HISTORY AND THEORY OF ART INVENTING THE AMERICANS: ISSUES IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN ART AND CULTURE

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1 HISTORY AND THEORY OF ART INVENTING THE AMERICANS: ISSUES IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN ART AND CULTURE Class: Mondays, 14h-16h, École normale supérieure, Salle des Actes Instructor: Dr. Jody Patterson Office Hours: Tuesdays, 10h-12h, Département d histoire et théorie des arts (rez de chaussée, couloir Dussane). This course will introduce students to the development of American art during the 19th century. It will explore how visual culture may be understood in relation to the ideological and aesthetic needs of particular social and political groups. Among the central topics to be considered is the role of art in the development of national identity from the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776), through the antebellum period of the early and mid-1800s, into the era of the Civil War ( ), Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age in the final quarter of the century. More specifically, we will explore the symbolic functions of landscape painting; the ways in which Native Americans and African Americans were represented; the increasingly cosmopolitan character of American high culture during the Gilded Age; and the emergence of diverse forms of realism, naturalism, and modernism at the end of the century. Attention is given throughout the course to the role of artistic institutions and patronage. Unifying themes include the implications of the geographical and political redefinition of the United States through westward expansion and the significance of the processes of modernization and industrialization that made America the most powerful nation in the world by Week 1 October 19th INTRODUCTION AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN ART Suggested Reading: Andrew Hemingway, American Art Pre-1940 and the Problem of Art History s Object, Internationalizing the History of American Art (Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), pp Week 2 October 26th NATURE S NATION : THOMAS COLE AND THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL Suggested Reading: Angela Miller, Thomas Cole and Jacksonian America: The Course of Empire as Political Allegory, Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, ed. Mary Ann Calo (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), pp Week 3 November 2nd MANIFEST DESTINY AND WESTWARD EXPANSION: REPRESENTING THE FRONTIER AND NATIVE AMERICANS Suggested Reading: Nancy K. Anderson, The Kiss of Enterprise : The Western Landscape as Symbol and Resource ; and Doomed to Perish : George Catlin s Depictions of the Mandan, Reading American Art, eds. Marianne Doezema and

2 Elizabeth Milroy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp and Monday, November 9 th NO CLASS; Tuesday, November 10 th NO OFFICE HOURS Week 4 Monday, November 16 th NO CLASS Tuesday, November 17 th 14.30h TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART LIBRARY, 29 rue des Pyramides, Paris Wednesday, November 18 th 14.30h MUSÉE D ORSAY, 1 rue de la Légion d'honneur, Paris Week 5 November 23rd NATION BUILDING AND THE ART OF DEMOCRACY: GENRE PAINTING IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA Suggested Reading: William T. Oedel and Todd S. Gernes, The Painter s Triumph: William Sidney Mount and the Formation of a Middle-Class Art, Reading American Art, eds. Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp Week 6 November 30th RACE, SLAVERY, AND THE PICTURING OF AFRICAN AMERICANS Suggested Reading: John Davis, Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington, D.C., The Art Bulletin 80.1 (Mar, 1998), pp Week 7 December 7 th LUMINISM AND THE REFORMULATION OF THE LANDSCAPE Suggested Reading: J. Gray Sweeney, A "Very Peculiar" Picture: Martin J. Heade's Thunderstorm Over Narragansett Bay, Archives of American Art Journal 28.4 (1988): Week 8 December 14th REALISM AND NATURALISM: THOMAS EAKINS, WINSLOW HOMER, AND PAINTING IN THE GILDED AGE Suggested Reading: Gordon Hendricks, Thomas Eakins s Gross Clinic, The Art Bulletin 51 (March 1969): 57-64; and Jules Prown, Winslow Homer in His Art, Reading American Art, eds. Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp Week 9 January 4th INTERNATIONALISM AND MODERNISM AT THE END OF THE CENTURY Suggested Reading: Kathleen Pyne, Resisting Modernism: American Painting in the Culture of Conflict, American Icons: Transatlantic Perspectives on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Art, eds. Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Heinz Ickstadt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1992), pp Week 10 January 11th THE ART OF EMPIRE: THE 1876 CENTENNIAL EXHBITION AND THE 1893 WORLD S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION Suggested Reading: Robert W. Rydell, The Chicago World s Columbian Exposition of 1893: And Was Jerusalem Builded Here?, All the World s a Fair: Visions of Empire at

