Passing Show

Philip Evergood’s Passing Show juxtaposes a down-and-out African American man, seated on a street curb, with a crowd of fashionably dressed women passing in and out of a five-and-dime, a kind of inexpensive variety store once a fixture in urban America. The shop windows offer a disparate assortment of tools, kitchenware, and wigged mannequin busts that mimic the shoppers’ garish makeup. Evergood’s title emphasizes the spectacle as seen by the man, excluded by gender, race, and economics from the frenzied consumerism that presents a spontaneous spectacle for him. He is marginalized, but Evergood’s women are correspondingly victimized: not only can their insatiable lust for beauty and possession never be satisfied by the tawdry offerings of a five-and-dime, but they are tragically complicit in their own degradation to sexual objects. Evergood’s sketchy, almost cartoonish style, with its brittle lines and jarring colors, echoes the superficial allure of the “passing show,” and suggests his own humorously ironic take on the delusions of modern consumer society.

In the early years of the Great Depression, Evergood associated with members of the so-called Fourteenth Street school of artists and others who championed the underclass in their often unsettling images. These artists favored a highly graphic style of painting that reflects both their training as artist-reporters and their use of popular media images as sources. Passing Show, with its black outlines, thinly brushed paint, and semi-transparent draperies clinging to the exaggerated proportions of female bodies, recalls a similarly scathing view of urban women lured by popular spectacle: Pip and Flip (TF 1999.96), a painting by Reginald Marsh also in the Terra Foundation collection.

Evergood’s painting, however, relies on a strong element of fantasy to portray the dreams and the despair of the poor and to critique the mindless pretensions of the well-off. Passing Show not only highlights the reality of social difference but hints at visions of an alternative: the dreamily gazing man is not in fact watching the “passing show” but is lost in thought; behind him, the woman in blue, who has just emerged from the store clutching her purchase, seems to follow his gaze as if momentarily released from the grip of frenzied consumption. The entire scene, with its deliberate crudity of paint application, compressed perspective, and large vertical format, evokes popular posters and advertising billboards, blunt agents of the very culture of cheap commercialism at which Passing Show is targeted.

Evergood’s artistic commitment to social betterment was life-long, and the continuing relevance of his humanistic themes led him to rework older canvases. Although dated 1951, Passing Show is thought to have been painted originally fifteen years earlier and reworked the year he dated the canvas. Precisely how Evergood might have altered the painting is unclear. In general, however, his later work evinces a lighter touch, a greater emphasis on sketchy outline, and more attention to surface pattern and texture. In this work, the sense of overall transparent brittleness may be the most visible result of the artist’s later reworking of the canvas.

The Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, November 8, 1951–January 6, 1952, no. 41.

Philip Evergood, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (organizer). Venues: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, April 5–May 22, 1960; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 8–July 17, 1960; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut, August 3–September 11, 1960; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, September 28–November 6, 1960; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California, November 23, 1960–January 2, 1961; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado, January 18–February 26, 1961; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, March 15–April 30, 1961. [exh. cat.]

Philip Evergood, Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York, New York, November 19–December 7, 1974. [exh. cat.]

Philip Evergood: A Retrospective, Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, January 10–March 7, 1976.

Never Separate from the Heart: Philip Evergood, 1901–1973, The Center Gallery of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venues: The Center Gallery of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, September 5–October 19, 1986; The Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, November 1–December 20, 1986; Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, California, January 27–March 22, 1987. [exh. cat.]

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1992.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

Selected Works from the Collections: Two Hundred Years of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–July 1, 2001.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: American Moderns, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 14–October 7, 2001.

Mid-Century Modern: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 20–July 7, 2002.

American Classics from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 14–June 15, 2003.

Le Temps des loisirs : peintures américaines (At Leisure: American Paintings), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 15–October 31, 2007.

Le Temps des loisirs : peintures américaines (At Leisure: American Paintings), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2008.

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.]

 

Baur, John I. H. Philip Evergood. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art.) New York: Whitney Museum of Art, 1960. Text p. 103; fig. 55, p. 75.

Dennison, George. "Month in Review." Arts 34:8 (May 1960): 50–53. Text p. 52.

Philip Evergood. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1960. Cat. no .43, pp. 103, 121; ill. p. 75.

Baur, John I. H. Philip Evergood. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1975. Text p. 63.

Taylor, Kendall Frances. Philip Evergood: Never Separate from the Heart. (exh. cat., Bucknell Center Gallery). Cranbury, Pennsylvania: Associated University Presses, 1987. Text pp. 24 (checklist), 162.

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-183, p. 292 (color).

Passing Show, Philip Evergood. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1992. Ill. (black & white).

Caughie, Pamela L. Passing & Pedagogy: The Dynamics of Responsibility. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Ill. cover (color), title page (black and white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 277; ill. p. 277 (color).

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. Text p. 14, 84; pl. p. 97 (color).