Essay by Dr. Bryan Zygmont
The G8—the Group of Eight—was founded in 1997 as an international political forum where world leaders gathered to discuss pressing world issues. This group consisted of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States. In a world with almost 200 sovereign countries, this collection of nations were viewed as the economic and political superpowers of the day. And if such a group had existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is fair to write that the freshly created United States of America had not yet acquired enough standing on the world stage to have acquired a seat at this tiny but influential table.
And yet over the past 250 years, the American colonies have transitioned from being the mere foreign holdings of European superpowers, to being perhaps the preeminent superpower of our own day. This incremental shift—some taken enthusiastically, others more reluctantly—is, in many ways, the story of the United States itself. And like all of our stories—those of identity, geography, and economics, among others—this story can be both illustrated and told through art. From the colonial times until our own, art eloquently speaks to both who we are and who we have aspired to become.
Europe and the “New World”
An excellent early point of departure is James Wooldridge’s 1675 painting, Indians of Virginia . This oil-on-linen composition measures approximately 30” x 43,” and although Wooldridge completed it in 1675, the painting has a complicated history that has much to tell modern viewers about what people in the seventeenth (and sixteenth!) century thought about those they found living in the New World.
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): James Wooldridge, Indians of Virginia , c. 1675, oil on linen, 75.6 x 108.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art)
The story of Wooldridge’s Indians of Virginia does not begin in 1675, it actually begins about a century earlier. If Columbus “discovered” the New World during the closing decade of the fifteenth century, then it was during the sixteenth century that European nations turned their attention from discovery to colonizing these lands. On 9 April 1585, Sir Ralph Lane led an expedition that attempted to begin an English colony on Roanoke Island. Although now part of the Outer Banks in North Carolina, Lane—and his patron, Sir Walter Raleigh—named this land after their monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Amongst the 108 people who began the colony at Roanoke was John White, an English mapmaker and illustrator. Sir Walter had asked White to join the group in order to visually document the flora, fauna, and the indigenous people of the Tidewater area.
Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): John White, The towne of Pomeiock and true forme of their howses… , watercolor, brown ink, graphite, heightened with gold, 22.2 x 21.5 cm (The British Museum)
During his time in Virginia, White completed dozens of maps, drawings, and watercolors, and these images became amongst the earliest visual representations of the plants, animals, and people of North America. In this endeavor, White worked closely with Thomas Harriot, who aspired to communicate in words what the artist hoped to illustrate in pictures. When the wordsmith returned to England (either in 1585 or 1586), the artist and his art returned with him. By 1588 Harriot rushed to publish his imageless text A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia . A less hurried edition two years later featured 28 prints by the Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry. These images were largely taken from John White’s in situ drawings and watercolors.
Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Theodor de Bry, Admiranda narratio… XVIII. V and XX. Oppidum Secota ., 1608 Francoforti ad Moenvm, Typis I. Wecheli, svmtibvs T. de Bry, venales reperivntvr in officina S. Feierabendii (Duke University Libraries), pages 76 and 83 .
By including these engravings in his Briefe History , Harriot made White’s watercolors—once removed from the originals the artist painted—available to a comparatively large audience. Although it is unlikely that Wooldridge ever saw White’s original watercolors, there can be little doubt that he had a copy of Harriot’s text. Indeed, a visual analysis of Wooldridge’s painting shows that the composition is an interesting conglomeration of no less than six of de Bry’s engravings that Harriot had published some 85 years earlier. In addition to this transmission—a kind of visual “telephone game”—there is also the interesting idea of exclusivity. White painted his watercolors at the behest of Sir Walter Raleigh, the patron of the expedition. De Bry’s engravings were intended for a much larger audience. And then, not quite a century later, Wooldridge painted the Indians of Virginia for the Earl of Conway, whose grandfather was an early shareholder in the Virginia Company. This image serves as a kind of artistic tribute to his grandfather, even though his grandfather is nowhere to be found in it.
The exotic and the familiar
Who was to be found, of course, were the Natives Americans living in the Tidewater area. White the watercolorist—and by transmission, Wooldridge the oil painter—has reinterpreted the these people as a way to make them appear both familiar and exotic at the same time. The standing male figure in the central part of the composition is from de Bry’s third plate, “A weroan or Great Lorde of Virginia.” Although he wears unfamiliar attire, at least to European eyes, his exaggerated contrapposto mimics Late Classical Praxitelian sculpture and makes him immediately recognizable. The female figure to this right—taken from plate ten, “Their manner of careynge ther Childern” likewise depicts the foreign, but does so in a way that is accessible to an Old World audience.
Other parts of Wooldridge’s painting similarly speak to the exotic and the familiar. The figures in the lower left—lifted from plate 16, “Their sitting at meate”—shows communal eating, including a fish, several ears of corn, and an oyster shell. What appears to be a tobacco pipe—something that would have been quite recognizable to a Londoner after Raleigh introduced Virginia tobacco to England at the end of the sixteenth century. Other vignettes in the painting show organized religious activities, active settlements, and thriving agriculture. These all suggest that the New and Old Worlds share much in common; it was likely both exciting and new, and oddly familiar. In this way, Wooldridge’s painting—through de Bry’s earlier engravings—may have served as a kind of promotional material to encourage English men and women to relocate to Virginia.
Independence, expansion, displacement
Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Thomas Birch, Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie , c. 1814, oil on canvas, 167.64 x 245.11 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
If James Wooldridge’s Indians of Virginia is a view of Native Americans for the English, then, Thomas Birch’s Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie (1814) is a view of the English and the Americans with Native Americans as an unseen, but important, group. At first view this may appear to be a painting about a naval conflict between Great Britain and the United States, and while it is that, Perry’s Victory also has much to tell us about the rising position of the United States of America on the world stage, about westward expansion, and about the displacement of indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of North America.
The War of 1812 is often called the second war for American Independence, as it again involved conflict between Great Britain and the country forged from its former colonial holdings in North America. One of the key points of contention in this conflict was the Great Lakes region of North America. This important area—filled with freshwater lakes, streams, and rivers—was vitally important to the profitable trade routes of the area. The United States—then still predominantly on the eastern seaboard—aspired to grow westwards. Great Britain—which still had extensive holdings in what is now Canada—hoped to maintain their mercantile superiority. And, of course, these areas were populated with thousands of indigenous people who had lived there for generations.
Depicting contemporary events
Battle of Lake Erie took place on the 10th of September 1813. Thomas Birch completed his painting that commemorated this great victory for the American navy less than one year later. Birch had completed a blockbuster image that depicted a nearly contemporary event. This was the early nineteenth century version of the newsreels that played before movie theater crowds during the Second World War, the nightly news that broadcast daily casualties during the Vietnam War, or the tallies of COVID-19 victims posted hourly on social media.
Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Detail, Thomas Birch, Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie , c. 1814, oil on canvas, 167.64 x 245.11 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
If the American Revolutionary War was a conflict (mostly, although not exclusively) of soldiers on the ground, then the War of 1812 was a skirmish of navies, and the naval battle that shifted the tide of this conflict was the Battle on Lake Erie. Perry’s painting chronicled this battle and can be divided into three overlapping bands. To begin, we can observe the surface of the lake; the white-tipped crests suggest it is a windy day. The low, pyramidal shape of the ships comprises the second band of the composition. Their billowing sails—even those that have been riddled with cannon shot—and the sweeping smoke from the cannon fire likewise suggest the day’s meteorological conditions. The rest of the composition is filled with clouds bathed in early-morning light (although the first shot of the conflict was not fired until almost noon).
