Blog #4

This was completed in 1911. This picture is interesting how it shows what was like in that era which was industrialized. In the center of the picture, you can see the triangle. There is a word written on the each side of the triangle which is rent, profit, and interest. I can see a sick looking woman lying down at the bottom, inside the triangle with her arm on the word interest, which is the bottom side of the triangle. In front of her, there is an Employer’s Liability Bill that is stabbed with a knife that says ‘courts.’  I feel that this indicates how people were starved to death by having to pay the interest. Also, I think Employer’s Liability Bill with a knife stabbed shows that the law didn’t help the employees who devote themselves to the factory. Right next to the word Profit, there is a chubby man standing which looks like a wealthy man with a neat clothes on. In my perspective, it indicates a wealthy man who make the money by the ridiculous amount of the interest from other people. When you look close to the face of that wealthy man, you can see that he is crying. This tells me that he is sad but I don’t think it’s because his employee is dead but because he lost the worker who would make money for him. Moreover, on the left side, there is a skeleton looking at the wealthy man.  The posture of the skeleton which he put the arm on the waist, seems to look as if he is mad. I think it shows how dead person have a grudge to the wealthy man. The woman’s head look like it’s burning and there is a fire and a smoke from her body. I think she made a suicide by putting on fire.

            The drawing is done by pencil and a black crayon and I think the word on the triangle is written by using a whiteout. There is a shadow and a value to show an illusion of depth. You can see Hatching and cross hatching to show value. By doing a cross hatching on the cloth of the wealthy man and the sick women, it makes an illusion of depth. The place of the skeleton and the wealthy man, the triangle, and the sick woman, and the employer’s liability bill is overlapped to show the distance of the each object. There is a contour line except for the smoke form the woman’s body. This art is a historical image that reflects the life of that time.

           The title of this art is The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire by John Sloan. After researching about this art piece, I learned that this art was related to the actual incident that happened in 1911. The factory “The Triangle Shirtwaist” was on fire. The Wikipedia says it was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city. According to Wikipedia, 145 garments workers were dead from the fire, 123 of them were women and 23 were men. There weren’t able to escape because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits which was a common practice to prevent workers from stealing. This incident helped improve a factory safety standards and also helped the growth of the International Ladies Garments Workers’ Union. Now, I can see that the triangle is representing The Triangle Shirt waist Factory and the women in the triangle represents the garment worker who is dead from the fire. The wealthy looking man is representing an owner who locked the doors. I think he is crying because his factory is burned down and he had to go to jail for locking the safety exits.  

In the diary, on March 26, Sloan says, “I got a cartoon idea in the frightful fire of last evening in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. A black triangle each side marked (“Rents,””Interest,””Profit”) death on one side, a fat capitalist on the other and the charred body of a girl in the center.” He draw a Think black line of Triangle with the words and drew a figure relating to the word.