• BECOMING MODERN

• MACHINE

• 1. "Machine Age"
• 2. Factory
• 3. Automobile
• 4. Airplane
• 5. Radio
• 6. Movies

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MACHINE

4. Airplane

In 1927, when Charles Lindbergh made his game-changing solo transatlantic flight, the airplane was only twenty-three and a half years old—a modern wonder that most people experienced only through barnstorming air shows, media coverage of air races, crashes, and innovations, and, for a growing number, air mail delivery. By the end of the decade, however, more and more brave souls could travel by passenger airline service, buy and learn to fly a "Ford flivver of the skies," serve on an American aircraft carrier, and compete as a civilian to set a world flight record, as did "Lucky Lindy" that fateful spring. Here in essays, newsreels, and visual art we glimpse the postwar leap in aviation innovation, commercialization, and derring-do.

• "Has Aviation a Future?" Has aviation a commercial future was the proposition in these essays invited by the Forum, a periodical of social and political commentary. Both commentators viewed flight from their experience in naval aviation—one at the end of his career, one at the beginning. Alfred Dewar, chief of the Historical Section of the British Royal Navy, claimed the airplane could never deliver regular efficient transport and would remain at best "an auxiliary to sea transport." Richard Byrd, the famed aviator and polar explorer, insisted that "flying has a future as yet undreamed of," dismissing Dewar's pessimism as a casualty of faulty logic, i.e., predicting aviation's future from the earlier paths of the railroad and automobile. How did Byrd credit American enthusiasm and self-esteem for assuring aviation's future? To what group did he appeal to assure its "greatest progress"? (4 pp.)





• The "Aeroplane" in Art The individual manmade object—from eggbeater to bridge truss—was a regular feature of modern American painting in the 1920s. In these two paintings, the object is the "aeroplane"—as interpreted by an abstract synchromist painter and a realistic precisionist painter. Despite their obvious differences, the paintings reflect the modern artist's search for new ways to direct, manipulate, and enhance the viewer's perception. What do you see in each painting? What do you hear in your head? What movement do you feel? How would you rename each painting to reflect your answers to these questions? Why did both artists title their works Aeroplane instead of Airplane? What different interpretations of the "aeroplane" did they offer? (3 pp.)
  

  • - Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Aeroplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange, oil on canvas, 1920. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
    
    Raised in Virginia and California, Macdonald-Wright pursued his art studies in Paris, and in 1912, developed with fellow artist Morgan Russell the color-saturated abstract style they titled synchromism. Blending color and music theory with Cubist influences, they created vivid rhythmic "chords of color" in their paintings, which they called synchromies("with color"). As Macdonald-Wright explained, synchromy "is to color what symphony is to sound,"1 i.e., a synchromist selects colors from the color wheel as a composer selects a chord structure, the "key" of a piece. As a tonic chord consists of the first, third, and fifth intervals of the tonic musical scale, for example, the "scale of red" would be composed of those intervals on the color wheel—red, yellow, and blue-green.2 With this technique, Macdonald-Wright created dazzlingly alive canvases that burst beyond their edges to envelop the viewer. "Stanton was a dreamer," writes art historian Will South. "He unashamedly, unabashedly looked for transcendence in painting. He wanted to create images that would take you physically, emotionally, spiritually outside of yourself—create some other state of mind, bigger than what you would normally experience in your day-to-day life."3 In Aeroplane Synchromy, an airplane whizzes past us as it skims over city rooftops, its pilot catching our glance. The action is fast: the rotating propeller, the blur of close-range flight, the white flashes of sunlight. How does Aeroplane Synchromy evoke movement and immediacy, as though the plane will vanish in the next moment, while Driggs's Aeroplane appears suspended in space, as though frozen in a moment?
    
    
  • - Elsie Driggs, Aeroplane, oil on canvas, 1928. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
    
