Please help me identify this series of paintings.

August 21, 2007 4:25 PM

Help me identify this series of paintings

I found a series of paintings today ( prints, actually) that depict the progression of a city through time. On the back of one print, there is a note that states "1956".... no artist signature.

The painting series starts with a house in a field, with hills in the background. The house gets bulldozed down, roads are built, buildings are erected, torn down, and eventually a freeway runs right through where the house once stood.

There is a mixture of languages in the paintings on the street signs and what have you - german, japanese, english, etc....

I don't think I have all the images, but I would like to find out where I could. Only, I don't know the first thing about the painting - or the artist. Anyone familiar with this work?

posted by bradth27 to media & arts (6 answers total)

Can you give us a look at what you have?
posted by tellurian at 4:51 PM on August 21, 2007

R. Crumb's 'A History of America' comes to mind, but for a variety of reasons probably isn't right.
posted by dirtdirt at 5:01 PM on August 21, 2007

a SHORT history, that is.
posted by dirtdirt at 5:02 PM on August 21, 2007

R. Crumb's work is almost exactly what this series looks like - only.. not so cartoonish. Same idea, different look.

Unfortunately, I left the pictures at work - I work in a library, and this was found in a storage bin used by the children's area. Each panel is about a foot tall, and about 2 and a half feet long. I can take pics tomorrow.
posted by bradth27 at 5:44 PM on August 21, 2007

Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House comes to mind, but also, for various reasons, is probably not the source.
posted by londongeezer at 10:07 PM on August 21, 2007

Definately not Burton's Little House because the house is never torn down. What immediately came to mind for me was Anne Millard's/Steve Noon's A Street through Time or A City through Time. Both by DK. They fit the dimensions, and have the same theme. My copies are buried in boxes somewhere in the basement. I am not sure if there are multilingual street signs though and they are from the eighties/nineties. I am very interested to see the paintings ~ what a great find!
posted by saucysault at 7:09 AM on August 22, 2007