(light piano music)
- [Dr. Zucker] We're in the Georgia Museum of Art,
looking at a large painting by Vertis Hayes.
This is called "Juke Joint,"
and it was painted in 1946.
- [Dr. Harris] Interesting to see a Southern scene,
probably somewhere outside of Memphis, Tennessee.
- [Dr. Zucker] And it's interesting to look
at an easel painting
because Vertis Hayes is probably best known
for the murals that he produced in Memphis,
but also that he produced in New York City
as part of the WPA, most famously at Harlem Hospital.
So let's start with what a juke joint is.
- [Dr. Harris] Essentially, a juke joint would have been
almost like a bar or saloon
noted for having great music and entertainment.
It was a central part of many communities,
particularly African-American communities.
They could have come in any form,
a small place in a rural area,
in larger cities, they might've taken up
a corner of a city block
and they became a central meeting place.
- [Dr. Zucker] And this does seem like
the central meeting place in this painting,
but the building is isolated.
- [Dr. Harris] The fact that it's by itself
is really interesting
because if you think of the time period,
you would have seen larger cities like Memphis
that would have had clusters of buildings,
lots of people, lots of cars.
And here you have this more isolated scene
where the juke joint is the central building
in the composition.
- [Dr. Zucker] The building almost feels alive.
It's curving, it seems to almost be stretching upward.
- [Dr. Harris] You can feel the energy
of what's going on inside.
You can faintly see the colors
that seem like they're bouncing on the window panes,
but everything is directed toward the juke joint.
If you look at the electrical pole across the street
leaning in toward the juke joint building.
- [Dr. Zucker] And there's a gentle curve to the roof line
of the juke joint,
which is echoed in the wires of the pole
And even in the clouds.
This was a carefully composed image.
- [Dr. Harris] There's a house that's down the road,
and there's an outhouse.
They all have these curves.
Everything is moving.
- [Dr. Zucker] And that kind of organic quality
makes this painting feel so human.
It makes it feel approachable.
And this is a characteristic of a kind of painting
that is known as social realism.
- [Dr. Harris] Vertis Hayes was part
of a larger community of artists
that would have participated
in this social realist vein in American art,
showing social scenes of people active in their communities.
Even more mundane scenes,
or genre scenes of various communities
across the United States, particularly in the South,
where there was a lot of interest
in showing rural areas such as this.
- [Dr. Zucker] And by genre scenes,
we mean scenes of everyday life.
Not a historically important event,
nobody of particular note,
but just the things that people do every day.
And here we see lots of people
going about their every day activities.
- [Dr. Harris] You see everything from the people
entering and exiting the juke joint,
to the tamale seller,
the dog that seated on the border of the composition,
the man in the overalls, who's a customer,
waiting for his tamale to be prepared.
And then even the man in the green suit,
who appears to be heading toward the juke joint.
- [Dr. Zucker] And then further up the hill
we see a man in yellow pants
standing right in front of this woman in white.
Even further up the hill,
we can just make out the silhouette of yet another figure.
- [Dr. Harris] That figure is mirroring
the curving electrical pole
and the house and the roof line of the juke joint.
- [Dr. Zucker] And then the man with his foot up
on the runner of a police car,
talking to two officers.
- [Dr. Harris] We're not sure about what that conversation
might be about,
if they know each other or if there's a problem.
It's interesting how the police car
is functionally oppositionally to what's going on
on the left-hand side.
- [Dr. Zucker] The one form that's as powerful
as the building is that road.
It's almost a mountain.
- [Dr. Harris] You can see that the road
is leading toward the viewer.
Everything leans downward.
You wonder if this will eventually be paved?
- [Dr. Zucker] You can see where
the rain has run down that road, has eroded that soil.
And it really expresses for me
the economic neglect of a rural area.
And it's a period when the United States
has just lived through the Second World War,
but it's also a moment when the Great Depression
is still a recent memory.
- [Dr. Harris] We're not really sure
what time of day it might be.
Probably getting close to nighttime
because you can see that the artist emphasizes the bulb.
But that purple-ish tint,
you wonder if there's a storm that's about to touch down.
- [Dr. Zucker] But also just that everything
in this painting seems to be in flux
and to be moving, to be alive.
There are no perfect right angles in that building.
Everything in the sky seems to be changing.
And even the road, a slower kind of change.
The change of erosion.
One of the things that I think is really interesting
is the attention to signage,
to the everyday things that somebody would see.
We see the large beer sign,
but then closer to us,
we also see what would probably be
an enameled sign, advertising beer.
We see Moe's Cafe.
Perhaps there's a little blue sign that is alerting people
that there's a public telephone here.
There's all these wonderful details
that capture our attention and make the scene
feel really authentic.
(light piano music)