Rush Hour, New York

1915

Max Weber

Painter, American, born Poland, 1881 - 1961

Rust brown, pewter gray, steel blue, and tan geometric forms are piled up in this abstract vertical painting to suggest buildings, train tracks, and metal grates on city streets. The composition is densely packed with shapes, many of them repeating in clusters. For instance, in the center, three rust red, angular shapes resemble escalator steps. Below and to the right, five narrow triangles form an arc. Near the bottom edge, six thinly painted, triangular, kelly-green shapes point almost downward like nested arrows. The green color is strongest along their edges but quickly feathers away as it moves inward. More pointed shapes in denim blue are layered in front of them near the lower right corner, with the points facing our left. The dark tones are broken up by soft honey-gold fields at the sides and near the bottom. A row of narrow gray rectangles spans the lower edge of the canvas like the slats of a pier or a moving walkway. In tiny letters, the artist signed and dated the work near the lower right corner, “MAX WEBER 1915.”
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Rush Hour, New York is arguably the most important of Max Weber’s early modernist works that capture early 20th-century New York City's ultramodern urban spirit. The painting achieves a remarkably vivid sense of the city's frenetic pace through the artist’s adaptation of both the shallow, fragmented spaces of cubism and the rapid-fire, repeating forms of Italian futurism.

Weber was inspired by New York’s elevated railways and underground subways—mass transit systems that were among the most visible manifestations of the new urban age. These conveyances made it possible for hundreds of thousands of people to travel to and from work every morning and evening. Weber represented rush hour as what Alfred Barr, the scholar and first director of the Museum of Modern Art, called “a kinetograph of the flickering shutters of speed through subways and under skyscrapers.” Here the mundane annoyances and frustrations of commuting give way to the vast abstractions of space and time.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of the Avalon Foundation

  • Dimensions

    overall: 92 x 76.9 cm (36 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.)
    framed: 111.7 x 95.9 cm (44 x 37 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1970.6.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Rush Hour, New York, 1915

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1881-1961]; his estate; purchased 1970 through (Bernard Danenberg Galleries, Inc., New York) by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1930

  • Max Weber Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1930, no. 33.

1945

  • Max Weber, Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York, 1945.

1949

  • Max Weber: Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1949, no. 18, repro.

1951

  • Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1951, no. 108, repro.

1959

  • Max Weber: Retrospective Exhibition, The Newark Museum, 1959, no. 20.

1965

  • Roots of Abstract Art in America, 1910-1930, National Collection of Fine Arts (now National Museum of American Art), Washington, D.C., 1965-1966, no. 187.

  • Six decades of American Art, The Leicester Galleries, London, 1965, no. 91.

1970

  • The Cubist Epoch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970-1971, no. 320, pl. 197.

1973

  • City and Machine Between the Wars: 1914-1945, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando; Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, 1973-1974, no. 15.

1976

  • The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America, 1876-1976, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 1976, no. 3, repro.

1977

  • Paris - New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1977, unnumbered catalogue.

1980

  • La Pintura de Los Estados Unidos de Museos de la Ciudad de Washington, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1980-1981, no. 41, color repro.

1981

  • Visions of New York City: American Paintings, Drawings and Prints of the 20th Century, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, 1981, no. 88, repro.

1982

  • Max Weber: American Modern, Jewish Museum, New York; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach; McNay Art Institute, San Antonio; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1982-1983, no. 44, repro. (shown only in West Palm Beach and Omaha in 1983).

  • American Masters of the Twentieth Century, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, 1982, no. 53, repro. (shown only in Oklahoma City).

1986

  • Futurismo e Futurismi, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1986, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1991

  • Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920, High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Brooklyn Museum, 1991-1993, no. 57, repro.

1996

  • To Be Modern: American Encounters with Cezanne and Company, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1996, unnumbered catalogue.

2000

  • Max Weber's Modern Vision: Selections from the National Gallery of Art and Related Collections, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000, brochure.

  • Tempus Fugit: Time Flies, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 2000, fig. I.31.

2002

  • Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Des Moines Art Center; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2003, no. 15, repro.

2007

  • Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Shanghai Museum; The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, 2007-2008, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2017

  • New York, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, 2017, no catalogue.

Bibliography

1930

  • Cahill, Holger. Max Weber. New York, 1930: 26-27, pl. 9.

1951

  • Baur, John I.H. Revolution and Tradition in Modern American Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1951: 52.

1960

  • Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. New York, 1960: 221-222, 322, fig. 151.

1967

  • Rose, Barbara. American Art Since 1900: A Critical History. New York and Washington, 1967: 88, fig. 4-3.

1975

  • Werner, Alfred. Max Weber. New York, 1975: 50, color pl. 62.

1978

  • King, Marian. Adventures in Art: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1978: 115, pl. 74.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 254, repro.

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: no. 56, color repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: detail 212, 214, repro. 216, color repro. 224.

1983

  • Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidian Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton, 1983: 130-131, color pl.

  • Brown, Milton W. One Hundred Masterpieces of American Painting from Public Collections in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., 1983: 130-131, color repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 574, no. 878, color repro.

  • Ricciotti, Dominic. “The Revolution in Urban Transport: Max Weber and Italian Futurism.” American Art Journal 16 (1984): 56, fig. 1.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 172, no. 63, color repro.

  • Ricciotti, Dominic. "City Railways/Modernist Visions." In Susan Danly and Leo Marx, The Railroad in American Art: Representations of Technological Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988: 132, color pl. 99.

1991

  • Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920. Exh. cat. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, traveling exhibition, 1991: 62, no. 57.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 375, repro.

1995

  • Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. New York, 1995: 1097, fig. 28-109.

1999

  • Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. 2 vols. Revised ed. New York, 1999: 1097, fig. 28-110.

2000

  • Oja, Carol J. “George Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique and Transatlantic Modernism.” In Townsend Lundington, ed. A Modern Mosaic: Art and Modernism in the United States. Chapel Hill, 2000: 187, 193, color pl. 4.

2008

  • Miller, Angela et al. American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008: 458, 460, color fig. 14.12, color frontispiece.

Inscriptions

lower right: MAX WEBER 1915

Wikidata ID

Q20191959

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