Marcia Brennan
Fall 2004, Tu Thurs 9:45-11
Office Hours: Tu Thurs 11-12 in Herring 109

 

HART 364

Studies in American Art from the Colonial Era to 1920

 

 

Course Description

 

This course will examine a range of topics in U.S. art from the colonial era to circa 1920.  Some of the subjects to be addressed include the symbolic, religious, and corporeal associations ascribed to the genres of still life and landscape painting; the mythology of the open frontier and the image of America as a ³natural paradise²; the negotiation of 19th century masculinity around the tensions between civilized refinement and uninhibited primitivism; the divergent claims of American cultural nationalism; and the introduction of international modernism during the second decade of the twentieth century.  Particular emphasis will be placed on the ways in which works of art represent visible and significant places where issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and identity are played out within a dynamic social and cultural framework.  Central to this course is the accompanying reading material, a methodologically diverse selection of texts designed to provide a range of critical viewpoints on American art.  The format of this class will combine course lectures with intense critical discussions of related readings.  Student participation is fully expected in all aspects of this class.

 

 

Requirements and Course Grades

 

There are three written components to this course: 1.) a mid-term exam; 2.) a final exam; and 3.) a paper of approximately 10 pages in length.  The essay will involve a comparative discussion of a work of art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and related ideas raised in class readings.  Attendance in course lectures is mandatory, as student participation will constitute a vital element of this class.  Final grades will be based on the following percentages: 25% mid-term, 25% paper, 25% final exam, 25% attendance and participation.

 

Plagiarism and Disability:

Students must follow the honor code. If you directly quote or paraphrase a source, so indicate it with full citation.  Any students with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations is requested to speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential.  Students with disabilities will also need to contact Disability Support Services in the Ley Student Center.

 

Texts

 

Mary Ann Calo, ed., Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings (New York: Icon, 1998).

 

Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, eds., Reading American Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).  N6505. R4 1998

 

In addition, there are three photocopied texts to augment the books cited above.   All of the readings are mandatory unless otherwise noted and constitute an essential component of this course.

 

 

Schedule of Lectures and Readings

 

 

Aug. 24         Course Introduction and Overview

 

Aug. 26         Colonial Art and the Boston School: Smibert and Feke

Reading: Wayne Craven, ³The Seventeenth-Century New England Mercantile Image: Social Content and Style in the Freake Portraits² in Reading American Art, pp. 1-11; Margaretta M. Lovell, ³Reading Eighteenth-Century American Family Portraits,² in Critical Issues, pp. 35-46.

 

Aug. 31         Copley

Reading: Paul Staiti, ³Character and Class: The Portraits of John Singleton Copley² in Reading American Art, pp. 12-37.

 

Sept. 2           Copley and Neo-Classicism: West, Vanderlyn, Allston, Stuart, Trumbull

Reading: David M. Lubin, ³Ariadne and the Indians: Vanderlynıs Neoclassical Princess² in Critical Issues, pp. 47-58.

 

Sept.7           Empiricist Knowledge and Enlightenment Traditions: Charles Wilson Peale and Family

Reading: Roger B. Stein, ³Charles Wilson Pealeıs Expressive Design: The Artist in His Museum² in Reading American Art, pp. 38-78.

 

Sept. 9           The Corporeal Still Lifes of Raphael Peale

                  Reading: Alexander Nemerov, ³Blackberries and the Solitary Imagination² from The Body of Raphaelle Peale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), in reading packet.

 

Sept. 14          Thomas Cole and the Hudson River Landscape School of Painting        

Reading: Alan Wallach, ³Thomas Cole and the Aristocracy² in Reading American Art, pp. 79-108; Optional Reading: Angela Miller, ³Thomas Cole and Jacksonian America: The Course of Empire as Political Allegory² in Critical Issues, pp. 59-76.

 

Sept. 16         Asher B. Durand and ³The Unity of God and Nature²

                  Reading: Rebecca Bedell, ³Introduction² and Chapter 2 of The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), in reading packet.

 

Sept. 21         The Natural Paradise and the Luminist Landscape: Bierdstadt, Church, Moran, Inness, Kensett, Lane, Heade

Reading: Nancy K. Anderson, ³The Kiss of Enterprise: The Western Landscape as Symbol and Resource² in Reading American Art, pp. 208-31.

