Niles Spencer’s piece Waterfront Mill depicts a Rhode Island industrial mill complex. This piece was made in 1940, and sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1942. It is currently on display in the museum’s ‘Work and Industry’ gallery (“Waterfront Mill”).
Spencer uses sharp straight lines and corners to create a sense of order and perfection. The buildings are all perfect rectangles, and everything is clean, with no signs of wear or age. The painting is brightly lit, but uses dull colors. Despite it being a representation of a factory, no workers appear in the image, and there is no movement or signs of life shown in the complex.
This reflects the interwar time period. In the early twentieth century, ideas put forth by Henry Ford reshaped