The ship closest to the picture plane is the USS Lawrence , a 20-gun brig that was formally commissioned in August 1813 and named in honor of James Lawrence, an American naval officer who had been killed on 4 June. She served as the flagship for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Although the American flag still prominently flies, the sails have been riddled with cannon shot and the ship has clearly been disabled. In the midst of the battle, Perry transferred to the USS Niagara, the ship to the left of center along the horizon line with three flags hoisted upon the mast. Although smoke obscures our chaotic view, we can clearly see both American and British flags flying from a variety of ships. Some vessels remain seaworthy; others still appear to sink.
Although Birch does not make it immediately clear within this composition which side will be victorious—after all, the American brig in the foreground has been shot to shreds and has been abandoned—Perry and the United States Navy defeated their vastly more experienced British counterparts. At the conclusion of the battle, Commodore Perry penned to Major General William Henry Harrison—the future ninth president of the United States—what might be the most famous words in the history of American naval conflict. On the back of a used envelope Perry hastily wrote, “Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop” With this victory, the balance of this conflict began to teeter the American way. Two important and related historical events resulted from the United States victory on Lake Erie, the British were expelled from the area, leaving their Native American allies in the Great Lakes area vulnerable to the westward expansion of the United States, a nation that was eager to expand beyond the eastern seaboard.
On the world stage
Birch’s painting, then, is about two things. It certainly chronicles a great American naval victory and heroized the commanding officer, Commodore Perry. It also eloquently speaks to shift in the position of the United States on the world stage. They neither won nor lost any land, but they had again faced a military and economic super power and had prevailed. But the naval victory this painting commemorates was also a turning point for the thousands of Native Americans who had lived in the Great Lakes area. With their British allies gone, the United States believed it had carte blanche to occupy these lands regardless of who might have already been there.
Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Childe Hassam, Horticulture Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago , 1893, oil on canvas 18-1/2 x 26-1/4 inches / 47.0 x 66.7 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.67)
If Birch’s Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie celebrates the growing military might of the United States, then Chide Hassam’s World’s Columbia Exposition, Chicago (1892), painted almost 80 years later, depicts another kind of growth. During the second half of the nineteenth century, various countries hosted a World Exposition as a way of highlighting their advancements in art, architecture, science, and industry. These include Great Britain (1851 and 1863), France (1855, 1867, 1878, and 1889), Austria-Hungary (1873), Australia (1880), and Spain (1888). The United States hosted its first such event-called the Centennial Exposition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—in 1876. But it was the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 that most clearly announced the elevation of American art, architecture, science, and industry to the world at large. Hassam’s modestly-scaled painting is about more than just a pleasant vista; it is about the advancement of the United States and its sudden cultural maturity.
Americans in Europe
Chide Hassam was born in Boston in 1859 and worked as a freelance illustrator in the early 1880s, completing drawing for such prominent periodicals as The Century , Harper’s Weekly , and Scribner’s Monthly . In 1883 he embarked on a European Grand Tour to study the Old Masters; he visited (among other counties) Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. He returned to the United States after this extended trip, but moved back to Paris in 1886 and studied at the Académie Julian, a prestigious private art school particularly attractive to aspiring American artists who could not successfully pass the French language exam then required for admission into the École des beaux-arts. Hassam was a quick study; he submitted four paintings to the art competition in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 and won a bronze medal.
By the time he returned to the United States, Hassam had fully embraced the impressionistic style then in fashion in Paris, and World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893) is an excellent example of his mature style. Utilizing bright, vibrant greens, blues, and reds, he has sketchily depicted the lush grounds on the left and right side of the composition, and a path that begins in the middle of the painting and then meanders off to the right. A woman and small child rest on a bench while others promenade about the grounds. Some move towards the viewers, while others advance into the picture plane towards a building of vast proportions in the background.
Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Detail, Childe Hassam, Horticulture Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago , 1893, oil on canvas 18-1/2 x 26-1/4 inches / 47.0 x 66.7 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.67)
The Great White City
The American-born but French-trained architect William LeBaron Jenney designed that gleaming white structure in Hassam’s World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago . Called the Horticulture Building, critics (errantly!) claimed that it held every variety of flora on earth. Although it is not evident from Hassam’s painting—and it might not have been immediately clear to the visitors at the time, either—Jenney’s building was not made of a permanent material such as marble, but was instead composed of temporary plaster and stucco. Indeed, almost all of the buildings in the so-called White City were made to be dismantled at the end of the exposition. But despite the temporary nature of these buildings, the most famous American architects from the end of the nineteenth century lent their talents to the exposition as a way to showcase the advancements of American architecture. These included Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim, Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, and Sophia Hayden. From an architectural point of view, the World’s Columbia Exposition aspired to highlight all that the United States had to offer.
But it was not only the outside of these buildings that spoke to American accomplishments and advancements. The exhibitions inside those buildings also demonstrated to the world the ways in which the United States—young though it may have been when compared to its European counterparts—had reached a kind of artistic, cultural, and scientific maturity. Fourteen different buildings were centered around an enormous reflecting pool, and each of these structures highlighted a different branch of American ingenuity. For example, George B. Post’s Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building highlighted American advancements in literature, sciences and the fine arts. Notable American painters and sculptors who exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition comprises a Who’s Who of late nineteenth century American art, a lineup that justifiably bragged that the United States was proud of its artistic achievements. The artists who exhibited in the exhibition included (amongst dozens of others) Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Daniel Chester French, Winslow Homer, Frederick MacMonnies, and John Singer Sargent. After six wildly successful months and more than 27 million visitors, the Great White City closed on 30 October 1893. Even if the United States had not fundamentally changed during those six months, its international reputation had.
World War
If the infancy of the United States was the eighteenth century, and its adolescence during the nineteenth century, then it was in the twentieth century when it came in to its majority. As with people, so too with nations: the transition to adulthood can be a difficult time. In the two decades on either side of the year 1900, the United States was determining what role it wanted to play on the world stage. Did we aspire to remain focused on North America and to preventing European intervention there, or did we wish to expand our political and geographic influence, and become engaged in global affairs more broadly? This was a challenging question for the United States, and it can be claimed—with some justification—that World War I, the Great War, was the catalyst for the United States of American to shed its isolationist ways and become a geopolitical superpower.
Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): R.M.S. Lusitania , between 1907 – 1915 (Library of Congress)
But this transition was taken somewhat reluctantly. Historians point to 28 June 1914 as the beginning of World War I, for this was the day in which the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo. By August, almost every nation in Europe had mobilized their armed forces, lines were drawn, and preexisting alliances were set to be cemented in blood. On one side of this conflict—the Allied Powers—of France, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, and Italy (among a dozen others). While on the other, The Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Bullets were fired. Bombs were dropped. Torpedoes were launched. Mustard gas released. Between August 1914 and April 1917, millions died. And yet the United States stayed distant from what it perceived to be a uniquely European conflict.
On 7 May 1915 a German U-boat sunk the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania, part of the country’s unrestricted submarine warfare. This sinking of a civilian passenger vessel killed almost 1,200 people including 128 Americans. Yet not even this terrible event brought the United States into the great conflict. Germany complied with President Woodrow Wilson’s demand at halting the practice of targeting civilian vessels until January 1917, when it again began to target non-military ships as a way of starving Britain into submission. January 1917 also coincides with the infamous Zimmermann Telegram, a clandestine communique between the German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann and the German ambassador to Mexico. In a coded message, Zimmermann wrote that Germany was set to commence its earlier strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare against the United States on 1 February, and that Germany was prepared to offer Mexico the states of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico if they would declare war on the United States. On 28 February Wilson released this text to the media, and the anti-German sentiment that had been rising since the sinking of the Lusitania hit a full crescendo, and the United States finally declared war on Germany on 6 April.