 

Sept. 23          Monumental Genre Painting I: William Sidney Mount

Reading: William T. Oedel and Todd S. Gernes, ³The Painterıs Triumph:

William Sidney Mount and the Formation of a Middle-Class Art² in Reading American Art, pp. 128-149.

 

Sept. 28         Monumental Genre Painting II: Politics & the Public Sphere in George Caleb Bingham

Reading: Gail E. Husch, ³George Caleb Binghamıs The County Election: Whig

                  Tribute to the Will of the People² in Critical Issues, pp. 77-92.

 

Sept. 30          Edmonia Lewis: A Case Study in Race, Identity, and Representation

Reading: Kristin P. Buick, ³The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis: Invoking and Inverting Autobiography² in Reading American Art, pp. 190-207.

 

Oct. 5           Native American Art and Narratives of First Contact

Ruth Beebe Hill, Hanta Yo: An American Saga (New York: Doubleday, 1979), pp. 108-20; John (Fire) Lame Deer, ³The Circle and the Square,² Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), pp. 108-118, in reading packet.

 

Oct. 7           Native American Art and Images of Native American Peoples:

Catlin, Remington, Russell

Reading: Kathryn S. Hight, ³Doomed to Perish: George Catlinıs Depictions

Of the Mandan² in Reading American Art, pp. 150-62.

 

Oct. 12          Midterm Recess

 

Oct. 14          Midterm Exam 

 

Oct. 19          American Masculinity and High Art I: Winslow Homer

Reading: Jules Prown, ³Winslow Homer in His Art² in Reading American Art, pp. 264-79; Optional: David Tatham, ³Trapper, Hunter, and Woodsman² in Critical Issues, pp. 155-69

 

Oct. 21          American Masculinity and High Art II: Thomas Eakins

Reading: Elizabeth Johns, ³The Gross Clinic² in Reading American Art, pp. 232-63.

 

Oct. 26          Thomas Eakins and the Conflictedness of Nineteenth Century Masculinity

                  Reading: Martin A. Berger, ³Manly Associations,² Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 7-46, in reading packet.

 

Oct. 28          Tonalism and the Art of James McNeill Whistler

                  Reading: Kathleen Pyne, ³James McNeill Whistler and the Religion of Art,² Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 84-134, in reading packet. 

 

Nov. 2           Mary Cassatt: A Case Study in Feminist Interpretation

Reading: Griselda Pollock, ³Mary Cassatt: Painter of Women and Children² in Reading American Art, pp. 280-301

 

 

 

Nov. 4           The Gender of American Impressionism: John Singer Sargent and Cecilia Beaux

Reading: Sarah Burns, ³The ŒEarnest, Untiring Workerı and the Magician of the Brush: Gender Politics in the Criticism of Cecilia Beaux and John Singer Sargent² in Critical Issues, pp. 177-98

 

                  Essay Due, to be handed in during class

 

Nov. 9           American Impressionists, Tonalists and Eccentrics: Chase, Tarbell, Metcalfe, Twatchman, Hassam, Robinson, Dewing, LaFarge, Vedder, Rimmer, Ryder

 

Nov. 11         The Eight

Reading: Patricia Hills, ³John Sloanıs Images of Working-Class Women² in Reading American Art, pp. 311-49

 

Nov. 16         Stag at Sharkeyıs: A Case Study in Class, Gender and Interpretation

Reading: Robert E. Haywood, ³George Bellowsıs Stag at Sharkeyıs: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity² in Critical Issues, pp. 243-51.

 

Nov. 18         Alfred Stieglitz: Modernism at 291 and Photography as ³High Art²

Reading: Alan Trachtenberg, ³Image and Ideology: New York in the Photographerıs Eye² in Reading American Art, pp. 302-10

 

Nov. 23         The Armory Show & American Responses to Cubism: Stella, Weber, Walkowitz, Synchromism

 

Nov. 25         Thanksgiving Recess

 

Nov. 30         The Past and the Future: Primitivism and Technology

                  Reading: Helen M. Shannon, ³African Art, 1914: The Root of Modern Art² in Sarah Greenough et al., Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2000), pp. 169-84, in reading packet.

 

Dec. 2           Looking Ahead

                 

 

 

Final Exam date to be announced