“Thanksgiving” (1935) by Doris Lee

“Thanksgiving” (1935) is the most famous painting of American artist Doris Lee (1905-1983).

I thought it worth contemplating today for a couple of reasons. One is that it is from that very same period of Americana-mania that benefitted John Steuart Curry, whom we wrote about just about a week ago. It’s amazing to me to know that critical and academic voices praised such visions in times so recent, and works like this weren’t just dismissed as kitsch. It wasn’t until after World War Two that Abstract Expressionism skewed the entire aesthetic conversation into one that was exclusively about technique and form, rarifying visual art into compartments accessible only to a cultivated elite. “Thanksgiving” won awards when it was exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute, not just for its style, but for its narrative content and its depiction of character, elements which had been present in painting since the time of the cavemen. Lee deliberately mimicked folk painting and injected a bit of sloppy realism into her scene. This is not the idealized image of Pilgrims, or the American family sitting down and saying grace prior to carving the turkey. This painting depicts (almost literally) “how the sausage gets made”. The women of an extended family all bustling around a crowded kitchen, probably sniping at and joshing with each other in equal measure. One is shirking (clearly a vain sister or aunt), and putting on her fancy hat and coat to go out. There are kids and pets underfoot. There’s tons of excitement. The scene was like this in my extended family (my grandmother even still had the cast iron stove).

So the first surprise is that art world critics would like this kind of thing EVER in the modern age. Yet they still did, even after Cubism and Dada and suchlike had come into being. But more than that, and this is equally surprising, is that this latter day genre painting provoked controversy. From CONSERVATIVES. Many felt that the image in the painting is too humorous and satirical, too quotidian and disrespectful! The very next year the ironically named Society for Sanity in Art was founded by Josephine Hancock Logan to protest not only the growing movement towards non-figurative painting and sculpture, but also, I guess, art that was too cheeky! In this particular case I guess the issue was that Lee was approaching a topic that ought to be sacrosanct with irreverence. In addition to the slutty aunt, for example, you can also see a little girl’s bloomers. Overall, the children appear spirited and indulged, and not, sort of, cowed into awe and obedience. Oh, and those babies are too close to the stove. But I assure you, almost every American living nowadays would need this pointed out to them in order to see what there was to cause any fuss. Some people just like to make problems where there aren’t any.

Thus this eloquent historical object clues us into two facts of contemporary life: much has changed in these past 88 years. And much has remained very much the same.