Maoist Currents and Un-American Art Histories

About the Authors

Editorial Commentary

The Ashcan School paintings discussed in Douglas Tallack’s Urban Visual Culture course at the University of Nottingham were, for me, the hook. I was enthralled by the way that my growing knowledge of the history of chaotic, cosmopolitan, early-twentieth-century New York opened up the complex legibility of these works. Coming to American studies after having previously read English and philosophy, I was surprised to be spending my time looking at art. However, while researching my thesis (“On the Cusp: Stephen Crane, George Bellows and Modernism”), as a Terra summer residency fellow, and in my postdoctoral career, I have sought to catch up on both art history practice and the history of American art. I now teach in the School of American and Canadian Studies at Nottingham, where I offer courses entitled The Emergence of Mass Culture and American Realisms. My journey, from novice to teacher—or novice teacher—in less than a decade represents a fairly intense encounter with American art. But it also suggests a trajectory, from initial fascination to a more informed engagement, relevant to encounters of other kinds. At Nottingham, visual art forms one element of our interdisciplinary Thought and Culture survey and is also taught in specialist options, such as those named above and Celeste-Marie Bernier’s course African American Visual Culture. Both approaches are used at other U.K. American studies undergraduate programs: at the University of Leicester, painting and photography are discussed in courses exploring the City and the West; at King’s College London, Shamoon Zamir leads secondand final-year options titled Visual Culture: An Introduction and Photography USA; and at the University of Winchester, Carol Smith asks the students who take her Picturing a Nation course to reflect on the discourse surrounding recent exhibitions of American art in Europe. At these and other programs, American art is explored in an interdisciplinary American studies framework, with all the attendant benefits and dangers. American art also appears in U.K. university curricula within art history programs. Typically offered as options for secondand final-year students who have already taken the introduction to Western art, these courses tend to be specific in period or thematic focus. While the emphasis is often post-1945, as in the New York School course at the University of Leeds, Michael Hatt examines an earlier moment in Modern American Art, 1900–1930 at the University of Warwick, and Andrew Hemingway teaches Inventing the Americans: Issues in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture at University College London. While sharing the common difficulty of teaching the subject at some distance from its objects and archives, art history and American studies programs in Britain provide distinct disciplinary frames for American art. In the opening sessions of my Realisms module, I have to combine discussion of Thomas Eakins’s career with a crash course in how to read a painting, but when we come to social realism I can rely on existing knowledge of the Depression and the New Deal. Teaching students with strong foundations in methodology and with the background provided by the course The Traditions and Institutions of Western Art, Michael Hatt includes novels and cultural histories on his reading lists to provide context of earlytwentieth-century America. Both situations demand that teachers think closely about what American art requires. As yet, U.K. academics have not concluded that encounters with American art need to be framed by an American art survey. A trawl through teaching syllabuses reveals no evidence of such a course being taught. Anecdotally, at least, this approach appears to work. Students find ways of discussing the images they are shown in class, and in the courses I teach and moderate, I have read outstanding essays on racial stereotypes in early-twentieth-century advertising imagery, Edward Hopper’s sense of space and place, and historical references