3 American International Expositions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp Week 11 January 18 th STUDENT PRESENTATIONS Week 12 January 25 th STUDENT PRESENTATIONS Each student will be asked to select an artwork, preferably one they are able to see and investigate first-hand, and give a 10-minute oral presentation in class. A selection of 19 th -century American artworks on view at the Musée d Orsay will be distributed on the day of our visit. Additionally, students may consult the La Fayette Database in American Art, which includes images and bibliographic citations for works by American artists in French national collections, , and which may be accessed at: This presentation is informal and is intended to encourage students to organize and articulate some of the main themes and issues covered throughout the course. Presentations should include a detailed visual analysis of the artwork and some discussion of the specific historical and cultural context in which the artwork was produced and received.

4 Bibliography The corpus of literature on 19 th -century American art is now vast. I include here only a selection of sources that deal with issues frequently raised by this course. The Terra Foundation for American Art has an excellent library with an extensive collection of books, monographs, exhibition catalogues, and critical studies on American art, which students will be introduced to during our visit. The database for the Terra collection may be accessed at: Students may find the library s resources particularly helpful in preparing their oral presentation. Basic Reading on American History American Social History Project, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, 2 vols (dir. Herbert Gutman, Bedford Books, 1989). Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, Vergo, 2006). Edward Countryman, The Americans: A Collision of Histories (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997). Howard Zinn, A People s History of the United States, 1492-Present, 3 rd ed. (London: Longman, 2003; and earlier editions) Historiographical Overviews of American Art-Historical Scholarship Wanda Corn, Coming of Age: Historical Scholarship in American Art, Art Bulletin 70.2 (1988): ; rpt. in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, ed. Mary Ann Calo (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), pp John Davis, The End of the American Century: Current Scholarship on the Art of the United States, The Art Bulletin (September 2003): Andrew Hemingway, American Art Pre-1940 and the Problem of Art History s Object, Internationalizing the History of American Art (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), pp Elizabeth Johns, Scholarship in American Art: Its History and Recent Developments, American Studies International 22 (1984): General Histories of American Art Milton W. Brown, et al., American Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Decorative Arts, Photography (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977). David Bjelajac, American Art: A Cultural History (London: Laurence Kings, 2000). Barbara Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). David Lubin, Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994). Angela Miller, et al., American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008). Barbara Novak, American Painting in the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience, 3 rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

5 Frances K. Pohl, Framing America: A Social History of American Art, 2 nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008). Further Reading Albert Boime, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). Mary Ann Calo, ed., Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, eds.,reading American Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998). Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Heinz Ickstadt, eds., American Icons: Transatlantic Perspectives on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Art (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1992). Neil Harris, The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years, (1966; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982). Patricia Hills, The American Art-Union as Patron of Expansionist Ideology in the 1840s, Art in Bourgeois Society, , eds. Andrew Hemingway and William Vaughan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991). Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994). Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988). Angela Miller, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). David Miller, ed. American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). Lillian B. Miller, Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). National Museum of American Art/National Portrait Gallery, Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art/National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution, 1993). Frances K. Pohl, Black and White in America and Old World, New World: The Encounter of Culture on the American Frontier, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, ed. Stephen F. Eisenman (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp and Alexander Saxon, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990). Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (1982; New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). William H. Truettner, ed. The West As America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art/Smithsonian Institution, 1991). Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat, eds., Art and the Empire City: New York, (New York/New Haven and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2000). Alan Wallach, Long-Term Visions, Short-Term Failures and The Battle Over The West As America, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on Art Museums in the

6 United States (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), pp.9-21 and