The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers-Quality Guarantee

Description

Work always has been a central construct in the United States,influencing how Americans measure their lives and assess theircontribution to the wider society. Work also has been valued as the keyelement in the philosophy of self-improvement and social mobility thatundergird the American value system. Yet work can also be somethingimposed upon people: it can be exploitative, painful, and hard. Thisduality is etched into the faces of the people depicted in the portraitsshowcased in The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers.This companion volume to an exhibition at the Smithsonian NationalPortrait Gallery examines working-class subjects as they appear inartworks by artists including Winslow Homer, Elizabeth Catlett, DannyLyon, and Shauna Frischkorn. This richly illustrated book charts therise and fall of labor from the empowered artisan of the eighteenthcentury through industrialization and the current American businessclimate, in which industrial jobs have all but disappeared. It alsotraces the history of work itself through its impact on the men andwomen whose laboring bodies are depicted. The Sweat of Their Face is a powerful visual exploration of the inextricable ties between American labor and society.