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommentaryImagining a More Expansive Narrative of American ArtTomás Ybarra‐FraustoTomás Ybarra‐Frausto Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Art Volume 19, Number 3Fall 2005 Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/500227 Views: 143Total views on this site Citations: 61Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Introduction, (Jan 2019): 1–10.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-001 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 13–17.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-003 Looking for Alternatives, (Jan 2019): 19–29.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-004 Con Safo (C/S) Artists, (Jan 2019): 30–31.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-005 El Arte del Chicano, (Jan 2019): 32–34.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-006 Notes on an Aesthetic Alternative, (Jan 2019): 35–36.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-007 A Critical Perspective on the State of Chicano Art, (Jan 2019): 37–44.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-008 Response, (Jan 2019): 45–53.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-009 Post-Chicano, (Jan 2019): 54–57.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-010 The New Chicano Movement, (Jan 2019): 58–65.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-011 Post-movimiento, (Jan 2019): 66–71.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-012 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 75–79.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-015 The Politics of Popular Art, (Jan 2019): 81–84.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-016 Rasquachismo, (Jan 2019): 85–90.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-017 Domesticana, (Jan 2019): 91–99.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-018 Chicano Humor in Art, (Jan 2019): 100–103.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-019 Points of Convergence, (Jan 2019): 104–116.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-020 Graffiti Is Art, (Jan 2019): 117–122.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-021 Inventing Tradition, Negotiating Modernism, (Jan 2019): 123–134.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-022 Negotiated Frontiers, (Jan 2019): 135–145.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-023 Deus ex Machina, (Jan 2019): 146–164.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-024 Celia Alvarez Muñoz, (Jan 2019): 165–173.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-025 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 177–181.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-028 Mel Casas, (Jan 2019): 183–193.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-029 Drawing Offensive/Offensive Drawing, (Jan 2019): 194–207.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-030 The Pachuco’s Flayed Hide, (Jan 2019): 208–218.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-031 Writing on the Social Body, (Jan 2019): 219–236.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-032 Ojo de la Diosa, (Jan 2019): 237–249.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-033 Art Comes for the Archbishop, (Jan 2019): 250–262.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-034 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 267–270.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-037 The Enacted Environment of East Los Angeles, (Jan 2019): 271–277.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-038 Space, Power, and Youth Culture, (Jan 2019): 278–291.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-039 Pseudographic Cinema, (Jan 2019): 292–303.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-040 Whose Monument Where? Public Art in a Many-Cultured Society, (Jan 2019): 304–309.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-041 La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra, (Jan 2019): 310–313.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-042 The Donkey Cart Caper, (Jan 2019): 314–318.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-043 Public Audit, (Jan 2019): 319–330.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-044 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 335–339.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-047 Border Arte, (Jan 2019): 341–350.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-048 The Spaces of Home in Chicano and Latino Representations of the San Diego-Tijuana Borderlands (1968-2002), (Jan 2019): 351–373.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-049 Straddling la otra frontera, (Jan 2019): 374–393.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-050 Borders, Border Crossing, and Political Art in North Carolina, (Jan 2019): 394–401.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-051 Excerpts from Codex Espangliensis, (Jan 2019): 402–405.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-052 187 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border (Remix), (Jan 2019): 406–409.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-053 Introduction, (Jan 2019): 413–416.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-056 Los Four, (Jan 2019): 417–419.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-057 MARCH to an Aesthetic of Revolution, (Jan 2019): 420–422.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-058 Resisting Modernism, (Jan 2019): 423–426.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-059 Our America at the Smithsonian, (Jan 2019): 427–429.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-060 Alex Rivera, Philip Kennicott Debate Washington Post Review of Our America, (Jan 2019): 430–433.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-061 What Do We Mean When We Talk about “Latino Art”?, (Jan 2019): 434–435.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-062 Chicano Art, (Jan 2019): 436–439.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-063 Readers’ Forum Letter to the Editor in Response to Shifra Goldman’s Exhibition Review, (Jan 2019): 440–441.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-064 Readers’ Forum Response to Judithe Hernández’s Letter to the Editor, (Jan 2019): 442–443.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-065 “All Roads Lead to East L.A.,” Goez Art Studios and Gallery, (Jan 2019): 444–454.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-066 From CARA to CACA, (Jan 2019): 455–469.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-067 On Museum Row, (Jan 2019): 470–483.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-068 Strangeways Here We Come, (Jan 2019): 484–494.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-069 Further Reading, (Jan 2019): 495–495.https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003403-070Stacey Van Dahm Barrio art: Telling the story of Latino Philadelphia through murals, Latino Studies 13, no.33 (Sep 2015): 421–433.https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2015.28STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE Art across Frontiers: Cross-cultural Encounters in America. Introduction, Journal of American Studies 47, no.22 (Apr 2013): 301–311.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875813000108

