Top: Arnold Friedman, American Scene Depression Era New York City Post Office, 1935. Oil on wood panel.
Bottom: Arnold Friedman, Post Office Parcel Window, 1935. Oil on wood panel.
Arnold Friedman worked at the New York City Post Office for four decades, and after his retirement, he returned to that bleak world to paint realistic depictions of the regimented life the workers endured each day.
This [top picture] was done two years after his retirement. ... The strikingly original composition features a black and a white postal worker positioned at the extreme ends of the pictorial space. Breaking with academic tradition, they face outside of the picture. In doing so, the center part of the picture is purposely left wide open and creates a pathway that leads your eye into a mid-ground space and then a deeper and even deeper space. Although packed together, the people are looking away from one another. The packages are a metaphor for the people, crammed together but apart. Friedman captures the dehumanizing and impersonal character of a Manhattan post office where people are no more than packages.
In the [lower picture], the disposition of the robot-like figures in an assembly line formation conveys the bleakness of the Depression era. The artist deliberately reduces each mailman to a blue shape while hiding the individual identity. Many have their heads pointing down. His use of unexpected cropping is highlighted in the Supervisor being depicted as a cut-off shape. He is dressed differently and physically separated from the other. Adding to the painting's Modernist sensibility, there is a paring down the pictorial elements to its bare essentials.
Photos & text: 1st Dibs