Of course, many people had been calling for the United States to enter the war against the Central Powers for many months, if not years. Some artists—George Bellows was but one of them—picked up their paint brushes, their pens, or their burins to reaffirm the United States’ decision to join the Allied Powers in 1917. Bellows had studied with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art and was vaulted to fame towards the end of the first decade of the twentieth century as a member of the Ashcan School. Fame notwithstanding, Bellows volunteered to join the war effort in 1917 when we learned of the Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrage—commonly called the Bryce Report. In this account, James Bryce, the former British Ambassador to the United States, chronicled the debauched behavior of the German army. Partly factual but with a heavy measure of propaganda and misdirection, it was the release of the Bryce Report in the United States as much as the sinking of the Lusitania that ultimately brought the United States into World War I.
Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): The Bryce Report , 1915 (British Library)
Art and war
It certainly inspired Bellows. The first section of Bryce’s report was titled, “The Conduct of German Troops in Belgium,” and the artist found much written fodder for his visual art within the pages of Bryce’s account. In 1918, Bellows completed roughly 20 lithographs, five large-scale oil and canvas compositions, and dozens of smaller drawings that chronicled the German army and atrocities they were alleged to have committed. In this, Bellows’ effort is not dissimilar to earlier artists who utilized their artistic talents to comment on war. Jacques Callot completed two print series commonly called The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1633) that depicted the mayhem of the Thirty Years’ War. Francisco Goya had a similar goal in The Disasters of War series, a collection of 82 prints he made between 1810 and 1820 that examined Napoleon’s Peninsular War in Spain.
But whereas Callot and Goya had first-hand accounts of the atrocities of these conflicts, Bellows was in New York in 1918, a great distance from The Great War. As such, the lithographs and paintings Bellows made as a part of this series are very much from his imagination, and this fact drew some criticism. Joseph Pennell, a painter and engraver who himself made illustrations on behalf of the war effort, suggested that Bellows ought not have painted scenes he had not witnessed himself. Bellows quipped—convincingly so—that he was unaware that Leonardo “had a ticket to paint the Last Supper.”
Return of the Useless
The paintings, drawings, lithographs that Bellows made are less about visual truth and more about creating the visual pathos of war. Return of the Useless (1918) is a great example of this. Germany’s first offensive in World War I was the invasion of Belgium and many civilians were forced into labor camps. Bellows gives us a scene where those who were unable to work—too young, too old, too sick, too injured—are being returned. It is a painting that testifies to the pain and suffering of war. The majority of the image is given over to the red box car that has transported the figures. On the left side, a German soldier stands on a prone person and is about to strike them with the butt of his rifle. The soldier’s left hand is already covered with blood, and so too are the hands of the helpless figure who is about to receive his ferocity. On the right side, another soldier is about to strike a woman whose back is to the viewer while a man—already bloodied and terribly pallid—valiantly attempts to intervene. In the center, a young woman—wearing a white shirt—descends steps made from boxes. She has used her right arm to open the sliding door of the boxcar, but that arm remains elevated as if to shield her from the atrocities that surround her. A woman lies on the ground, and in the back of the car a mother holds her young child. A slightly more aged man embraces a girl on the left side of the boxcar, while another man—in deep shadow—sits on the far side of the car, holding his own head. The visual story that Bellows gives us is clear: the ruthlessness of the German army is indiscriminate.
Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): George Bellows, Return of the Useless, 1918, oil on canvas, 149.9 x 167.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art)
A Second World War
History is a complicated matter, of course, and the United States of America was not immune own immoral behavior. Like in World War I, America was a reluctant participant in the Second World War. The conflict began in earnest on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The United States was hardly neutral in the two years that followed. For example, the Lend-Lease policy—An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States—that began on 11 March 1941 allowed the United States to lend (but not sell) supplies to the war effort. Yet despite this commitment to supply warplanes and warships to Britain, France, and the Soviet Union (among other Allied countries), it took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 for the United States to commit to sending troops to the European and Pacific theaters. Once that happened, the United States acted swiftly. Congress declared war on Japan the following day, and it declared war on both Germany and Italy on 11 December.
Declaring war on American citizens
In the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States government became immediately distrustful of Japanese Americans. Indeed, on the same day that War was declared on Japan—8 December—the United States also seemingly declared war on Japanese Americans (and Japanese citizens living in America) by freezing their bank accounts. Four days later—12 December—President Franklin D. Roosevelt loosened these restrictions and allowed Japanese Americans to withdraw up to $100 a month from their personal bank accounts. But things quickly took a turn. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942. The importance of this document necessitates an extensive quote:
Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942
American concentration camps
Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\): Russell Lee, Japanese Americans boarding train bound for internment camp, Santa Fe station, Los Angeles, CA (Library of Congress)
In Executive Order 9066 lay the germ for one of the more shameful stanzas in United States history: the forced imprisonment of American citizens in internment camps. In total, the United States opened ten of these concentration camps in seven different states between March and October 1942, imprisoning almost 120,000 men, women, and children whose only crime was being of Japanese descent. On 18 December 1944, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Ex parte Mitsuye Endo that the United States Government could not detain any citizen without cause. This, in effect, declared the illegality of Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Roosevelt was made aware of the decision before it was made public, and on 17 December he released Public Proclamation No. 21 which repealed his own Executive Order. Nine of the ten concentration camps were closed by the end of 1945.
Given the trauma this period of history caused to an entire group of American citizens, it is not surprising it has gathered the attention of visual artists. Roger Shimomura was born in Seattle in 1939, the year World War II began and two years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Both of his parents were born in the United States, yet despite this fact, the Shimomura family was relocated to the Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho where they remained for about two years. Although he was but a young child at the time, these events had a profound effect upon his future art.
Superman, WWII, and Japanese Americans
Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\): Roger Shimomura, Diary: December 12, 1941 , 1980, acrylic on canvas, 127.6 x 152.4 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the artist, © Roger Shimomura)
Diary: December 12 1941 (1980) shows the ways in which Shimomura fused his post-World War 2 Pop Art style with traditional style of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. The subject is one that is wonderfully personal for the artist, for in this work Shimomura is creating a work that specifically references a diary entry his own grandmother penned on 12 December 1941 in which she referenced Roosevelt’s decision that day to allow Japanese Americans to withdraw $100 a month from their own bank accounts.
Thus, while we can presume that the young woman in the painting is Shimomura’s grandmother, she sits in a traditional Japanese home (despite the fact that she immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century). She wears a kimono and sits upon a tatami mat, while her diary and ink brush rest on the desk before her. She is surrounded by rice-paper screens; one partially obscures her left side while the screen left of center shows the silhouette of a standing male figure. His hands are seemingly placed upon his hips, and there seems to be a cape that flutters in a strong breeze. It becomes clear, then, that this is not just any man. It is Superman.