Katherine E. Manthorne Art: National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution-these are the first words that we encounter on the journal's cover. They announce a historic agenda that extends nationwide and embraces the potential participation of an immense body of readers and contributors. Such an ambitious mission raises a number of questions, two of which demand immediate attention. The first surrounds the use of the term American. So far, it has been used in these pages as a shorthand notation to refer almost exclusively to the United States, a single country of fifty states. This traditional focus often complicates efforts to address the rich art of our fellow inhabitants in the Americas. Notwithstanding this problematic concern, ongoing sociopolitical debates have reinforced our awareness of the need to account for the multiplicity of voices within the United States of America.' Yet while scholars debate the validity of the melting pot as a legitimate schema for national developments, the popular tendency has been to retain that myth. So whose story, whose art history, then, do we tell? In this climate of multicultural awareness, it is all too common to promise ever-widening representation. Since its inception, Art has played an active role in the rethinking of the discipline on issues of race and gender and of folk art and crafts production. We can do even better in questioning the politics of art, with its unwritten edicts for inclusion and exclusion. But it requires the participation of all to redress the balances and ensure that this journal's content speaks to our shared concerns. The second point centers on the concept of art and brings us to the heart of the current controversy over elitism versus democracy in the arts. One side might be represented by the recent National Endowment for the Arts report entitled American Canvas, which accused the arts of the sin of elitism. The other side finds its most prominent spokesperson in Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello, who in turn has resoundingly asserted elitism as a virtue rather than a vice. Where in relation to these two endpoints should Art situate itself? To stake its claim, we need to pay attention to what has been called the ideology of democracy. In this world view, not only are all men and women created equal, but so too are all cultures and their artifacts.2 This democratizing tendency has been affirmed by much of the new art history and the newer move toward the study of visual culture as an alternative to more circumscribed definitions of artistic production. To date Art has subscribed to this principle, publishing essays on the art of Winslow Homer or Jackson Pollock alongside those on Elvis Presley's Graceland and a nodding-head pink flamingo. The journal's

American art history is a remarkably young, but rapidly growing, discipline. Membership in the Association of Historians of American Art, founded in 1979, now totals nearly 600. As a result of this growth, geographical and cultural borders no longer contain the field. American art history has become 'internationalized', represented by scholars and exhibitions around the globe. While this international transmission and exchange of ideas will certainly prove to be valuable, it has been left largely unexamined. Internationalizing the History of American begins a critical examination of this exchange, showing how it has become part of the maturation of American art history. In this volume, a distinguished group of scholars considers the shaping and dissemination of the history of American art domestically and internationally, past and present, theoretically and practically, from a variety of intellectual positions and experiences. To do so, they draw on a literature that, collectively, constitutes a bibliography for the future of the field. Three sections - 'American Art and Art History', 'Display and Exposition', and 'Post-1945 Investments' - provide the structure in which the contributors examine the existing narrative framework for the history of American art. This examination indicates a direction for the field and a future historiography that is shaped by international dialog. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Derrick Cartwright, David Peters Corbett, Serge Guilbaut, Andrew Hemingway, Sophie Levy, Christin Mamiya, Marylin McKay, Veerle Thielemans, and Rebecca Zurier.

