The Big Jolt

An integral work in Roger Brown’s acclaimed Disasters series, The Big Jolt is a strong example of Brown’s career-long exploration of natural disasters and their effect on people and nature. Framed by a landscape torn in two by an earthquake, the skyscraper in The Big Jolt begins to crumble, while its inhabitants tumble both inside the structure and away from it into the crevice below. With a black sky above a glowing yellow horizon line, The Big Jolt possesses the major stylistic and thematic qualities of Brown’s series: ominous in its cataclysmic activity, and absurd in its precise, matter-of-fact portrayal of chaos.

The Big Jolt was included in Brown’s well-received 1973 exhibition at the Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago. Titled Disasters, nearly half of the 21 canvases in the show depicted city buildings and skyscrapers affected by various calamities, such as engulfing avalanches, whirling hurricanes, raging fires, and ground-rattling earthquakes. Brown incorporated weather events and natural disasters into his work as a way of exploring the greater unseen and unpredictable forces that can affect humankind. One reviewer noted that Brown’s “paranoid fantasies of urban mayhem,” while personal, were still relatable, and showed “the deep and disturbing anxiety and contradiction that underlies contemporary existence.”

Of the Disasters paintings recorded in the Roger Brown Study Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, eight others depict scenes similar to The Big Jolt. Now held in private and public collections across the United States, when presented together in 1973 the series portrayed a uniquely prescient view of disaster striking the modern world.

Disasters, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, January 1973.

In the Streets: Modern Life and Urban Experiences in the Art of the United States, 1893-1976 (Pelas ruas: vida moderna e experiências urbanas na arte dos Estados Unidos, 1893–1976). Terra Foundation for American Art and Pinacoteca de São Paulo (organizers). Venue: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, August 27, 2022–January 30, 2023. [exh. cat.]

 

Piccoli, Valéria, Fernanda Pitta, and Taylor Poulin. Pelas ruas: vida moderna e experiências urbanas na arte dos Estados Unidos, 1893-1976. (exh. cat., Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Terra Foundation for American Art). São Paulo, Brazil: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2022. Pl. p. 125 (color).