Defining Americana: Changes in "American" Identity through the Ages

    Art in America has always been a paradoxical combination: both a copycat of foreign movements worldwide, but also a pioneer, taking elements of past or contemporary art movements and making them distinctly "American." At the same time, America uses its art to define its culture; it also challenges and strengthens existing cultural definitions. In the following pictures, I'd like to take us through a brief sampling of three America-centered art movements, seeing how the cultural identity of America radically evolved in less than a century.

    The earliest movement that we will examine is the Hudson River School, a movement in the late 19th century that captured the wild beauty of the expanding American West. The Hudson River School was highly Realist in style, but almost Romantic in content, idealizing the untamed beauty of the western territories. Next, the Ashcan School: a group of artists who broke away from the popular impressionists of the time to capture the complex frenzy of urban life in New York City in the early 20th century. Many artists in the Ashcan School believed in "art for life's sake," believing that art should capture everyday life; they also held that art should be an integral part of everyday life. Finally, we'll take a look at the Precisionists, a multimedia movement that studied the new American identity coming to life as the United States became an international industrial power in the 1920s. Precisionists were defined by their attention to simple, straight lines, bright colors, and unusual angles that shed a new, positive light on scenes of industrial America.

Nota bene: when we refer to movements like the Hudson River School or the Ashcan School, we are not referring to actual educational institutions, but to groups of artists who are similar in style, content, and ideology, and are are at least somewhat contemporary in time period.

Hudson River School

Colburn's Butte, South Utah (1873) by Thomas Moran
Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on off-white clove paper. 
Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 2009.547

    The Hudson River School movement was primarily devoted to capturing the wide landscapes and dramatic natural monuments of the American West, and Thomas Moran's Colburn's Butte (1873) is a shining example of this fascination. As the idea of America's "western regions" began to extend towards the Pacific coast, American art movements such as the Hudson River School embraced this radically different terrain, as seen here in Moran's depiction of Tucupit Point, Utah. As the American people pushed west into new territories, artists helped to reinforce the idea of the United States' "Manifest Destiny" to take western America. This "Manifest Destiny" to take the West came to define the American identity of the time. As we will recognize in the next example, the ramifications of the "Manifest Destiny" on the existing native populations and communities would be tragic and devastating.

The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863) by Albert Bierstadt
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 07.123 

    In 1859, artist Albert Bierstadt accompanied a United States surveying operation into the Nebraska Territory, documenting what he saw in sketches and paintings. Another member of the Hudson River School movement, Bierstadt's paintings served both as a documentation of the newly purchased Nebraska Territory as well as an advertisement to prospectives settlers living on the East Coast. As Americans flooded into the western American territories, pioneering and innovation came to define the American identity. The "American Dream" of the time is farmed as the pioneer life, full of wide open prairies and spectacular mountain vistas as Bierstadt frames not only with the content of the painting, but with the dimensions of the painting itself (over 6' x 10'). We should note that Bierstadt includes a Native American community in this landscape (likely members of the Shoshone tribe, given the time period and location). Bierstadt includes the Shoshone, not as the subject of the painting, but as a part of the landscape. Given the trends towards American domination and taming of the West's landscape, it is no surprise that the Shoshone and White American settlers engaged in armed conflicts with one another, resulting in massacres and tragic loss of life on both sides.

Ashcan School

The Lafayette (1927) by John Sloan
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 28.18

    The Ashcan School movement focused on capturing urban life in the early-20th century. Many Ashcan School artists were former newspaper artists skilled in quickly capturing candid moments in everyday life. The Ashcan School composed their paintings similar to those of Edgar Degas, framing urban scenes of New York City in a manner similar to that of a photograph, intentionally painting certain subjects, such as the taxicabs in John Sloan's The Lafayette, as if they were cropped from the painting. The Lafayette features the Hotel Lafayette, an establishment known for fine food and wine. Located in Greenwich Village in New York City, the Hotel was a favorite haunt of Sloan and other Ashcan artists in the 1920s. The Lafayette represents the American identity tied to a growing urban lifestyle and the successful life of the middle class.

The Green Car (1910) by William James Glackens

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 37.73

    William Glackens's The Green Car is another piece that embraces the urban American Identity. Painted in 1910, Glackens has clearly been influenced by the brushwork style of Renoir, a French artist known for his quick, light brushstrokes and use of bright colors. Here, Glackens captures a scene from urban New York City. Glackens's studio was located in Washington Square Park, a popular urban center in Greenwich Village. Though the scene itself is fairly static - a woman simply hailing a passing trolley car - Glackens's light, energetic brushwork fills the painting with the subtle energy of a winter evening, celebrating the beauty of the lower-middle class life.

Precisionism

Criss-crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company (1927) by Charles Sheeler

Gelatin Silver Print

Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 1987.1100.1

    Charles Sheeler was an artist in the Precisionist tradition, and Criss-crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company is a prime example of Precisionism. As the United States came into its own on the international front, so too did its artwork. In the early- to mid-20th century, the United States became the leading power in the growing technological fields of communication, industrial production, transportation, and urban construction; the American identity became closely tied to the international industrial successes of the United States between World Wars One and Two.

Water (1945) by Charles Sheeler
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art ascension number: 49.128

    Precisionist art drew on a variety of artistic traditions in its composition and elements of design, emphasizing simple, bold, lines and bright colors. Precisionists, Charles Sheeler in particular, applied a filter of geometric minimalism to industrial and urban scenes familiar to Americans; through the efforts of Precisionism, these scenes would come to define the American identity in the 20th century. In Water, Sheeler paints an artificial water causeway in clear, simple lines, highlighting the unexpected beauty of a newly constructed piece of infrastructure. Through Precisionism, the American identity comes to focus on industrial power and success throughout the 20th century.