Figure \(\PageIndex{14}\): Superman No. 17 (July-August 1942) with racist caricatures of Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito
There are at least two ways to interpret this depiction of the silhouetted Superman. The first is that of a kind of protector. Since his debut in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, the Man of Steel was made famous for protecting the innocent, defeating the bad guys, and promoting “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” But in the early 1940s, the covers of the Superman comic books made it clear that the enemy of Superman (and by association, the United States) was not just Lex Luthor (who first appeared in April 1940), but also the Axis Powers. For example, on the cover of Superman No. 17 (July-August 1942), Superman triumphantly stands, clinching a caricature of Adolph Hitler in his right hand and a caricature of Emperor Hirohito of Japan in his left. In the following issue (September-October 1942) Superman rides a red torpedo and the text reads, “War savings bonds and stamps do the job on the Japanazis!” The cover from the issue dated January 1944 (Superman #26) shows Superman about to ring the Liberty Bell with the head of a German soldier who wears a swastika armband.
It is clear, then, that Superman protects the United States from all enemies, both domestic and foreign. And given the the distrust of the United States government toward Japanese Americans, it is seems easy to recognize that the Superman in Shimomura’s painting is not here to protect the seated young woman; he is there to both menace and survey her. Her posture—she sits with her right hand supporting her head—suggests a kind of dreamlike state, and a lack of awareness of the powerful, shadowed figure who appears ready to read the intimate thoughts she is set to write in her diary. In doing so, Shimomura suggests Superman (and, by proxy, the United States government) believed that his grandmother was threat, a possible extension of Hitler, Hirohito, and the “Japanazis” around the world.
Creating Coalitions
The United States had been a reluctant entrant into the two World Wars of the twentieth century. By the end of that century, however, the position that the United States held in world affairs had dramatically changed. The nation had become both politically proactive and reactive. An excellent example is when the United States swiftly responded to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. This Iraqi military action did not directly involve American military or civilian interests (aside from the worldwide repercussions to the oil market). Yet, the United States—in conjunction with a United Nations coalition that involved more than thirty other countries—led a military operation to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restore their sovereignty. In less than a century, the United States had transitioned from hesitantly joining coalitions to creating them.
From the American perspective, the Gulf War consisted of two distinct phases. The first, Operation Desert Shield (2 August 1990 – 17 January 1991), involved the buildup of American and coalition forces in the Persian Gulf area. In the midst of this—on 29 November 1990—the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 678. This mandated that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein withdraw all troops from Kuwait by the deadline of 15 January 1991. When that deadline came and passed, the second phase—Operation Desert Storm—commenced on 17 January. The early weeks of this conflict involved attacks from coalition naval and air forces. After more than a month of such conflict, a large-scale (but brief) ground assault began on 24 February. The conflict came to an end on 28 February.
Yet months before—beginning in December 1990—Iraqi military forces had begun to place explosive charges on hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells, understanding, that motives on both sides of the conflict had little to do with the sovereignty of Kuwait, but rather it’s oil. In the days leading up to the Security Council mandated withdraw date, the Iraqis began to sabotage these oil wells. The oil fires hit an apex in the days surrounding the ground assault, as the Iraqi military implemented a scorched earth policy during their retreat from Kuwait. In total, between 600 and 700 oil wells were set ablaze. The last one was not capped until November.
Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\): Sebastião Salgado, Kuwait , 1991, gelatin silver print, 45.24 × 30.1 cm (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Gary Sato, AC1998.162.1, ©Sebastião Salgado)
Oil in the Middle East
Clearly, this was one of the greatest environmental tragedies of human history, and it gathered the attention of Sebastiao Salgado, a Brazilian photographer who was in Iraq documenting this disaster. The black-and white photograph Kuwait (1991) shows the repercussions of this environmental catastrophe. It is a strongly vertical composition; a man stands to the left of center, reaching up to a hanging element. Just to the right of center is the wellhead itself, and it forcefully shoots jet-black oil beyond the frame of the photograph. Three other men who are knee-deep in oil join that standing figure, and each has been so soaked in the viscous liquid that they appear to be bronze statues, frozen in time. The high value of the whites and grays in the foreground also reinforce that the earth has been thoroughly soaked, while gazing to the horizon line, we can see no less than three wells on fire. This very scene is likely happening at other places. Clearly, this photography documents an environmental catastrophe. But it also murmurs about the American involvement in a foreign skirmish and our increased role on the world stage.
The history of the United States—and of the American colonies before it—is a complicated story. From humble beginnings as the overseas possessions of foreign countries through numerous transitions leading to the United States being one of the true superpowers and a geopolitical leader. In between these endpoints was change, and growth. The United States of today is not the United States of a century ago, and though it is difficult to predict the future, it is easy to imagine that the United States of the future will be different again. Whatever it is that American will be in the future, it is likely that artists will chronicle and comment on those changes. In doing so, they will continue to shed light on the United States and its people.
1629
The mission church at Acoma Pueblo
This mesa in New Mexico is believed to hold one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the US.
Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): View of Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
Stunning and dramatic, Acoma Pueblo is magnificent to visit not only for its spectacular location, but also because it is home to one of the best-preserved early mission churches in the United States. Standing on the edge of Acoma Pueblo (referred to as Sky City), one can see vast panoramas of the New Mexican landscape. What is a mission church?
Acoma sits on a mesa—a flat-topped hill with steep sides—about 360 feet above sea level, and until the mid-20th century, the only access to the Pueblo was via a narrow stone staircase carved into the mesa itself (pueblo is the Spanish word for a town or village). The location of the Pueblo is imposing and impressive, and it is easy to grasp why so many described it as impregnable. In the past, its elevated location aided in protecting it from invaders. Acoma Pueblo is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.
Figure \(\PageIndex{17}\): Acoma Pueblo street with adobe buildings and ladders that lead to the upper story entrances to kivas (sacred ceremonial spaces)
A city in the sky
The Pueblo is filled with dwellings ranging from one to two stories, all fashioned in adobe (mud-brick). The tallest and largest structure is the mission church of San Esteban del Rey, built between 1629 and 1642. A Spanish Franciscan friar named Juan Ramirez directed the construction of the church in 1629. The Franciscans are mendicant friars (a religious order where the monks take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and depend on charity for their livelihood) that helped to convert the peoples of modern-day New Mexico beginning in the sixteenth century. The practice of building missions for the purpose of conversion began soon after Spaniards defeated the Mexica (often called the Aztecs) in their capital city of Tenochtitlan (what is today Mexico City) in 1521. The Spanish established the viceroyalty of New Spain, which eventually comprised parts of the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central America, Spain’s Caribbean colonies, and the Philippines. What is a viceroy and a viceroyalty?
Figure \(\PageIndex{18}\): Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The church of San Esteban del Rey is based on missionary churches found in Colonial Mexico, but combines local Indigenous techniques and architectural elements. Because it was the first mission built in New Mexico, it became the model for many others erected in this area.
It is a single nave church—it has no transept (or crossing), and is approximately 150 feet long and 40 feet wide. Typical of other mission churches of this era in the Spanish viceroyalty, it has a cloister (a covered walkway surrounding an open space) that may have been used to instruct Indigenous converts, an atrium (an open courtyard in front of the church), and an elevated open-balcony chapel. The walled atrium yard also functions as a cemetery, called a campo santo, in front of, and to the side of, the church.
Figure \(\PageIndex{19}\): Elevated open-balcony chapel, Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The Spanish in New Mexico
Spaniards had two primary interests for desiring missions like the one at Acoma in New Mexico—to convert peoples to Christianity and to protect mines in northern Mexico. Led by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, the Spanish arrived in the area around 1540. In 1542, New Mexico and Arizona were claimed for Spain, but the geographic regions remained largely unsettled because of the harsh conditions and lack of water. The Spanish king, Philip II, officially authorized settlement of New Mexico in 1583, but it was not until 1598 that Juan Perez de Oñate officially claimed this region for Spain.
