Aaron Bohrod

The designations “American Scene Painter” and “Regionalist” overlap, and the distinction between the two is often arbitrary. Edward Hopper is usually labeled with the former, while Grant Wood is called a Regionalist, perhaps because he worked largely in the Midwest. In general, the art associated with both movements is representational and emphasizes local color and scenery. This characterization describes the work of Illinois- and Wisconsin-based painter Aaron Bohrod (1907–1992), although his quirky and individualistic style often hints at social commentary and satire.

Bohrod was born in Chicago, the younger son of Russian immigrants. His father, a grocer, and his mother had hopes that he would be a pharmacist because his older brother studied medicine. Despite their aspirations, they did not actively discourage their son’s desire to be an artist. In an interview for the Archives of American Art, Bohrod recalled sending away for an art correspondence course and taking a Saturday class at the Art Institute of Chicago, but his formal art training did not start until his late teens. He studied mechanical drawing at Crane Technical High School and briefly at Crane Junior College on the west side of Chicago. Beginning in 1927, he studied part-time at the Art Institute of Chicago; after two years he left for New York where he took classes with Kenneth Hayes Miller and John Sloan at the Art Students League. In 1930, he returned to Chicago to earn money and then spent 1931–1932 in New York. His most influential instructor at the League was Sloan; Bohrod recalled the Ashcan School artist’s insistence on drawing constantly as well as his frequent references to art history, which inspired Bohrod to study the works of old masters. He said of Sloan, “While I worked with him for just a year, by remote control I think I remained under his influence for quite some time afterward. His influence somehow engendered a spirit of self-criticism which is a healthy attribute in a young artist.”[1]

During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration employed Bohrod, and under its auspices he completed three murals, including one for a post office in Vandalia, Illinois. He was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which made possible travel around the United States between 1936 and 1938. From his sketches made during these travels he developed American Scene paintings. The Regionalist artist Grant Wood recommended him to the Associated American Artists group. Assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers War Art Unit, Bohrod departed for the South Pacific in 1941. When funding for the program was cut, he became artist-in-residence at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale, but, by 1943, he was in Europe as an artist/correspondent for Life magazine.

When the war ended, he continued to travel around Europe, returning to the States in 1948 when he was invited by the University of Wisconsin to take up an artist-in-residency position formerly held by the Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry. Still working largely as an American Scene painter with an interest in satire, Bohrod began to collaborate with fellow faculty member F. Carlton Ball to create decorative pottery. In discussing the relation of the pottery to his painting, Bohrod commented: “I think the chief difference was that in my painting I was demanding of myself a strict adherence to the visual forms that constituted my subject matter, whereas in the pottery notions, I was consciously departing from the visual aspects of reality and delving into kind of fantastic or unrealistic approach to the forms of nature. I think most of the forms were based on nature, but they were departing from them so that my horses were all fat and distorted and strange and so on and prehistoric looking or, whatever, and all different.” [2] Prompted by these experiences, he moved in the direction of magic realism, an approach that emphasizes intensely focused details in weird juxtapositions. Between 1955 and 1959, Time magazine commissioned him to do several covers. Bohrod retired from the University of Wisconsin in 1973, but continued to live and paint in Madison until his death in 1992.

Notes:

[1] Aaron Bohrod, “On John Sloan,” College Art Journal10, no. 1 (Autumn, 1950), 3–9.

[2] Bohrod interview with Sue Ann Kendall, August 23, 1984, Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-aaron-bohrod-12310