Grain Elevators (Evans) 1933

Curator: Charles Burchfield rendered "Grain Elevators" in watercolor in 1933. What do you make of it? Editor: Stark. The mood is one of abandonment, almost. Like monuments to a forgotten industry. Curator: The watercolors of Charles Burchfield often document the architecture of industrial and small-town America. His pieces frequently portray buildings not as sites of vitality but places struggling through hard times. Editor: And here, the stark shapes of the grain elevators certainly convey that. The looming silhouettes against the gray sky have a symbolic weight. Grain elevators, historically, represented abundance and security—a community's harvest, literally. But here, they evoke the opposite. Curator: Indeed. Burchfield completed the work in the midst of the Great Depression, which created anxieties about economic and ecological disaster across America. Consider how the landscape itself is largely barren; it's late fall or winter perhaps. There's very little color—Burchfield primarily relies on muted tones. The entire work expresses something akin to despair, and that may reflect not just a specific site, but an entire society's hardship. Editor: You're right. There's something ominous in the lack of detail, too. We can barely discern the buildings' functions—they're looming, gray shapes. It strips away the symbolism of prosperity to expose the hardship beneath. A broken promise made by industrial America? Curator: Perhaps that’s pushing the symbolism, but you’ve offered some interesting context for the cultural and political era in which Burchfield was working. I wonder how contemporary viewers might respond, in an age grappling with very different types of political and environmental crises. Editor: Agreed, It's a reflection on industrial landscapes, memory, and maybe even the transience of symbols. Makes one think about the cyclical nature of prosperity and decline.