American Art

The central idealism of American art in the previous century revealed the position of traditional culture. It was the expression of a culture that was wealthy, nonviolent, and apparently safe - that had not yet gone through the tribulations of recent war, the great Depression of the 1930's, the great political, societal, and emotional turmoil of the twentieth century. During that time preceding the First World War, all appeared to be for the best in this best of nations. To that civilization, the world of these days would have seemed an unbelievable nightmare. The United States of our parents and grandparents was by numerous means a lucky civilization, and the art which reflected it still has a melancholic charisma.

At the turn of the new century had come a recess in the progress of American art. Its mature leaders were either no longer alive or well on in years. The American art world was in the hands of a young generation, most of which had studied in the scholastic universities overseas, mainly in the Ecole des BeauxArts. In contrast to their precursors, they were less courageous and more prone to accept convention, more international and less concerned about the American outlook. After Rome, Paris or Munich, the United States in its daily facets must have seemed unrefined and unattractive, not easy to absorb into art. The history of more than three hundred years of American art can be understood in different ways. We may focus on the American inflection of the individual tones, or we may attempt to hear each tone in the framework of a global choir whose whole is more than the summation of the parts. Naturally, American museums, at least when having business with art before 1945, is inclined to separate American art from its European complements, segregating it to its own art galleries, wardens, and publishing.

Europe is elsewhere where we can go, for example, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, or the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; and if we visit the Oakland Museum, we may even imagine that California has its own glowing tradition as a number of light-years away from New York as it is from London or Paris. However, there are also other techniques of scuffling this well-known deck. For instance, at the Spencer Museum in the University of Kansas, American art is wholly incorporated with its European counterparts, in order that what comes out is less the exacting essence of the American custom than a United Nations record of Western art in which American painters join forces with their international equals in the practice of living in, for example, 1790 or 1840 or 1890.

Present-day classiness, in actual fact, leans to disregard the old-fashioned inquiry with which we started, "What is American about American art?" Yet American people belong not only to the globe, but also to their own particular customs and knowledge. When we glance at a work of art by Rothko, we may well call to mind numerous European artists, from Turner to the late Monet, but we as well feel original roots whose heritage might take us not only to the world of American Luminism but to such eccentric ideas of American infinity as shown in Elihu Vedder Memory. And when we glance at Eric Fischl The Old Man's Boat and the Old Man's Dog, although the canvas is situated in an intercontinental collection of modern art in London, we would be apt to appreciate it without bringing to mind the naval works of Winslow Homer in which the drama of American scenery and American fervor stand against each other. Akin to American people, American art exists either at home or overseas.

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