    Raised in the Pittsburgh area, Elsie Driggs was a member of the Precisionist movement which depicted modern industrial landscapes in precise distinct lines, emphasizing geometric shape and clarity, usually with no apparent human presence. She experienced her first airplane flight in a Ford trimotor airplane, the "Tin Goose," which she interpreted in her 1928 painting, Aeroplane. The painting, while technically "realistic," goes beyond mere illustration to evoke the allure and mystery of flight. With no pilot or passengers visible, with the sky and ground defined only by darkening greys at top and bottom, with the plane closely bounded on the sides and surrounded with a natural halo of light, the airplane is an artifact of modern man's transcendence of his earthbound limits—but not an icon to be worshipped. "Oblique and puzzling," wrote art curator Constance Kimmerle, "Aeroplane exudes a sense of haunting loneliness while suggesting the eeriness of a dreamlike experience."4 How did Driggs achieve this multilayered effect with such seeming simplicity? Compare Aeroplane and Aeroplane Synchromy: if you placed them side-by-side in a museum exhibition, what would you title the pairing? Compare Aeroplane with (1) a photograph of the Ford trimotor airplane, (2) with her paintings Pittsburgh and Queensborough Bridge, and (3) with other modernist paintings interpreting the industrial environment in the sections "Machine Age" and Factory. Compare her use of diagonal line with Aaron Douglas's use of rays and arcs in his Charleston. What is achieved with these line and light embellishments?



• Newsreels depicting aviation innovations. British Pathé News produced dozens of brief newsreel clips in the 1920s recording aviation feats, stunts, disasters, and innovations in Europe and the United States. The newsreels below present seven American commercial, military, and whimsical aviation innovations. Which are standard equipment today? Which were abandoned? Why? What did the innovations—and the newsreel reporting of them—reveal about the public's response to aviation and its place in their lives? Imagine viewing the newsreels in a "film palace" of the era with live piano accompaniment. Pay attention to the British intertitles [text] as well as the video content. How was American innovation depicted by the British in the period after World War One? See Supplemental Sites for similar BPN newsreels; select several on a single innovation (seaplanes, safety designs, etc.). Also compare aviation and automobile innovation of the period and note any patterns you discover (see Automobile).

  • - 1923: "War's Latest Terror," airplane takeoff from submarine (1:22)
  • - 1927: "Death Missed by Inches," navy seaplane catapult (1:14)
  • - 1929: "We Shall All Be Flying Now," Ford's "flivver of the skies" (0:45)
  • - 1929: "Anti-Crash Airplane Crashes," failure of plane-to-glider design (1:24)
  • - 1929: "New Device Speeds Air Pilot Training," early flight simulator (0:55)
  • - 1929: "For Safety in the Air," parachute for an airplane (1:19)
  • - 1930: "Airships for All?" a "family blimp" (0:59, with sound segments)




• On "the phenomenon of Lindbergh": appendix by Fitzhugh Green in Lindbergh's 1927 memoir "We." Here we digress from aviation history and consider the phenomenon of aviation celebrity, specifically of the most celebrated American aviator before space flight, perhaps ever—Charles Lindbergh. In an age of back-to-back aviation feats, Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight galvanized America and Europe. And in an age of Valentino, Dempsey, the "It" girl, and the Hall-Mills trial, Lindbergh's low-key response to instant fame, his calm diminutive stance amid cheering throngs, became celebrated in itself. An early witness to "the phenomenon of Lindbergh" was Fitzhugh Green, who traveled with Lindbergh's celebratory tour in Europe and America. Green wrote a piece entitled "A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh" as an appendix to Lindbergh's memoir "We," published just two months after the flight. "Whatever the reason for it all," wrote Green, "the fact remains that there was a definite 'phenomenon of Lindbergh' quite the like of which the world had never seen." What was the "phenomenon of Lindbergh"? How was he lauded by fellow celebrities such as President Coolidge, Charles Evans Hughes, and Will Rogers? Consider 21st-century examples of instant celebrity while reading these selections from Green's piece. (5 pp.) [See lesson based on the essay.]

• Lindbergh-inspired animated cartoons. The "phenomenon of Lindbergh" showed up everywhere—including animated cartoons. For the fun of it, compare Felix and Mickey as they try to do a "Lindy." How is an instant celebrity or game-changing event "immortalized" in a cartoon, advertisement, app, viral video, etc., today?
  • - Felix the Cat, The Non-Stop Fright, silent cartoon, 1927. Aspiring to a Lindbergh-style feat, Felix vows to win a $50,000 prize for arriving first in "Timbuctoo" in West Africa (where he encounters stereotypical "cannibals"). INTERNET MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVE
    
  • - Mickey Mouse, Plane Crazy, sound cartoon, 1928. After reading a how-to-fly manual and mussing his "hair" to look more like Lindy's, Mickey takes Minnie on a wild ride in a plane concocted from an automobile, spare parts, and a turkey's tail. DISNEY ANIMATION/YOUTUBE

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