THE "Paint by Number: Accounting for Taste in the 1950s" ARCHIVE
Propelled by postwar prosperity, increased leisure time, and the democratic idea that anyone might paint a picture,
painting by number became a national pastime in the 1950s. Paint-by-number kits included two brushes and up to ninety
premixed, numbered paints ready to be applied to numbered spaces on a canvas or board. As the spaces were filled in, an
actual painting gradually revealed itself, to the delight and pride of the "artist."Paint by Number: Accounting for Taste in the 1950s revisits the hobby from the vantage point of the artists and entrepreneurs who created the kits, the critics who reviled them, and the consumers who happily completed them and hung them in their homes. Although many critics saw "number painting" as a symbol of the mindless conformity gripping 1950s America, paint by number had a peculiarly American virtue. It invited people who had never before held a paintbrush to enter a world of art and creativity.
List of Articles
- You, Too, Can Be a Rembrandt SMITHSONIAN Magazine, March, 2001
- ART'S NUMBERED DAYS Washington Post, April 6, 2001
- What's Right With This Picture? The New York Times, April 5, 2001
- Paint-by-number: A phenomenon that made everyone a 'Rembrandt' Smithsonian Institution Research Reports, Spring, 2001
- Every Man's a Rembrandt Chicago Tribune, April 25, 2001
Suggested Reading
Bird, William L. Jr. Paint by Number: The How-to Craze that Swept the Nation. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001. (exhibition catalog)
Marling, Karal Ann. "Hyphenated Culture: Painting by Numbers in the New Age of Leisure," in As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Robbins, Dan. Whatever Happened to Paint-by-Numbers? A Humorous Personal Account of What It Took to Make Anyone an "Artist." Delavan, Wisc.: Possum Hill Press, 1998.
Wypijewski, JoAnn, ed. Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.
National Museum of American History
The Museum is located at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily; closed December 25. Admission is free. Museum exhibition areas, performance spaces, and most rest rooms accommodate wheelchairs. For further information call 202-357-2700 (voice) or 202-357-1729 (TTY) or visit americanhistory.si.edu.
Exhibition Website http://americanhistory.si.edu/paint