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Erie Underpass

Niles Spencer American
1949
Not on view
Spencer's customary subjects were the industrial edifices of factories, mills, and powerhouses. However, he also displayed a fascination with the interstices and transitional points of cities, such as bridges, rooftops, and the gaps between buildings. Erie Underpass, a late work, was painted while the artist was living in Dingmans Ferry, a town on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. (The title is a reference to the Erie Railroad, which ran through the region.) Working in an even more rigorous variant of his Precisionist style, he transformed this purely functional structure into a bold visual abstraction. His extreme flattening of its forms results in ambiguous spatial relations between the elements of this structure: the staircase seems disconnected from the platform, and nothing is visible through the dark, arched openings of the underpass.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Erie Underpass
  • Artist: Niles Spencer (American, Pawtucket, Rhode Island 1893–1952 Dingman's Ferry, Pennsylvania)
  • Date: 1949
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 28 × 36 in. (71.1 × 91.4 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950
  • Object Number: 50.31.3
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Universalist Church, Provincetown, Niles Spencer American, Oil and graphite on canvas
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Provincetown Church
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Waterfront Mill
Niles Spencer
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Provincetown Corner, Niles Spencer American, Oil paint and graphite on board
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Niles Spencer
ca. 1926–28
Black Abstraction, Georgia O'Keeffe American, Oil on canvas
Black Abstraction
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