Franciscans arrived at Acoma in 1598. At first, the peoples of Acoma defeated the Spaniards, but in 1599 the Spaniards were successful after a strategic attack. They claimed St. James (Santiago), appeared on horseback brandishing a sword and intervened to help them conquer Acoma.
The façade of San Esteban del Rey
Figure \(\PageIndex{20}\): Façade, Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The church’s unadorned adobe façade is stark and austere, which is different from other Franciscan mission churches such as San Miguel in Huejotzingo, Mexico (in the state of Puebla, image below). San Esteban del Rey has two bell-towers framing a rectangular central area and an elevated open balcony chapel above the main entrance. This elevated space allowed friars to preach to people in the atrium outside the church, and so provided both practical and spiritual functions. Any priest in the open chapel stood higher than any new converts, suggesting he was closer to God and to Heaven.
Figure \(\PageIndex{20}\): Façade of church and cloister of San Miguel Arcangel in Huejotzingo, c. 1520s – 1530s, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Alejandro Linares Garcia , CC BY-SA 4.0)
San Esteban del Rey’s massive adobe walls—bricks made from a mix of clay and straw—need continuous maintenance. In places the walls are seven feet thick, keeping the interior cool during the hot New Mexican summer, but also warm when the temperature drops. The heavy adobe construction limits the number of windows in the church structure. Small windows appear high above the ground, allowing little light into the church interior. The thick adobe walls and dark interior add a sense of awe and mystery to the space, especially as you pass through the main door from outside. You immediately know you have entered a holy space.
Figure \(\PageIndex{21}\): View of adobe wall (note that straw is visible to the right), Acoma Pueblo
The thick unadorned walls, interrupted by only a few windows, gives the façade an imposing quality. Some scholars describe it as having a militaristic or defensive appearance, yet there are no crenellations or other militaristic motifs like the ones we find on Central Mexican mission churches such as Huejotzingo. It is unclear whether San Esteban del Rey actually functioned as a fortress or if this impression was intended to symbolically convey the impression that the church was the stronghold of God.
To build the church, people gathered materials and then transported them up to the top of the mesa. The vigas (wooden beams), for instance, were brought from the San Mateo Mountains—some of which were considered sacred—and which are about thirty miles north of Acoma. This demonstrates the substantial labor required to construct the church.
Figure \(\PageIndex{22}\): View from Acoma Pueblo
Church interior
The church’s interior is simple like the outside. You’ll need to imagine what it looks like because interior photos are forbidden. There are no arches, domes, or stoneworking; instead, there are flat ceilings with vigas over forty feet long. The nave is narrow, due in part due to the use of adobe since it can’t hold as much weight as stone.
Packed earth covers the floor. A raised sanctuary demarcates the holiest space within the church. Some of the windows shine light on the altar, literally highlighting its importance. An altarpiece stands in the church’s raised sanctuary. Originally the interior was painted with frescoes, which were repainted often. Today sacred symbols like rainbows, clouds, and corn are visible. These symbols attest to the syncretic Catholicism practiced at Acoma, the result of Puebloan and Christian sacred ideas and practices becoming entangled over time.
The original interior frescoes were whitewashed likely as a result of the Acoma Revolt (1680–92), a period during which many missions were destroyed and missionaries like the Franciscans killed or expelled. Yet San Esteban del Rey survived and it remains a stunning testament to the events that shaped this area during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Go deeper
Most of the photographs in this essay were taken by Dr. Steven Zucker and can be found here .
Edward Proctor Hunt, The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo (Penguin Classics, 2015)
Ward Alan Minge and Simon Ortiz, Acoma: Pueblo in the Sky (University of New Mexico Press, 1991).
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning
Figure \(\PageIndex{23}\): More Smarthistory images…
c. 1675
Europe’s earliest views of America
Among the earliest European representations of North America
Europe’s earliest views of America
Images drawn from the expedition that founded the lost colony of Roanoke
by DR. MINDY BESAW, CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{1}\): James Wooldridge, Indians of Virginia , c. 1675, oil on linen, 75.6 x 108.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), a Seeing America video Speakers: Dr. Mindy Besaw, Curator of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
Testifying to the ongoing processes of European exploration and colonization, James Wooldridge’s Indians of Virginia is a third-generation image, created 200 years after the original artistic records. This painting was based on a popular series of engraving by Theodor de Bry from the late 16th century, which were themselves based on watercolors made by John White around 1585.
John White was a cartographer and naturalist during Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploration of territories in present-day Virginia and North Carolina. White’s watercolors, and the prints and paintings based on them, interpreted aspects of Native American life —in this case Algonquin people— for a European audience. The paintings combine his observations with European traditions of art, blending the exotic and the familiar in order to interest people in either investing in or participating in Raleigh’s ventures.
More to think about
John White’s watercolors, turned into prints by de Bry, and then reinterpreted by Wooldridge fueled the imagination of Europeans of what the “New World” looked like. Compare this standing figure depicted by White and de Bry with the contrapposto figure highlighted in the video. What changes in each version? How does the visual context for each version affect our understanding?
c. 1735
A Jewish Family in Early New York
A Jewish family in New York and London during the French Indian Wars
A Jewish Family in Early New York
six portraits of the Levy-Franks family
by DR. MINDY BESAW, CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART and DR. BETH HARRIS
Video \(\PageIndex{2}\): Gerardus Duyckinck I (attributed), six portraits of the Levy-Franks family (Franks Children with Bird, Franks Children with Lamb, Jacob Franks, Moses Levy, Mrs. Jacob Franks (Abigaill Levy), and Ricka Franks), c. 1735, oil on canvas (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art). A conversation with Dr. Mindy Besaw, Curator of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Dr. Beth Harris. A Seeing America video https://smarthistory.org/seeing-america-2/
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
This series of six paintings captures three generations of the Levy-Franks, a wealthy merchant family who were part of the small community of Jewish immigrants who settled in lower Manhattan. Their shipping empire supplied the British during the French & Indian War, carried goods on Caribbean trade routes, and possibly brought enslaved people to the Americas.
These portraits were created by a limner painter, who most likely had no formal training but certainly knew English mezzotints of the aristocracy. Their poses, dress, and accessories align the family with the upper class. The paintings would have conveyed their wealth and celebrated the family network.
More to think about
The portraits reinforce the wealth and social status of the Levy-Franks family, but also create a strong network between the members of three generations. Looking at the portraits together, how did the artist emphasize family connections and create a unified sense of community?
c. 1814
The battle that turned the War of 1812
The battle that turned the tide during the War of 1812
The battle that turned the War of 1812
Perry's Victory on Lake Erie
by DR. ANNA O. MARLEY and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{3}\): Thomas Birch, Perry's Victory on Lake Erie , c. 1814, oil on canvas, 167.64 x 245.11 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), a Seeing America video speakers: Dr. Anna O. Marley, Curator of Historical American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Dr. Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
Admiral Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake Erie was a turning point in the War of 1812 and the development of the American empire. The American forces defeated the powerful British navy, demonstrating the growing international strength of the United States.
Connecting British Canada and the U.S., Lake Erie was strategically important, especially in a larger war that centered on controlling the conduits of international trade. The victory also enabled American expansion westward, beyond the original colonies along the eastern seaboard. This was a tragic development for Native Americans in the region, especially after Tecumseh, who had organized a confederacy of native peoples in alliance with the British, was killed in a subsequent battle.
