PA0389

. Organized into a very successfully composed montage, he has every phase from the pony express, stage coach and steam locomotive means of mail transportation to the more contemporary methods of airplane, diesel train and truck. Also included are images of both rural free delivery to mail boxes in the country and home delivery in the cities exemplified by the striding letter carrier. Modern life with its speed, convenience and benefits for more individuals is another theme at the heart of this tribute.

PA0398

Another untitled work is quite unusual and much less clear as to its meaning, and Haydon left no known explanation of it.

This painting shows a benevolent looking, but gigantic figure reclining across a landscape. At his feet in the lower left foreground is a small town. In the middle distance on the left is a farm, while beyond and behind the giant are hills, lakes and mountains. The giant, though, is giving no attention to those features; his attention is exclusively on the city that is protectively within his embrace. Possibly this is a tribute to the "giants" of industry and capitalism that helped create the modern city, but undoubtedly Haydon would not have taken such a generous view of those "giants." More likely, the giant is a symbol of the cooperative spirit of working people united in the common goal of building and living together in the modern city, with perhaps an added reference to the challenge of the Depression and how all can unite to build the future. Whatever the interpretation, the painting's true meaning, though, may remain a mystery.

City Industry PA0403

Also in keeping with the social consciousness of the period is yet another untitled painting, dated 1938,

that not only takes a positive view of industry and technological growth, it also reveals Haydon experimenting with a form of abstraction derived from the 1920s Precisionist style. This type of abstraction was incorporated into the work of many WPA era artists as an adaptation of Cezanne's work applied to American architectural forms. Already solidly geometric in structure, the factories, smoke stacks, steel suspension bridges, city high-rises, grain silos and similar, uniquely American forms of architecture were the perfect modern subjects and adapted well to the Precisionist style. In his work, Haydon uses an interplay of simplified industrial shapes in warm shades of reds, oranges and browns, contrasted with a sweeping curve of an highway overpass set off in a blend of blues and grays, all of which is softened by translucent billows of smoke. The overall effect is of an optimistic view of the future, a praise and welcome of new creations, new technology and the constructions of a united society. The 1930s had been quite a dynamic period for Haydon's art. Between developing an art theory based on the binocular vision technique and the retinal afterimage phenomenon on the one hand and expanding his technical skills in drawing, color theory and composition on the other, he gained much confidence as an artist. While his color palette remained within the muted brownish tones that were quite common at the time, his compositions became more mature and sophisticated. Looking at his subjects, his attempts to infuse his art with progressive social philosophy are interesting but took him away from the scientific basis of his primary program. By the end of the decade social themes had disappeared. In their place, he returned to more familiar landscapes, city scenes and still lifes.

Artist with Cows PA0379

Even though he was not exhibiting his art very frequently during the first half of the 1940s, Haydon was actually painting a great deal, working in both the more conventional "souvenir" style and in the binocular vision and retinal afterimage techniques. Also, he had begun to shift his color palette from the muted brownish tones of the early 1930s to a higher keyed palette with greater use of pure colors. This was a gradual transition with his more traditional looking paintings retaining naturalistic color, but now and then his colors turned to a more saturated and artificial use of primary and secondary colors, as in this untitled work

from 1941. Here he shows an artist in a field working on his paintings with two very charming and curious cows admiring his work. While not as freely and sketchily handled as many of his other "souvenir" paintings of the time, it is still quite directly painted with a bold use of his new high-keyed palette.

Child on Tricycle PA0081

An untitled work of a child on a tricycle from 1943

is another example where he is using high-keyed color. Here, set against an innocuous view of a park, is a little girl rocketing along the sidewalk on her tricycle. Behind her in shades of green is the park; while in stark contrast, she and her tricycle are painted in vivid red and a blur of furious motion. Unlike "Orpheum" which preceded it by twelve years, this painting's forms are highly simplified and shown in binocular vision doubling. While optical realism has become very much the subject of his paintings, Haydon has also become more consistent in using the contrast of natural visual phenomenon with the unnatural look of simplified generic figures rendered in flat areas of bright color.

Traffic PA0370

Two city scenes, done in 1943 within three months of each other, clearly show his new figure type.

includes both the binocular vision and the retinal afterimage techniques. His focal point is the woman in yellow in the middle distance. Behind her is virtually the same figure in pink, placed in the picture's far distance. In the immediate foreground are five adults, the woman in white being posed similarly as her counterparts in yellow and pink, and a small child. By selecting a figure in the middle distance as his focal point, Haydon's foreground figures separate into haloed patterns, their faces only suggestions, and their bodies reminiscent of his earlier pictographs. Where the viewer's attention is normally concentrated in the foreground looking for details, there are none. Instead the viewer is moved into the depth of the picture space to find the focal point, leaving the large foreground figures to demonstrate the effects of normal binocular vision. Finally, the blur of objects in motion effectively dissolves any remaining belief in the solidity of form.

57th Street and Harper Avenue PA0077

The other major work from 1943 is 57th Street and Harper Avenue (oil on canvas, 32 x 40" PA0077). Here, looking through the windshield of Haydon's car, is a normal, everyday scene from city life. There are cars and pedestrians, buildings and an elevated train overpass. Colors are bright and localized, and everything is simplified, reduced to generic patterns. Once again the focal point is in the middle distance, over on the left at the small group of figures, and all the other elements are seen doubled, just as in Traffic. Haydon does not need dramatic scenes or moralizing stories for his art, because the effects of normal vision are his subjects and they are best seen in views from daily life.

Low Level Flight PA0181

As an exception to this formula, there is a quite different painting from 1943, Low Level Flight over a Village (oil on canvas, 26 x 30" PA0181), where he chose what was then a very uncommon experience. At the time he had never flown in an airplane, so he used what he had seen in a movie theater newsreel to create an imaginary village, as well as how it would appear flying over it in a small plane. Normally in his paintings, Haydon places the viewer in a stationary position and as objects "pass by" within the painting's scene they leave blur lines recording the retinal afterimage effect. Here though, the scene is stationary, and it is the viewer that is moving, like he had done in Train Window from 1934. The focal point is straight ahead near the horizon line, which throws the houses and even the nose cone of the plane into overlapping images.