Previous article FreeAbout the AuthorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreEliza Butler is a core lecturer in art history at Columbia University, where she received her Ph.D. Her research centers on the intersections of landscape, natural history, and material culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century North America. Her writing has also recently appeared in Winterthur Portfolio.Maggie M. Cao is the David G. Frey Assistant Professor of art history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of The End of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century America (2018). Her research focuses on the intersections of art with histories of technology, natural science, and economics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Sophie Cras is a maître de conferences (assistant professor) in contemporary art history at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, with a special interest in intersections between art and economics. Her first book, The Artist as Economist: Art and Capitalism in the 1960s, will appear in an English translation from Yale University Press in 2019.Michael D’Alessandro is an assistant professor of English at Duke University. His articles have appeared in The New England Quarterly, Studies in American Naturalism, Mississippi Quarterly, and J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Currently, he is working on a book project titled “Staged Readings: Contesting Class in Popular American Literature and Theatre, 1835–1875.”Chris Dingwall is a lecturer at Oakland University and author of Selling Slavery: Race and the Industry of American Culture (forthcoming). He recently co-curated African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race, an exhibition held at Chicago Cultural Center.Diana Seave Greenwald is assistant curator of the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, where she also earned an M.Phil. in economic and social history. Her book Painting by Numbers: Economic Histories of Nineteenth Century Art is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.Diana L. Linden is an independent scholar. Her book Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (2015) was selected as a finalist by the National Jewish Book Awards. She was the co-editor of The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere (2006). Her work has also appeared in Prospects and American Jewish History.David McCarthy is a professor of art history at Rhodes College. He is the author of The Nude in American Painting, 1950–1980 (1998); Pop Art (2000); H. C. Westermann at War: Art and Manhood in Cold War America (2004); American Artists against War, 1935–2010 (2015); and numerous essays about American art of the mid-twentieth century.John Ott is a professor of art history at James Madison University and author of Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority (2014). His current book project is “Mixed Media: The Visual Cultures of Racial Integration, 1931–1954.”Alex J. Taylor is an assistant professor and academic curator in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2014 to 2016, he was the Terra Foundation Research Fellow in American Art at Tate. He is currently completing a history of corporate art patronage in the 1960s.Anne Verplanck is an associate professor of American studies at Penn State, Harrisburg. She is writing “The Business of Art: Transforming the Graphic Arts in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which explores such areas as entrepreneurship, innovation, and marketing to more fully understand the interplay of economics, social forces, and art.Alan Wallach is the Ralph H. Wark Professor Emeritus of art and art history and professor emeritus of American studies at the College of William and Mary. His publications include studies of Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School, and art museums in the United States. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Art Volume 33, Number 3Fall 2019 Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/707480 © 2019 by Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

African Modernism in America, 1947–1967

Barbara Groseclose The phenomena to which my title alludes require explanation: research and writing on the history of pre-1945 American art by non-Americans have reached a stage of proliferation that permits the discipline, formerly practiced almost entirely by Americans, to be deemed international. Yet art historians in the United States may find themselves only vaguely aware of these new circumstances. To be sure, the essays and books of Terry Smith and Robert Hughes, who are Australians, and Britons Robert Lawson-Peebles and Andrew Hemingway regularly receive that universal academic imprimatur, a place on the syllabus. On the other hand, Roland Tissot, who gives American impressionist painting the benefit of French formalist readings, and his compatriot Jean-Loup Bourget, a multifaceted historian of American cinema and painting, are less familiar to American readers not only because tend to write in French but also because sometimes publish in venues outside the customary sphere of most university libraries.1 A more extensive listing of international writers could be compiled; my purpose, however, is not to recount a bibliography but to account for it. Since art history as it was introduced to programs of higher education was German in its intellectual bases and-as a result of World War II-often in its faculty, then in the United States it has always been a discipline practiced by an international coterie. National art histories being what are, of course, Americans generally assume that their own accounts of, say, the Hudson River School, are authoritative, much as the Dutch favor their own explanations of Rembrandt or Italians prefer Italian readings of Michelangelo. But unlike widespread European art collections that promote internationalism among connoisseurs, patrons, and scholars as well as public viewers, the objects constituting historical American painting and sculpture have been confined almost entirely to the United States, limiting their exposure.2 In terms of non-American scholarship in American art, the exchange in past years has thus been presumed to be, to put it crudely, us to them. While this does not accurately describe the situation, it describes a perception of it. If they now produce compelling analyses, offer novel insights, and reason persuasively, it may be said that the exchange is no longer one-way. Not that there has been a lot of traffic previously, which is why I helped to convene a panel for the 1999 meeting of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA) at the College Art Association (CAA) to address the question: Where and how does the study of historical American art show up abroad? Dismayed that the trajectory of American art history's scholarly and popular rise in the United States did not appear