Thomas Birch relied on reports and military sketches to capture the details of the battle with great precision. Building on a tradition of Dutch marine painting, he depicts the confusion and chaos of the battle, but also signals America’s ultimate victory.
More to think about
The decisive victory at the Battle of Lake Erie was also celebrated in a painting by William Henry Powell. Compare the depictions of the battle by Powell and Thomas Birch. What are some of the differences in how each artist chose to represent the American victory? How do those choices impact your response to each painting?
1866
A nude in Victorian America
Though at first glance this nude seems plucked from classical antiquity, it actually alludes to modern politics.
A nude in Victorian America
Hiram S. Powers, The Greek Slave , 1866
by DR. BRYAN ZYGMONT
Video \(\PageIndex{4}\): Hiram S. Powers, The Greek Slave , 1866, marble, 166.4 x 48.9 x 47.6 cm (Brooklyn Museum). Speakers: Margarita Karasoulas, Assistant Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum and Beth Harris
Figure \(\PageIndex{24}\): Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, model 1841-43, carved 1846, Serravezza marble, 167.5 × 51.4 × 47 cm (National Gallery of Art)
They say Ideal beauty cannot enter
The house of anguish. On the threshold stands
An alien Image with enshackled hands,
Called the Greek Slave! as if the artist meant her
(That passionless perfection which he lent her,
Shadowed not darkened where the sill expands)
To so confront man’s crimes in different lands
With man’s ideal sense. Pierce to the centre,
Art’s fiery finger! and break up ere long
The serfdom of this world. Appeal, fair stone,
From God’s pure heights of beauty against man’s wrong!
Catch up in thy divine face, not alone
East griefs but west, and strike and shame the strong,
By thunders of white silence, overthrown.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hiram Powers’ “Greek Slave,” 1850
It is a rare work of art that could inspire the lyrical pen of a poetess as talented as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but such was the universal acclaim of Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave a mere five years after he first exhibited his statue in London. Powers, an American expatriate sculptor who had been living and working in Italy since 1837, was suddenly vaulted into the pantheon of great (American) sculptors, and drew favorable comparisons to Phidias and Michelangelo .
From Cincinnati to Florence
Figure \(\PageIndex{25}\): Hiram Powers, Martin van Buren , modeled 1836, carved 1840, marble, 54.3 x 61.2 x 34.2 cm (The White House)
And yet, for Powers—who turned 40 in 1845, when The Greek Slave was first exhibited—it had been a long journey from his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Born in Woodstock, Vermont, Powers’ family moved near Cincinnati when he was 14 years old. At the death of his father, Powers moved into the city and began work, first as a superintendent of a reading room attached to a hotel, and later as a clerk at a general store. His introduction to the art-making world was a humble one. At the age of 17 he worked as an apprentice to a wooden clockmaker. Several years later—in 1826—Powers began to study with Frederick Eckstein, a local sculptor of some regional renown. In his studio, Powers learned to model the human face and figure, and how to create plaster casts.
These skills were put to great use at Joseph Dorfeulle’s Western Museum. While there, Powers created animatronic wax figures to occupy scenes taken from Dante’s Inferno. At the same time, Powers began to create portrait busts of his friends. These likenesses brought him to the attention of Nicholas Longworth, a local wine entrepreneur. Longworth paid for Powers to undertake two extended periods of study away from Ohio: first to New York City (1829) and then later to Washington, D.C. (1834).
It was this later trip to the nation’s capital that propelled Powers onward to the success he would later find with The Greek Slave . While there, he sculpted many Washingtonian elites, including current and former presidents—Andrew Jackson (1834), John Quincy Adams (1837), and Martin van Buren (1837)—as well as John Marshall (1835), the second chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. These successes prompted Powers to follow the lead of another American neoclassical sculptor, Horatio Greenough, and depart his native shores for Italy. Greenough had already been in Italy since 1828; if Powers hoped to emulate the work of Michelangelo and Bernini, then Florence was just the place to do it.
An American Venus
And so, in 1837, Powers moved to Italy, never again to step upon American shores. Four years later, he was at work on The Greek Slave , the sculpture that has become his most recognized and celebrated work. Powers completed no less than six full-sized versions of this work between 1843 and 1866, and it secured his fame on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, had he made nothing else of note, this work alone would have vaulted Powers into the pantheon of American sculptors. The Greek Slave was both familiar and new, and exceedingly relevant for the audiences that first viewed it.
Figure \(\PageIndex{26}\): Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave , model 1841-43, carved 1846, Serravezza marble, 167.5 × 51.4 × 47 cm (National Gallery of Art); Aphrodite of Cnidos , torso: Roman copy, 2nd century C.E., restoration, 17th century, marble (Rome, Roman National Museum, Palazzo Altemps); Venus de’ Medici , 1st century B.C.E. (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
In it, Powers sculpted a nearly life-sized nude female. Posed in the High Classical contrapposto, the figure faces towards her left so that when her body is viewed frontally, her face appears in near-perfect profile. Her weight-bearing left leg counterbalances the straight right arm, which leads the eye downwards to the drapery-covered vertical support. In contrast, her bent left arm leads the eye across her unclothed body towards both her non-weight-bearing right leg and the chains that bind her two hands together. Indeed, much like the classical (ancient Greek and Roman) works that Powers based The Greek Slave on—Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Knidos and the Medici Venus immediately come to mind—this gestural attempt to hide her nudity only forces the viewer to more directly address it.
The story of The Greek Slave
But who is this woman? Why is she nude? And what has caused her hands to be chained? In order to answer these questions—and, as importantly, justify Powers’s then scandalous use of female nudity—Powers himself wrote an explanatory text to accompany the exhibition of his work. In it, he explained that his figure is an enslaved Greek maiden who stands in a slave market during the time of the Greek War for Independence against Turkey (1821-32).
Figure \(\PageIndex{27}\): Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave , detail model 1841-43, carved 1846, Serravezza marble, 167.5 × 51.4 × 47 cm (National Gallery of Art)
The Slave has been taken from one of the Greek Islands by the Turks, in the time of the Greek revolution….Her father and mother, and perhaps all her kindred, have been destroyed by her foes, and she alone preserved as a treasure too valuable to be thrown away. She is now among barbarian strangers…and she stands exposed to the gaze of the people she abhors, and awaits her fate with intense anxiety, tempered indeed by the support of her reliance upon the goodness of God. Gather all these afflictions together, and add to them the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, and no room will be left for shame.
As quoted in American Art to 1900: A Documentary History (University Of California Press, 2009)
Upon close inspection, one can see a small cross and locket carved on the support. The cross hints at her everlasting Christian faith, while the locket suggests far away love. Through these small details, Powers sets the stage for our reaction: a young Christian female has been abducted from her family, has been stripped bare by her captors, and now stands judged in the slave market. The pathos is palpable.
Figure \(\PageIndex{28}\): John Vanderlyn, Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos , 1809-14, oil on canvas, 174 x 221 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
That The Greek Slave is nude—and that this nudity was deemed acceptable and appropriate to the audiences who viewed it—is very much a part of this work’s history. Nineteenth-century American art does not overflow with examples of the female nude, and those artists who attempted to paint or sculpt such scandalous subjects were often disappointed by reactions to their work. John Vanderlyn’s 1814 masterwork Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos is one such example. Vanderlyn painted Ariadne in Paris and hoped for this work to announce—to a New York City audience—that he was eminently qualified to paint neoclassical history paintings. But whereas this painting was a hit when it was shown at the annual Paris salon, the (comparatively) prudish American audience responded negatively to Ariadne’s lack of clothing.
