Doel Reed’s Murals in Stone: Picturing Oklahoma Agriculture and the Oil Industry in the 1930s By Rebecca Parker Brienen and Cassidy Petrazzi
Doel Reed (designer) and Joe Taylor (sculptor), Murals in Stone, ca. 1938, Oklahoma State Office Building (now the Jim Thorpe Building), Oklahoma City. Photography by Phil Shockley.
Celebrated for his beautiful aquatints and dramatic landscapes of the American Southwest, painter and printmaker Doel Reed (1894-1985) was an artist and faculty member at Oklahoma State University from 1924-1959. Many of the artist’s early works have been lost and others, like his self-described “murals in stone,” c 1938 in the Jim Thorpe Building (formerly the Oklahoma State Office Building) in Oklahoma City have only recently been identified as works by the artist. Built in 1938 and designed by prominent Tulsa architect John Duncan Forsyth, the Jim Thorpe Building is art deco in style. Reed and University of Oklahoma sculptor Joe Taylor created reliefs and wall engravings for this building that are reminiscent of other Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects that highlight American industry and agriculture. The relief above the building’s main entrance, which focuses on three robust male figures at work, may be attributed to
Taylor and Reed. It also includes imagery related to the land run of 1889 and oil production, preparing the viewer for Reed’s wall engravings inside. The limestone walls of the lobby feature images designed by Reed and expertly carved by Taylor. Many of Reed’s original drawings for this project are in the collection of the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art. Reed’s artistic reputation was on the rise nationally in the 1930s, and as such he would have been an obvious choice for this commission. Trained as an Impressionist painter at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, by the 1930s Reed had rejected “foreign” influences and subject matter, arguing that Midwestern artists needed to paint in their “own yards.” His adoption of a Regionalist style, which featured the land, people, and industries of the Midwest, was well-suited for this project. While the entryway relief focuses squarely on industry and masculinity, Reed’s interior imagery emphasizes an idealized and prosperous present for Oklahoma through representations of
anonymous but productive male and female types, all of whom appear to be Caucasian. The young state required decoration for its governmental buildings that conveyed a sense of history, institutional power, and civic duty to its visitors. Taylor and Reed’s work accomplished this, and perhaps even more importantly, instilled a sense of pride in Oklahomans’ collective accomplishments and bright future. Reed’s three images on the north side of the lobby illustrate Oklahoma’s connection to the oil industry. The central image features two large elm trees surrounded by oil derricks. This composition is framed on either side by pairs of young, strong, anonymous men, labor is highlighted by the tension in their muscular arms and the contrapposto of their powerful legs. The men on the left use a drill pipe elevator, and the men on the right work together to maneuver an oil pipe. All of the men wear close-fitting workpants and “Oil King” type work boots, and the majority are bare (continued to page 16)
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