The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art is unparalleled in its comprehensive approach to the study of art in the United States and it takes a fresh look at what American art is, how it is defined, and who influenced and produced it. The Encyclopedia contains reviewed, revised, and updated entries from Grove Art Online as well as hundreds of new entries. It covers American painting, architecture, sculpture, and photography from the Pre-Columbian sources to the colonial period to the twenty-first century devoting coverage to many previously underrepresented areas of inquiry, including African American artists, Asian American artists, and Native American art, both historical and contemporary. In addition to American artists such as John Singer Sargent, Robert Rauschenberg, Maya Lin, and Kiki Smith, attention is also paid to individuals who have had a significant impact on American art and art history through their activity in the United States, including Marcel Duchamp, Erwin Panofsky, Renzo Piano, and Max Beckmann. The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art offers a new foundation for scholarship for decades to come and will be of particular interest to students, researchers, and collectors specializing in American art as well as students and researchers in art history, American history, and cultural anthropology.

The relationships between Christianity and African American art compose a rich mosaic of interconnecting histories. As Christian subjects, themes, and practices have inspired the creative imaginations of African American artists, their work in pottery, quilts, paintings, prints, sculpture, and photography have, in turn, expanded and enriched the history of Christianity and the visual arts. The diverse, remarkable, and manifold ways in which African American artists have both contributed to and drawn from Christian motifs, symbols, and rituals make up one of the most complex and compelling chapters in the history of art. The history of Christianity and African American art is not composed of groups or movements; nevertheless, artists from divergent backgrounds and personal motivations have emerged from common historical and/or cultural contexts. These shared experiences have often led to parallel strategies toward the process of selecting and visualizing Christian themes and motifs. From the enslaved potter David Drake to the internationally acclaimed painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, African American artists of the 19th century, including Harriet Powers, Robert S. Duncanson, and Mary Edmonia Lewis, connected their creative practice with the struggle for survival and freedom. Perceiving the Christian faith through a lens of their own experiences, their art witnesses a faith in God that supported them in life and promised to grant them eternal salvation. In the early decades of the 20th century, the Harlem Renaissance was the most visible manifestation of a new African American identity. Artists, including Aaron Douglas, James Lesesne Wells, Romare Bearden, William H. Johnson, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, and Jacob Lawrence, reinvented the aesthetic developments of European modernism to challenge racial stereotypes in religious imagery. These artists depicted motifs that had been popular in a history of art, where biblical figures were often visually interpreted as European. If the history of Christianity and art is characterized by an attempt to make the biblical motif personal to the artist, and their presumed viewer, then the creation of images and objects in which Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary are portrayed as Black is one the most important contributions of African American artists to the project of expanding the elasticity of Christian art. Later 20th-century artists, such as Allan Rohan Crite and David C. Driskell, continued this legacy through the era of the Civil Rights movement. Paralleling the increasing recognition of artists working in urban centers, such as New York, African American artists who were “outside” of the official art network produced some of the most original treatments of biblical motifs. Believing that they were ordained by God to proclaim revelations and prophecies, artists such as William Edmondson, Clementine Hunter, Horace Pippin, and Sister Gertrude Morgan have read the Bible in ways informed by their own experiences and also employed references to biblical narratives to give meaning to these experiences. In the most recent half-century, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kerry James Marshall, Renée Cox, and Genesis Tramaine have created provocative images of Christ and Christian saints that promote social activism and personal empowerment. From Basquiat’s gnarled halos to Cox’s naked self-portrait as Christ, their art envisions traditional motifs in ways that resonate with contemporary life. From Drake to Tramaine, African American artists have been united by a refusal to surrender their individuality to any presumption of who they should be or how they should create. This assertion of personal will has ignited and sustained a bold inventiveness. These artists have had experiences of racism and injustice, of struggle and success, of doubt and faith, and each has found unique and individual ways of employing the motifs, symbols, and themes of Christianity as a means of articulating these experiences in art. Connecting across this history of divergent contexts and artistic ambitions, there are recurring motifs and themes that connect the pieces of this mosaic. Narratives found in the Bible, from the crossing of the River Jordan into the Promised Land to the flight into Egypt to the crucifixion have found renewed meaning when represented as dramas with African American actors. As these sacred narratives visualize dimensions of Black experiences, they evidence how art can both act as subversive protest in the present and orient the viewer toward salvation in eternity. The wealth and heterogeneity of creative ways in which African American artists have transformed the history of Christianity and the visual arts as well as the place of Christianity in the history of African American art are among the most important, and often neglected, narratives.

