal paintings that make him one of the most distinctive painters of the American Magic Realist tradition. The Rock from 1944-48 is one of Blume's most important paintings, depicting a rock in the precisely observed, surreal manner that distinguishes his best work from the more straightforward painting of his contemporaries. Blume was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to travel and study, and The Rock was painted over a four-year period that demonstrates Blume's meticulous working method. The 1944-48 date places this in the period when Magic Realism was one of the most important movements in American painting.
Cultural Impact
The Rock is important in the history of American painting because it demonstrates the precisely observed, surreal manner that Blume brought to painting as one of the most distinctive painters of the American Magic Realist tradition. Blume's precisely observed, surreal paintings—combining the meticulous observation of the real world with the surreal transformation of reality—represent one of the most distinctive traditions in American painting of the 1940s, and the 1944-48 painting shows this tradition at its most precisely observed and surreal.
Why It Matters
The Rock is Blume's precisely observed Magic Realism: a rock rendered in the meticulous, surreal manner of one of the most distinctive painters of the American Magic Realist tradition. The 1944-48 painting, worked on over four years, shows the combination of meticulous observation with surreal transformation that defines American Magic Realism.
