Commuter's Fantasy - from the "Fantasies" series

Lamar G. Baker

This modernist Depression-WPA era lithograph by Georgia printmaker Lamar G. Baker is from his series "Fantasies", a collection of images that are a commentary on sociopolitical subjects. Titles also included "African Fantasy," "Commuter's Fantasy," and "Mars". A montage of imagery depicting the monotony and entrapment, perhaps, of the lower working class in the reign of Depression-era capitalism. Baker did not shrink from exploring difficult and often controversial ideas, using art as a platform to critique the hypocrisy of social norms and prejudices. While his work often falls into the Surrealist category it was often less veiled than many of his contemporaries.

This image features a clock with its hour hand pointing to nine, attached to a ring in the commuter's nose, like a bull's nose ring which is used to control the animal. A large, twisting rail turns into a snake with its tail twisting through a train doorway with a lantern hanging on it. At the bottom of the image a locomotive, the 3287, emerges from another clock with numbers six and eight. At the right is a birdhouse, with a chimney and a bird, flying free. Perhaps a commuter's nightmare.

Lamar Baker was born in 1908 in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied at Columbus's High Institute of Art and at the University of Georgia under Ben Shute, and at the Castle Studio, also in Georgia. In 1935 he moved to New York to attend the Art Students League, where he studied printmaking under Kenneth Hayes Miller, Rico Le Brun, and Harry Sternberg. Sternberg's social realist style was of great influence to Baker, as was the work of Thomas Hart Benton, Louis Lozowick, and John McCrady.