Anyone who has read Museum Anthropology knows a good deal about the topic of Elizabeth Hutchinson’s book, The Indian CrazeFEuro-American passion for collecting native art. Through the years the journal has published articles on the collecting and display of Native American and First Nation peoples’ art, studies of international expositions and museums as sites of public display, and how these venues have affected the way the public sees and understands Native Americans. These studies, as well as a wealth of other articles and books, have provided a richly nuanced picture of the topics discussed in this book. Hutchinson, an art historian, uses a literary and cultural studies approach to attempt to demonstrate that the development of modernism and its aestheticism must be attributed to the Indian craze. Through the commercialization and objectification of native artifacts, the craze proposed handmade primitive objects as models for artists’ exploration of new aesthetic ideas and practices. She does this by discussing a suite of case studies in which intercultural exchange and appropriation of native art and aesthetic were evident: U.S. government schools, mainstream art institutions, and the work of transitional artists Winnebago Angel DeCora and Euro-American Gertrude Kasebier. It is in these areas that Hutchinson provides us with an insightful comparison. The book opens with the chapter ‘‘Unpacking the Indian Corner,’’ which examines the commercialization of native art through the modern aesthetic of Indian corners in eastern urban centers such as New York. The author considers the origin of Indian corners, the politics and techniques of display, and the promotion of native art as a commodity. ‘‘The White Man’s Indian Art’’ follows with a discussion of native art programs in government schools and their pervasive appropriation of the Indian craze for educational purposes. ‘‘Playing Indian’’ discusses how interest in the aesthetic value of Native American art emerged not only within the arts and crafts movement but also in mainstream art institutions. An analysis of selected art journals, schools, and exhibitions shows that the appropriation of the formal and aesthetic qualities of native art, particularly basketry and pottery, was a stepping stone for modernist artists in search of a new American character for their works. Hutchinson then presents two case studies of women artists whose works reflected this trend. In ‘‘The Indian in Kasebier’s Studio’’ Hutchinson focuses on Gertrude Kasebier, a student of Arthur Wesley Dow, and the incorporation of native aestheticism into her works as a stratagem to solve the tensions arising from being a modernist artist and a woman. ‘‘Angel DeCora’s Cultural Politics’’ examines the life and career of Winnebago artist and educator Angel DeCora and considers how DeCora appropriated the Indian craze to argue for ‘‘the economic and cultural survival of Native Americans’’ through their artistic productions (p. 171). Particular attention is paid to DeCora’s ‘‘cultural politics’’ of promoting a pan-Indian aesthetic that was deemed able to contribute to American culture and art. An epilogue focuses on ‘‘the legacy of the Indian craze’’ and its ‘‘influence on Native art’’ in the 1930s and 1970s (p. 222). This book is a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the late–19th and early–20th century American collecting practices of native art. Hutchinson forcefully argues that Americans have seen an essentialized Native American culture as distinct from mainstream culture. Although other scholars have repeatedly made this point, Hutchinson provides information about understudied collecting and display activities from the turn of the 20th century. She explicates the commodification of native objects for the beautification of the home and the appropriation of native aesthetic by Euro-American artists. In addition, she clearly draws the connection between the Indian craze and government education of Native American children, which aimed at transforming them to be producers of goods rather than equal citizens, and adds important contributions to our book reviews

