Sometime between using the “1-Click” function on Amazon, buying groceries at Safeway using an automated self checkout machine, and downloading an app on my phone that makes it look like I’m drinking beer off the screen, I attended the de Young Museum’s preview for their latest exhibit Cult of the Machine: Precisionism and American Art (on display March 24 – August 12, 2018), an exhibit that showcases a rival time in American history when the feats of technology were also powerful, fast, and overwhelming, but for altogether different reasons.
Between the World Wars,...