Interior of the Fourth Dimension

1913

Max Weber

Painter, American, born Poland, 1881 - 1961

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Early in 1909, Max Weber returned to New York City after a lengthy stay in Paris, where he associated with Pablo Picasso and the cubists. Like many American modernists, Weber regarded New York as a city of the future, where skyscrapers, public transport systems, terminals, and suspension bridges provided ideal subject matter. Both Alfred Stieglitz and Alvin Langdon Coburn encouraged Weber’s focus on abstracting the urban environment.

A vision of an ultramodern metropolis, Interior of the Fourth Dimension is one of Weber’s earliest cubist paintings and is an important precursor to his later New York City subjects such as Rush Hour, New York. Its title alludes to a pseudoscientific theory, derived from Einstein’s theory of relativity, that had been current among avant-garde artists during Weber’s last year in Paris. In a 1910 article, the artist discussed “a fourth dimension which may be described as the consciousness of a great and overwhelming sense of space-magnitude in all directions at one time. . . . It exists outside and in the presence of objects. . . . It arouses imagination and stirs emotion.”

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

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

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Interior of the Fourth Dimension, 1913

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 1915 from the artist by Nathan J. Miller for his wife, Linda R. Miller, New York; by inheritance 1936 to her daughter, Helen Miller Davis, New York, until at least 1959;[1] her daughter, Natalie Davis Spingarn; gift (partial and promised) 1990 to NGA; gift completed 1997.
[1] She lent the painting to exhibitions in 1956 and 1959.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1915

  • [Max Weber], Jones Galleries, Baltimore, 1915.

  • [Max Weber], Montross Gallery, New York, 1915.

  • Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Max Weber, The Print Gallery, New York, February 1915, no. 21.

1956

  • An Exhibition of Oil and Tempera Paintings, Gouaches, Pastels, Woodcuts, Lithographs and Drawings by Max Weber, Celebrating the artist's 75th birthday, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1956, no. 5a, as Fourth Dimension Interior.

1959

  • Max Weber: Retrospective Exhibition, The Newark Museum, 1959, no. 16, repro.

1982

  • Max Weber: American Modern, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1982, no. 31.

1991

  • Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920, travelling exh. organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 6 venues, 1991-1993, no. 37, repro. (shown only at first three venues: High Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Corcoran Gallery of Art).

  • Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, unnumbered catalogue, color repro.

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, fig. 3.

2001

  • Inheriting Cubism: The Impact of Cubism on American Art, 1900-1936, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, 2001-2002, pl. 39.

2008

  • American Artists from the Russian Empire, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman; The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow; San Diego Museum of Art, 2008-2010, no. 1, repro.

2012

  • Max Weber: Bringing Paris to New York, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2013, no. 24, repro.

Bibliography

1982

  • North, Percy. Max Weber, American Modern. Exh. cat. the Jewish Museum, New York, and three other venues. New York, 1982; 57-58, fig. 31.

1983

  • Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidian Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton, 1983: 176, fig. 53.

1984

  • Ricciotti, Dominic. “The Revolution in Urban Transport: Max Weber and Italian Futurism.” American Art Journal 16 (1984): 50.

1991

  • North, Percy, and Susan Krane. Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920. Exh. cat. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and five additional venues, 1991-1992. Atlanta and Seattle, 1991: 34, 42, 56, color pl. 37.

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.

Inscriptions

lower right: MAX WEBER 1913

Wikidata ID

Q20191748

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