Merry-Go-Round

The little girl confidently riding a huge white horse points to Elizabeth Olds’s concern for racial justice. Like other liberal artists in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, Olds believed that art could effect social change. Her approach here is matter-of-fact, depicting diverse riders enjoying a popular pastime. They could be at New York’s Coney Island amusement park, which in 1938 had thirteen carousels.

To achieve her painterly look, Olds painted her design on the gauzy mesh screen with a greasy substance, then treated it so that the unpainted areas hardened into a stencil. Each color had a different stencil. The technique is especially effective in the delicate warm-gray shading on the horse.