Destination Nowhere, by Dixon
Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) is best known as a painter of the American West. His paintings of the western landscape, western people, and the Native Americans were what originally established him as an artist. Like many other artists at the time, however, he was significantly influenced by the Great Depression in turning towards a more social realist style. Destination to Nowhere, painted in 1941, is one of those paintings. Depicting two solitary individuals walking through a barren desert with nothing hopeful in front of them, the painting represents a merger of Dixon's regionalist and social realist styles and a poignant social realist description and critique of the Depression era.
Born in California into a Virginian aristocratic family, Dixon started his career illustrating books and magazines with Western themes (Wikipedia). He studied for a while at the California School of Design but was largely self-taught. Drawn by the simplicity of the rural West, Dixon became well known for his regionalist landscape paintings of the West and depictions of Native Americans which were largely based on his own observations. These paintings, particularly those of the Native Americans, were more romanticized tributes than realistic depictions. His return to the West to paint Native Americans following the ending of his first marriage shows the comfort and solitude he found in the West.
Dixon's regionalist style of painting
The Depression significantly influenced Dixon as he turned away from mere regionalism towards a more modern and social realist style. Because of the Depression, Maynard and his second wife, photographer Dorothea Lange, were forced to give up their homes, board their children, and live in their studios to make ends meet. Working conditions at the nearby Boulder Dam construction site, the maritime strike in San Francisco, and his wife's social realist photography were all influential in turning Dixon towards a broader American perspective and a social realist critique (McKay). As Dixon said, "The depression woke me up to the fact that I had a part in all this, as an artist" (Hagerty 206). As a result, Dixon painted a series of paintings depicting strikes, displaced workers and those adversely affected by the Depression.
Destination to Nowhere is one of these Depression-era paintings, depicting the loneliness and insecurity faced by American society by means of two men walking together through a barren desert. Their ragged jeans and hats reveal them as working class people. The bedrolls they are carrying show that they are on a long journey and suggest that they are out looking for work with no more possessions than what they are carrying with them. That they are seen from behind their backs, their faces not visible, suggest that their specific identity is unimportant. The non-importance of their identity represents the hopelessness and insignificance they feel as poor people in the job market following the Depression. It also identifies them, and the theme of the painting, with the larger American populace rather than with specific people.
The first thing that catches my attention about the painting is the wide open sky in front of the two men. The sky covers about three-fourths of the painting and the major part of the bodies of the two men are situated against the background of the sky. This gives one the sense that they are walking toward the empty sky, representing a walk into the emptiness of an uncertain future. Had the painting promised hope and future fulfillment, there would have been something looming instead of the empty sky--a mountain, a temple, or the sun. But no such attainable ideal is presented. The style is modern precisely in that it does not express a distant ideal but a present reality. It is social realism in that this reality has to do with the harsh societal conditions of the time. There is no visible target or goal, merely an open-ended landscape--just as many during the Depression felt there was no hope or end in sight to the problems they were facing. The slightly rising altitude of distant mountains in the left and right side of the painting draws further attention to the center of the painting, emphasizing the wide open area they are walking into. The endlessness of the vista represents the endlessness of the journey they are on to find work and rise out of the poverty--and the seeming endlessness of the Great Depression. The shortness of the men's shadows show that the walk is taking place at mid-day, showing that the two men still have a long ways to go until they can rest with the night.
The postures of the two men emphasize the loneliness of the situation. Their faces and feet are not turned towards each other but towards the landscape in front of them. Had they faced each other or had the one person put his arm on the other's shoulder, this could have been a painting of friendship and cooperation in the midst of hopelessness and despair. Instead, their facing the terrain in front of them gives one the sense that these are not friends but two lonely individuals who decided to walk together in the search for better opportunities and better lives. As soon as they have found their opportunity, they are likely to separate. This, in turn, serves as a valuable commentary and social realist critique of a society where excessive individualism encourages people seeking their own individual success without cooperating with others. Americans have become too selfish and individualistic in their pursuit of the American Dream and they need to overcome that excessive individualism to overcome societal challenges. In this way, not only is this a "destination to nowhere" in geographical terms but in societal terms--if society continues along an excessively individual road without regard to the collective welfare it will get to nowhere. This is an implicit critique that the excessive individualism and greed of bankers and speculators is what led to the Great Depression in the first place. Collective cooperation is needed in the face of excessive individualism to fully solve the problems of the Depression and to get anywhere rather than nowhere.
Forgotten Man, another Dixon Depression Era painting
While a social realist critique of society, the painting also draws upon Dixon's earlier regionalist style in the natural background of the picture. It is a Western landscape, a desert with mountains in the background. The use of the desert as an image supports the feelings of loneliness and insecurity of the time. The dry, barren land represents the economic conditions of the Great Depression, the hot desert the harshness of society. The use of bland red, brown and grey colors rather than more vivid or lively colors signify the blandness of the time. Using the Western landscape as the background in a painting otherwise involved with a social realist critique represents a merger of the two styles of regionalism and social realism by Dixon.
At first glance, I did not like the painting very much. It is bland and there is nothing grand or beautiful about it. But after taking a deeper look I find it more interesting than I did at first. It effectively symbolizes the emotions of hopelessness and insecurity faced by people during the Great Depression and reminds me that similar conditions are still faced by some today.
Sources
Hagerty, Donald J. The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon. New York: Gibss Smith, 1993.
McKay, Jayne. Maynard Dixon: the artist, the poet, and the man.
Wikipedia. Maynard Dixon.
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