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Robert Hughes: American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America
Online gallery for "American Visions"
"O My America, My New Founde Land" -- in this introductory chapter, Australian critic Robert Hughes (who has lived in the U.S. for more than 25 years) meditates on what it means to be caught up in the dream of "America," which, in its pristine form, offered up a utopia, a new Eden, pristine canvas for artists of society. Sadly, the dream was, at the outset, exclusionary, elitist, even genocidal. But, artists tended to respond to idealized perspectives, and to the vision of the "New Eden" rather than the horrific realities of poverty, enslavement, exploitation, and "total extermination" conflicts. It is that dream -- the flowering of individual self-worth, and realization of potential -- that began to manifest itself in art, architecture, sculpture -- even in pre-revolutionary days. Tour the online gallery -- what do these visions say about how Americans were beginning to see themselves? What does their artistic vision say about the nature of their dream? Is it realistic? Is there an appropriation of "found" culture so that it just feeds the overall dream? Do you find these works inspiring? What ideas about the nature of the individual and society do they represent? The history of the United States is complex and filled with multiple versions and voices, and each is revelatory and useful.
"The Republic of Virtue" -- According to Hughes, the major challenge of artists working immediately after the American Revolution was to "graft" classicism onto Puritan sensibilities. The idea was to somehow legitimize the Puritan experiment and to endow it with the values traditionally associated with aristocracy, power, and privilege. This was an incredible irony, except that the Americans tended to endorse the notion that they were building a society from "pure and noble" forebears -- Plato's Republic being one, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics being another. No one seemed to see the irony in this. Do you see Classicism in the art and architecture of the newly formed United States of America? Who is building these works or having them commissioned? Do they mirror the aristocracy of Europe? Do you see any tensions between populist depictions of the new society and the aristocratic ones?
"The Wilderness and the West" -- What do the works of the great landscapists have in common? Please explore links and conduct searches for the following artists: Asher Brown Durand, George Catlin, Charles Byrd King, George Caleb Bingham, John Frederick Kensett, Martin Johnson Heade, Frederick Edwin Church, John James Audubon, Thomas Cole.
"American Renaissance" -- What do you think about the role of the machine in American history? How is it depicted in art?
"The Gritty Cities" -- How are the cities contrasted with the countryside? What does this reveal about the culture's view of nature? Which artists and artworks illustrate this?
"Early Modernism" -- Why was the early modernism shocking to Americans? What was the main event that introduced Americans to abstract art? Where was most modernist art produced? What were some of the values it embodied?
"Streamlines and Breadlines" -- How and why are abstraction rejected during the Great Depression? Who are some of the great realist painters? What philosophies and/or ideologies did their art support and/or represent?
"The Empire of Signs" -- How did abstract art seek to generate or represent meaning? Did their paintings, in fact "mean" anything? How do you know? Do you like this kind of art? Do you think we have the conditions under which more abstraction will occur, or do you think that we'll start to see a return to pattern and realism?
"The Age of Anxiety" -- What is the "age of anxiety"? When and how does art come to represent and/or question social and cultural phenomena? Please provide examples.
a beyondutopia production
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