Art Abstracts: Anton Refregier

POSTED ON MAY 25, 2015

Looking for the answer to Art Abstracts?? Its Anton Refregiers End of the
Conference.
On June 26, 1945, the worlds leaders gathered in San Francisco to write a
charter for the United Nations, and Russian-born artist Anton Refregier
was Fortune magazines artist correspondent for the conference. He critiqued
and satirized the political infighting and feigned civility that ran rampant. In End
of the Conference, Refregier suggests frustrations and resignation with the
proceedings as two workers remove the flags that symbolize the spirit of
international cooperation. The two men are not posed, nor do they treat the flags
with any sense of respect. They are ambivalent to the symbolism and the
success of the event and simply want to finish the job they were hired to do.
Refregier implies that the flags are simply window dressing: a symbol of fake
unification. He intensifies the ironic outcome of the conference by placing this
scene in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, a metaphor for Americas postIsolationist accessibility and a coastal counterpart to the Statue of Liberty.
Refregier spent much of his career critiquing racial injustice, social inequality,
and the hypocrisy of politics. After a brief apprenticeship in Paris, he immigrated
to the United States and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design on
scholarship. After graduation, he moved to New York, where he worked for
interior decorators, recreating compositions by Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore
Fragonard on the walls of upscale apartments. This experience set the tone for
his career as a mural painter during and after the Depression: Until 1936 and
the government sponsorship of art, mural painting consisted of palm trees, nude
girls, gold fish, et cetera. It was with the government projects that we had a
chance to look at peoples lives, connect up with the great tradition of Giotto,
(Jose Clemente) Orozco, (Diego) Rivera, Piero della Francesca, he said in an
interview. Refregiers participation in the Works Progress Administrations mural
program instilled in him the value of addressing the people, rather than those in
power. Thus, in End of the Conference, Refregier seeks to articulate the outcome
of the UN charter conference through the eyes of the common man.
This work is currently on display at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Artstop by TuesSun. to check it out!
IMAGE CREDIT
Anton Refregier, American, b. Russia (1905-1979)
End of the Conference, 1945
Oil on canvas, 32 x 15 1/2 inches
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma;
Purchase, U.S. State Department Collection, 1948