Gordon Newton, American Landscape (Tractor Series), 1987
June 14, 2024
Gordon Newton was a major artist in Detroit’s Cass Corridor movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Detroit in 1948, Newton began producing art while enrolled at Port Huron Community College, before returning to the city to attend Wayne State University and the Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies). Newton became known for his versatility and experimentation with a variety of mediums (he was dubbed an “atypical…wizard”[1] by close friend and patron James Pearson Duffy Jr.) and his artistry seems to transcend classification. His works invite viewers to engage from multiple entry points, offering a rich tapestry of visual and conceptual elements that speak to the complexities of the American experience.
In Newton’s American Landscape—a low-relief sculpture built up with layers of foam-core, polyurethane, oil, marker, and shellac—we see a male figure driving a tractor rendered with bold strokes and abstract forms. A closer look hints at Newton’s physical process in creating the work; the foam-core is spliced and puzzled together, its edges exposed, and there is a sense of frenzy through the loose brushwork and residual fingerprints, suggesting a dynamism inherent to the material interactions. The yellowing of the foam-core reveals its age (this effect was “prized by Newton”[1]) and its susceptibility to deterioration despite its structural qualities. The black, blue, and indigo oil and marker colors, on the other hand, are preserved behind the glossy finish of the shellac, which entirely coats the surface of the work in a smoothness reminiscent of industrial machinery. This sculpture is playful in that it is art made of foam-core backer-board; that which is normally the background is brought into the foreground. The juxtaposition of organic and industrial materials suggests a tension between nature and technology, and the choices of color, texture, and composition emphasize the physicality of the tractor as well as the land it cultivates.
An interest in energy, mechanization, and engineering characterizes Newton’s work, as do relationships with the natural world. In this vein, Newton explores themes of agriculture and farming through an almost sociological lens, viewing such practices as “so abstract,”[2] with the tractor (a subject with which Newton was fascinated since his childhood in rural Kansas[3]) becoming symbolic of American labor and the machinery that has both shaped and disrupted our natural and social landscapes. He produced many collages, drawings, and sculptures with the tractor as focal point, a signifier of both industrial progress and human manipulation of the natural environment. Such works facilitate a reflection on America’s agricultural heritage and its enduring impact on the national psyche.
Newton’s work was included in the inaugural exhibition at the Willis Gallery, a cooperative space run by artists in the Cass Corridor; his work has since been showcased at such prestigious institutions as the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Writen by Sarah Teppen
[1] Maryann Wilkinson, “Line, Shape, Form: Three Decades of Drawings,” in Gordon Newton: Selections from the James F. Duffy Jr. Gift, 26.
[2] Maryann Wilkinson, “Line, Shape, Form: Three Decades of Drawings,” in Gordon Newton: Selections from the James F. Duffy Jr. Gift, 31-32.
[3] Marshia Miro, “Gordon Newton: Thirty Years Later,” in Gordon Newton: Selections from the James F. Duffy Jr. Gift, 18-19.
[1] James F. Duffy Jr., “Knowing Gordon Newton,” in Gordon Newton: Selections from the James F. Duffy Jr. Gift, 3.