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Sun Patterns, Dark Canyon: the Painting and Aquatints of Doel Reed
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) feature
chested, allowing the viewer to admire their powerful torsos. This is one of only a handful of works by Reed that focus on the male, rather than the female, figure.
The derricks featured around the elms of the central image may refer to the “forest of derricks,” which was rapidly encroaching on the Oklahoma City State Capitol Complex in the 1930s. By 1936 there were 150 active wells throughout the capitol. By clearly rendering elm leaves, Reed may have been referring to the “million dollar elm” under whose shade Colonel Elmer Ellsworth Walters, the official auctioneer of the Osage Nation, became renowned for selling milliondollar oil leases in Pawhuska, OK. Though physically absent from these depictions, it is important to note the enduring presence of Native peoples in the history of oil discovery and production in Oklahoma. Lewis Ross, a brother of Chief John Ross of the Cherokees is credited with finding the first pocket of oil in 1859 in present day Mayes County, OK. In 1885 the first oil well was drilled in Atoka County, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory. During the height of the oil boom from 1919 – 1928, oilfields earned the Osage tribe millions of dollars and produced many fortunes including that of Phillips Petroleum and Conoco.
On the south side of the lobby, Reed also uses a tree as the central image for a three-part composition. Here the tree is a peach, and a disproportionately large female figure leans seductively against its trunk. The curvaceous form and full breasts of this Oklahoma Eve suggest the fecundity of the state, a Midwest Garden of Eden. Peaches were an important cash crop for many Oklahoma farmers into the 1940s and commercial peach orchards may still be found in the state. Here peaches stand in for the more traditional apples and echo the form of the woman’s breasts.
Pairs of figures flank the main image, matching Reed’s layout on the northern wall. To the left, curiously barefoot women lean over to harvest bolls of cotton. Cotton was introduced into the region by the Five Civilized Tribes in the early nineteenth century and became an important crop. The price of cotton plummeted during the Great
Depression, and the federal government paid farmers to cut production. By 1939, the number of cotton farmers in Oklahoma had declined by more than 33,000.
Male figures gathering sheaves of wheat complement the female figures harvesting cotton. The composition here replicates Reed’s c 1938 aquatint The Harvesters. Like the oil workers depicted on the opposite wall, these men are bare-chested, with the engraved lines emphasizing their strong, youthful bodies. Winter wheat became an important cash crop in Oklahoma in the early 20th century, although prices for wheat fell significantly during the 1920s. Reed’s work promotes an idealized vision of Oklahoma that ignores the human and environmental tragedy of the Dust Bowl. Instead, he harkens back to a premechanized utopia in which men and women work the land in harmony with nature.
Throughout these six murals, Reed’s positive characterization of Oklahoma’s productive land, and the strong bodies of the men and women working it, contributes to the developing mythology of the state, in which agriculture and the oil industry still play central roles. n
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.
Rebecca Parker Brienen, PhD, is a Professor of Art History and guest curator for the exhibition Sun Patterns, Dark Canyon: the Paintings and Aquatints of Doel Reed which opens at the OSU Museum of Art on July 6, 2021 and runs through October 30, 2021. Cassidy Petrazzi, MA, is Director of the Gardiner Gallery of Art, OSU, and curatorial assistant for the Doel Reed exhibition.
