Conference No. 1

Charles Sheeler painted dozens of compositions based on the 19th-century barns of Bucks County in his native Pennsylvania. Conference No. 1 expands on the painter's highly rational investigation of these barns, which he found to be surreptitiously modern. Like many members of his generation, Sheeler was drawn to such examples of vernacular architecture and craftsmanship for their honesty of design and unapologetic utilitarianism. He asserted their perceived modernity by painting in an austere style that reduces form to angular planes of flat color resembling cubism. His interlocking and overlapping planes blur the boundary between transparency and opacity. They also produce a layering effect ti...