Youth and Beauty – Art of the American Twenties features 160 works of paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 60 American artists that include Edward Hopper, Edward Weston, and Grant Wood.  The works came after World War I and the -even more lethal- flu pandemic of 1918.  It was the jazz age and Mark Cole says artists were being influenced by advertising, radio, and film . . 

“An example of that is a wonderful painting by Georgia O’Keefe called “Two Calla Lilies on Pink” where she was inspired by close-up photography and cloe-up film.  Here she is zooming in on these two blooms that are so magnified that they appear to be bursting out of the rectangular border of the painting itself.  Of course this is also the era of Freud and people start reading symbolism into O’Keefe’s flower paintings, particularly the calla lily paintings.”

 In a gallery called “Body Language” the exhibition features the wide open embrace of the healthy human body and sex – both heterosexual and homosexual.   Well known muralist Thomas Hart Benton had some criticism of homosexuals in the art world of the day but he showed off his body and his wife’s in a painting called “Self Portrait with Rita.”  

One little item in the painting.  Benton is wearing a wristwatch –something new in the 1920’s.  Even realism was new again - after the cubist and abstract art from a decade earlier.  In another room titled “Heroics” the Cleveland exhibition has works that recall classic Greek and Roman figures.  Still another showcases the new interest in African Americans as subjects and as artists. But a major part of the show features landscapes and cityscapes.

Artists painted factories, as they would do later during the Great Depression.  But these paintings are nearly devoid of people.  They focused on the straight lines and sharp angles of the city buildings.  You can see that emphasis on geometric shapes in a photograph called "Coconut Factory" by Cleveland-born artist Ralph Steiner where curved lines are almost absent. 

In the 1920’s automobiles were becoming affordable for the first time. That allowed city artists like Edward Hopper to head out to the country.  His painting called “Lighthouse Hill” was done on the seacoast of Maine.

Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties runs through September 16 at the Cleveland Museum of Art.