In the early decades of the 20th century, the United States transformed from a predominantly agrarian to a mostly industrial economy, becoming a major political and economic world power. This was the height of an era of technological progress commonly referred to as the Machine Age. In response, artists produced compositions with a “machined” quality—incorporating smooth surfaces and geometric forms–which conveyed the beauty, coldness, and impersonality of this mechanized world. This body of work came to be known as Precisionism, a term coined in the 1920s to characterize the precise, hard-edged qualities of the style.

Charles Sheeler is one of the most prolific and best known of the artists associated with Precisionism. Over a career spanning almost 60 years, Sheeler created numerous series documenting the industrial achievements of the United States. For his Power series—shown here—Sheeler traveled across the country studying the nation’s “instruments of power.” These works capture the ambitious achievements of the period, including the harnessing of natural resources to generate electrical power, and the propulsion of a jet engine. Notably, Suspended Power is the only painting that includes humans. Their presence boldly underscores the awe-inspiring scale of a hydroelectric turbine, but it also raises disturbing implications. What risks do these workers—and others who labor amid massive, powerful machines—encounter on a daily basis?

As was the case during the Machine Age, technological innovation today carries a sense of potential and risk, creating both economic rewards and disruptions, and engendering excitement and concern. Contemporary headlines routinely proclaim both the benefits and the perils of technology. While offering us a dazzling array of conveniences, smartphones and other gadgets may also threaten our socialization, by disconnecting us from more meaningful in-person interactions. We live in an age of anxiety about our unchartered future as we stand on the cusp of what has been termed a fourth industrial revolution and the American economy is once again being transformed.

What caused such a drastic shift in American art in the early 20th century?

The artists associated with Precisionism never formally organized as a movement. They did not publish a manifesto, work together, or exhibit as a collective. Rather, critics, gallerists, and art historians connected them through their common subjects and aesthetic: minimized brushstrokes, an emphasis on geometric forms that abstracted reality, and a focus on revealing an American identity. The reception and interpretation of these works varies widely, and has changed over time. Initially critics lauded the formal beauty of these works and saw them as celebrating America’s modernity. More recently, scholars have suggested that these depopulated scenes offer a subtle commentary on the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and rapid urbanization. The varied interpretations these works have elicited over time contribute to their richness, and they can hold a mirror to our contemporary attitudes about modernization and technological progress.

“Efficiency” was the reigning mantra of the Machine Age. Two figures embodied this philosophy above all others: industrialist Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor, the “father of scientific management,” whose time studies led Ford to previously unthinkable levels of productivity. In 1913 Ford unveiled the first moving assembly line, which reduced the time it took to build an entire automobile from more than twelve hours to just two hours and thirty minutes. The introduction of the assembly line is viewed as the watershed moment when skilled craftsmanship was replaced by automation, mass production, and a deskilled workforce. Although this innovation made automobiles more affordable for average Americans, it also led to laborers’ increased detachment from, and dissatisfaction with, their work.

The psychological impact of mechanization on Machine Age Americans was widely noted during the period. Popular plays, books, and movies explored the relationship between man and machine—sometimes with apocalyptic outcomes. Perhaps influenced by the mechanomorphic compositions that Dadaists such as Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp pioneered in the 1910s, some Precisionist artists used machine imagery to evoke aspects of the human condition, reasserting their humanity in an automated age. Ralph Steiner’s Louis Lozowick with Gears seems to conflate human and mechanical imagery in a manner reminiscent of the Dadaists’ “machine portraits.” And while Gerald Murphy’s Watch is devoid of human imagery and seemingly of personal references, it may in fact contain veiled allusions to the artist’s own life.

Just as the American factory elicited mixed feelings about industrialization, ranging from admiration to anxiety, the modern metropolis, with its gravity-defying skyscrapers, represented both the fears and the aspirations of the nation. The construction of skyscrapers required multiple technological innovations, including increased safety features for elevators and powerful equipment to insure proper heating. These towering structures also provoked concerns that their massive forms would plunge city streets into perpetual darkness. As a result, New York City officials passed a zoning law in 1916 that required skyscrapers to be built with setbacks, to allow light to reach the streets below.

Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s short experimental film Manhatta (1920) offers glimpses of the urban populace so commonly removed in Precisionist scenes. The film describes a day in lower Manhattan, beginning with a ferry approaching the city in early morning and ending with a sunset view from a skyscraper. In addition to exploring the relationship between photography and film, Manhatta captures the dynamism of the metropolis and explores its diverse subjects, from towering “cathedrals of commerce” to the rhythms of daily working life on its docks or at construction sites.

Charles Sheeler mined stills from Manhatta as source material for a group of works—including this painting, in which he presented a bird’s-eye vantage on the Church Street Elevated railway from the Empire Building in lower Manhattan. Sheeler radically abstracted his urban subject matter, stripping the composition of details found in the still, such as the debris in the middle ground and the complexity of the interwoven subway tracks to the right. His Cubist-inspired planes of overlapping colors and forms emphasize the underlying geometries of the scene. In addition to conveying the formal beauty of the metropolis, such static and de-populated scenes also captured a key emotional facet of urban life—its capacity to instill in its inhabitants a sense of loneliness and alienation.

For many artists working in a Precisionist mode, a focus on rural subjects provided an alternative—or even an antidote—to the themes of industry, machines, and urbanization that pervaded their work. Artists such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and George Ault found aesthetic inspiration in the geometry of a barn or the efficiency and functionalism of Shaker furniture. The prevalence of such subjects, which harked back to the nation’s agrarian past, reflected a larger national narrative that located roots for the industry and efficiency of the modern era in the colonial period. Projects such as Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum whose restoration began in 1927, reveal the widespread interest in the nation’s preindustrial past; they also can be interpreted as reflecting the nativist claims of cultural dominance and the calls for assimilation that accompanied the increased immigration of the period.

A century after the emergence of a Machine Age aesthetic, we face questions that are surprisingly similar to the ones that the Precisionists addressed with such nuance and intelligence. Their works ask us to consider the fundamental relationship between humans and machines—the ways in which we relate to, benefit from, resist, and learn to live with technology. While our absorption with and dependence upon technology deepens, we grapple with questions about its ethical limits and effects on our socialization, and on economic structures and workers. Ultimately, despite the recurrent concerns—now with us for more than a century—about machine dominance and usurpation, we are left with the perhaps more burdensome realization that it is up to us to use technology in a manner that benefits society and positively contributes to human progress.