Jules David Prown The past few decades have witnessed a major shift in the study of American art. If one had to choose a single word to characterize the change, it would be contextualization. The focus has shifted from works of art and the artists who made them-often monographic studies based on primary materials establishing chronology, authorship, paths of formal and iconographic influence, exhibition records, provenance, biographies, etc.-to the social and cultural context in which the objects were produced. Art has become less the object of study than the means of study.1 To borrow from M. H. Abrams, a work of art is examined not so much as a mirror reflecting its time as a lamp illuminating it.2 This development has roots in the social history of art, a Marxist mode that has long stressed the means and conditions of artistic production. But the application of social history to the study of American art by scholars such as Patricia Hills and Alan Wallach has been only one aspect of the recent shift. The proliferation of a variety of cultural studies-popular culture, material culture, visual culture, folklore and folklife-also reveals a shift in attention toward context. A number of influential scholars pursuing cultural art history, including Roger Stein, Elizabeth Johns, Bryan Wolf, and David Lubin, have come to their study not from traditional art history backgrounds, but from other disciplines, especially literature. And many younger Americanists teaching in art history departments arrive there by way of American Studies. Although trained art historians continue to play a central role in the study of American art, their scope has expanded to include a larger vision of American social and cultural history as the subject of their investigations. In terms of publication, the single magisterial volume on American art has become less common. Much of the best recent scholarship has appeared in the form of exhibition catalogues, volumes of collected essays or serial essays by a single author, and in journals, not only those devoted to American art like this one, but in American Studies journals, such as American Quarterly, Prospects, and the William and Mary Quarterly, as well as those with a cultural or decorative arts orientation (Winterthur Portfolio, American Furniture). Efforts to produce a single textbook on American art have not been as successful, with scholarship compromised by the daunting challenge of providing comprehensive coverage of an ever-expanding field. In the classroom, the result has been an increasing reliance on course packets of photocopied readings, a procedure that achieves flexibility and relevance but poses problems of logistics, copyright, and illustration quality. Better results can be achieved through digital technology, which is increasingly easy to use.

Next article FreeAbout the AuthorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreEmma Acker is the associate curator of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where she organized most recently the exhibition Cult of the Machine: Precisionism and American Art (de Young Museum, March 24–August 12, 2018; Dallas Museum of Art, September 16, 2018–January 6, 2019), and was the contributing editor of the accompanying scholarly catalogue.Susanneh Bieber is an assistant professor of art history at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary American art in an international context, particularly the relationship between art, architecture, and the built environment. Her current book manuscript, “Construction Sites: American Artists Engage the Built Environment, 1960–75,” examines how artists referenced architectural discourses to make their work socially relevant.Kevin Hatch is an associate professor of art history at Binghamton University. He is the author of Looking for Bruce Conner (2012) and essays on Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha, among others.Ashley Lazevnick is a postdoctoral fellow at the Phillips Collection/University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2018 and is currently writing a book on the relationship of American Precisionism to early twentieth-century poetry, philosophy, and popular science.Leo G. Mazow is the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). He is presently organizing the exhibition Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, which opens at the VMFA in fall 2019. Mazow is the contributing editor of the accompanying publication.James H. Miller is a doctoral student of American art at Princeton University. A former New York correspondent for the Art Newspaper, he holds a master’s degree in the history of art from Williams College, where he received the Clark Art Institute Graduate Prize in 2016.Vanessa Meikle Schulman is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the author of Work Sights: The Visual Culture of Industry in Nineteenth-Century America (2015). Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Art Volume 33, Number 1Spring 2019 Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/703705 © 2019 by Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This article begins with the contention that 'American art' is a powerful retrospective construction, rooted in the institutional practices of art history and museology. Through a focus on the experiences of expatriate American artists (John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West) in London at the start of the nineteenth century, and the genre or landscape painting in transatlantic art (including the work of the British artist Thomas Cole), this essay exposes the complex and dynamic cultural interrelationship that existed between the United States and Europe in the period. It extends Paul Gilroy's and Joseph Roach's recent concept of the 'Black Atlantic', in which they argue that a single cultural zone brought together London and New Orleans, Kingston, Jamaica and the ports of the Ivory coast, to analyse the cultural and performative exchanges that were also taking place between America and Europe (particularly Great Britain), and that have hitherto been neglected in dominant art history narratives.