Figure \(\PageIndex{28}\): Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave , 1869, marble, 166.4 x 48.9 x 47.6 cm (The Brooklyn Museum)
The Greek Slave is even more exposed than Ariadne in Vanderlyn’s painting (if we consider, for example, the drapery that comes across the top of her left thigh). So why was this sculpture so successful, when Vanderlyn’s painting had been rejected by American audiences? The Greek Slave is a generation or two later, but this difference in time—from 1814 until 1841—cannot be the only reason why one was accepted and other not.
Many believe the primary reason why The Greek Slave was so popular was because of the means by which the figure came to be nude. Her clothing was not removed because of an amorous tryst, like Ariadne’s. Although her clothing may have been stripped away, she remained cloaked and covered in her Christian piety. The Reverend Orville Dewey summed this up in an 1847 article in The Union Magazine :
“The Greek Slave is clothed all over with sentiment; sheltered, protected by it from every profane eye. Brocade, cloth of gold, could not be a more complete protection than the vesture of holiness in which she stands.”
Powers’ Statue of the Greek Slave (Eastburn’s Press, 1848)
The art-viewing public agreed, and the popularity of this work—a popularity that likely exceeded the work’s aesthetic merits—catapulted Powers to international fame. One of the contributors to the impact of this work was the way in which viewers could consider this both a historical and allegorical composition. In addition to being based upon an event taken from the Greek War of Independence, it was also topical to the situation of slavery in the United States.
A work admired around the globe
Figure \(\PageIndex{29}\): John Absalon, The Greek Slave on view in the East Nave of the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, London, 1851, hand-colored lithograph, 27.1 × 37.6 cm, published by Lloyd Brothers & Co., 1851 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
These were the connections viewers consistently made when the sculpture was first shown to great fanfare in London in 1845, and then when it toured the United States two years later. It made an appearance at the next two world’s fairs—London’s Crystal Palace in 1851 and the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855. At each stop, viewers made the connection between the statue and rising anti-slavery sentiment in the United States.
Beyond his six versions of The Greek Slave , Powers continued to contribute to the field of sculpture during the course of his long career. As an inventor, he patented new files and rasps, and developed an easier-to-use pointing machine that aided in the creation of marble copies of his works. He also developed a new finishing technique that allowed him to closely recreate the appearance of human flesh on the finely grained Carrara marble so preferred by Florentine sculptors. But it was The Greek Slave more than any other element that secured Powers’s reputation as an American sculptor of the highest rank and it remains one of the most important and enduring works of American sculpture.
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
The Greek Slave was inspired by the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830) and depicts a young Christian women being sold at a market in Constantinople. Instantly popular, Powers made multiple copies of the statue, starting in 1843 and ending with this version from 1866.
Powers became an abolitionist in the 1850s, and this statue takes on new meaning when considered against the growing conflicts over American slavery which culminated in the Civil War. In this final version from 1866, the replacement of the original chains with a set of manacles emphasizes this connection, and makes clear the political sympathies of the artist.
Although the female nude was a controversial subject in Victorian America, Powers stressed the modesty and Christian virtues of The Greek Slave . Details in the sculpture, along with the narrative written by the artist to explain her story, framed this figure as a victim.
The popularity of The Greek Slave in America and England led to a market for copies. Through new technologies, the statue could be more easily reproduced and transformed into formats for the mass-market. Powers filed a patent to protect his work from unauthorized copyists.
Go deeper
The Greek Slave at the National Gallery of Art , The Brooklyn Museum , Yale University Art Gallery , and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (the two other copies are held by Raby Castle, England, and Newark Museum, New Jersey)
Sarah L. Burns and Joshua Brown, “White into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America”
Essay on Hiram Powers from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Read more about the creation of The Greek Slave
Smithsonian exhibition on the plaster cast of The Greek Slave
Special issue on The Greek Slave from 19th-Century Art Worldwide
View a porcelain replica of The Greek Slave at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Read about John Bell’s The American Slave , made in response to Hiram Powers’ The Greek Slave
Explore Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 autobiography account, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Explore primary source documents about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Explore primary source documents about the Dred Scott decision
More to think about
According to the video, Hiram Powers created a backstory to go with his sculpture, which was included in a pamphlet given to people who came to see The Greek Slave . Why do you think he created this story? Should a work of art have to be explained by its creator?
The Greek Slave was so popular that it was replicated in many different materials for home decoration and even used on product packaging. Do you think that the popularization of this political sculpture helped to spread the artist’s message, or do you think it diluted that message? Can you think of a modern example of a powerful image that was later adopted for commercial purposes?
1868
Cotton, oil, and the economics of history
Sail, steam, cotton, and oil — the engines of the American economy.
Cotton, oil, and the economics of history
Samuel Colman, Jr., Ships Unloading, New York
by DR. PETER JOHN BROWNLEE, CURATOR, TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART and DR. BETH HARRIS
Video \(\PageIndex{5}\): Samuel Colman, Jr., Ships Unloading, New York , 1868, oil on canvas mounted on board, 105 x 76 cm (The Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1984.4). Speakers: Dr. Peter John Brownlee, Curator, Terra Foundation for American Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
Cotton was a valuable cash crop for the American South, but as a labor-intensive crop, plantations depended on enslaved people to work the fields. The economic strength of the cotton market contributed heavily to the secession of the Confederacy and the Civil War.
During the Civil War, Edward Atkinson proposed that the Union army could seize cotton plantations, freeing their slaves and employing them to continue harvesting cotton crops. Known as contrabands, these freed slaves were paid minimal wages and given certain rights. Their product was known as “free labor cotton” and it was popular in abolitionist countries, like England.
Samuel Colman’s Ships Unloading, New York includes a new export, petroleum. Following the discovery of oil fields in western Pennsylvania, petroleum was marketed as a replacement for whale oil. After the invention of the combustion engine, oil would become an important commodity of international trade.
More to think about
By seizing cotton plantations and paying workers in contraband camps for their labor, the Union marketed its cotton as a more ethical product. How does this compare to modern marketing of ethical clothing? How are today ideas of what makes something an “ethical” product similar to what they were in the 1860s?
1886
Light of democracy, the Statue of Liberty
Two countries honor their love of democracy with a huge statue of a woman! Neither let women vote, though.
Light of democracy, the Statue of Liberty
A gift from France welcomed generations of immigrants
by DR. ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{6}\): Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, installed 1886, conceived by Édouard Laboulaye, sculpture designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, engineered by Gustave Eiffel, pedestal designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Speakers: Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis and Dr. Steven Zucker
Key points
The idea for the Statue of Liberty originated with Édouard Laboulaye, a historian of American history and advocate for French democracy. Laboulaye conceived of a symbol that represented a nation that valued liberty and freedom, prompted by the abolition of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. The sculpture was commissioned in 1876, the centennial year of the United States.
The statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was financed by the people of France and America, rather than by governments. Sections of the statue were exhibited at World’s Fairs to raise money. The French raised 400,000 francs for the sculpture, and the Americans needed to raise around 250,000 dollars for the pedestal.
The final pedestal funds were raised in less than six months, mainly from donations of less than a dollar. The people who donated — many of them poor, many of them immigrants — showed their belief in American ideals and ideologies.
The sculpture takes an abstract idea — liberty — and personifies it in the tradition of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. The seven spikes of her crown reference the seven seas and seven continents, symbolizing the idea of liberty spreading throughout the world. She holds a tablet that holds the date July 4, 1776 written in Roman numerals.
Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the interior structure of the statue so that it could survive the heavy winds it is subjected to. The thin copper sheets are supported inside by a system of four pylons that have a web of supports connected to them that independently stabilize each copper sheet.
More to think about
The design of the Statue of Liberty and its pedestal relies on references to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. Do you think that the average person who contributed to Joseph Pulitzer’s fundraising campaign understood those artistic references? If not, why do you think they used those references anyway
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
Figure \(\PageIndex{30}\): More Smarthistory images…
1893
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
The critics at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago noted: "American art has made something of itself."
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
Critics at the World's Fair, "American art has made something of itself"
by DR. KATHERINE BOURGUIGNON, TERRA FOUNDATION OF AMERICAN ART and DR. BETH HARRIS
Video \(\PageIndex{7}\): Childe Hassam, Horticulture Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago , 1893, oil on canvas 18-1/2 x 26-1/4 inches / 47.0 x 66.7 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.67). Speakers: Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, Terra Foundation of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago in 1893 to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. Such World’s Fairs were an opportunity for countries to showcase their prosperity, culture, and innovations, and it brought international attention to the nation.
The expansive fairgrounds were a spectacle, earning the nickname of “The White City.” The buildings, however, were temporary structures intended to look like marble. The architecture drew inspiration from European cities.
Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “Frontier Thesis” at the 1893 Fair, arguing that American identity had been created through its settlement of the frontier. While he saw westward expansion as what had formed America’s national character, he claimed that it had ended.
While the Impressionists often worked directly from their subject, Childe Hassam was in Chicago before the fair opened, painting images like this for souvenir brochures. He worked from architectural drawings and unfinished construction sites to imagine a welcoming, inviting space for tourists to visit.
More to think about
The video describes the architecture of the World’s Fair of 1893 as almost like a cross between Rome and Venice. What do you think the architects might have been trying to express by drawing from European styles for these buildings?
In this painting, Childe Hassam depicts the horticultural building, which claimed to include every specimen of plant life. Why do you think a World’s Fair would include exhibits like this?
1902
Cuban cigars, Cuban independence
The Port of Havana, cigar shops, and Cuban independence
Cuban cigars, Cuban independence
Willard Metcalf, Havana Harbor
by DR. KATHERINE BOURGUIGNON, TERRA FOUNDATION OF AMERICAN ART and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{8}\): Willard Metcalf, Havana Harbor , 1902, oil on canvas, 46.5 x 66.4 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.49). Speakers: Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, Terra Foundation of American Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Cuba was placed under U.S. government control until it was granted independence in 1902. The years of Spanish occupation had been brutal, and economic hardships had continued under American rule, but Willard Metcalf’s painting Havana Harbor does not allude to these difficulties.
Metcalf visited Cuba in 1902, researching for a commissioned series of paintings to be displayed in the Havana Tobacco Company store, a luxurious salesroom in New York City designed by Stanford White. The interior was designed to create a tropical vision for wealthy American consumers.
While Metcalf’s Impressionist brushstroke feels casual, this skillful composition carefully leads the viewer around an idealized panorama of Havana Harbor. Focusing on tropical colors and evoking the sensation of warm breezes, Metcalf erases the complicated history and troubled conditions of Cuba.
More to think about
Havana Harbor erases the reality of recent Cuban history in order to sell high-end tobacco to wealthy customers in New York City. Compare this painting to Diego Rivera’s Sugar Cane , which directly confronts harsh economic realities of Latin America. How might the circumstances behind each of these commissions have influenced the way the artists portray their subjects?
1918
Beyond New York, Bellows & World War I
Beyond the street of New York, Bellows grapples with the horrors of the First World War
Beyond New York, Bellows & World War I
George Bellows, Return of the Useless
by DR. JENNIFER PADGETT, CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{9}\): George Bellows, Return of the Useless , 1918, oil on canvas, 149.9 x 167.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), a Seeing America video Speakers: Dr. Jen Padgett, Associate Curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
American entry into World War I was influenced by a series of reports, notably the British Bryce Report of 1915, outlining atrocities said to have been perpetrated by German soldiers in Belgium. While these reports may not have been entirely factual, they swayed public opinion to support American intervention in the war.
An unusual subject for George Bellows, Return of the Useless is part of his War Series, a group of paintings, drawings and lithographs that created a visual account of the war. His depiction of the brutal treatment of these Belgian civilians being returned from forced labor camps, aimed to generate sympathy among its American audience.
Bellows drew on art historical traditions, especially Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War prints, to imagine the abuses described in the Bryce Report. His staged interpretation uses dramatic lighting, gestures, and details to convey a sense of danger and suffering.
More to think about
Many artists created work in support of the war effort, including James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam , which encouraged enlistment in the armed forces. Why do you think Uncle Sam became so iconic, while Bellows’s War Series images didn’t?
c. 1930
The pueblo modernism of Ma Pe Wi
A modernism emerges from tourism, boarding schools & indigenous traditions
The pueblo modernism of Ma Pe Wi
One artist's agency in the American Southwest
by DR. ADRIANA GRECI GREEN and DR. BETH HARRIS
Video \(\PageIndex{10}\): Velino Shije Herrera (Ma Pe Wi), Design, Tree and Birds , c. 1930, watercolor on paper, 25.25 x 17.75 inches (Newark Museum of Art, Gift of Amelia Elizabeth White, 1937, 37.216). Speakers: Dr. Adriana Greci Green and Dr. Beth Harris
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
In the early 20th century, there was new interest in Pueblo art and culture from modernist artists and the growing tourist industry. This came at a time when Indian Schools endangered Native American cultural traditions in an effort by the U.S. government to eliminate Native American ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture.
Beginning in 1918, informal painting classes were offered at the Santa Fe Indian School, and Velino Shije Herrera, along with fellow artists Awa Tsireh and Fred Kabotie, developed a genre of watercolor painting on paper that connected European styles with indigenous traditions of painting. Works like Design, Tree and Birds blended traditional symbolism and forms, with elements of modernist painting to create a hybrid for non-native audiences.
As modernist Pueblo painting grew in popularity, some of its supporters also worked to protect the rights of the Puebloan peoples, supporting organizations like The Indian Rights Association, which helped raise awareness about the devastation created through government policies and practices.
More to think about
Modern Native American artists like Clarissa Rizal and Jamie Okuma have blended their native traditions with contemporary style or meaning. What makes a work of art “traditional”? What other examples can you think of where an artist has blended their own culture with mainstream forms or techniques?
1969-74
Protesting the Vietnam War, with lipstick
This sculpture, installed on the Yale campus during Vietnam War protests, was never meant to be permanent.
Protesting the Vietnam War, with lipstick
This Yale campus icon was meant to be temporary
by MYA DOSCH
Figure \(\PageIndex{31}\): Oldenburg stands next to his sculpture (left); students rally while one woman posts a sign which pictures the female symbol with a fist in the center and reads: Liberté / Egalité / Sororité (right) (source: Women at Yale )
A monumental tube of lipstick sprouting from a military vehicle appeared, uninvited, on the campus of Yale University amidst the 1969 student protests against the Vietnam War. While the sculpture may have seemed like a playful, if elaborate artistic joke, Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks was also deeply critical. Oldenburg made the 24-foot-high sculpture in collaboration with architecture students at his alma mater and then surreptitiously delivered it to Yale’s Beinecke Plaza. In Beinecke Plaza, the sculpture overlooked both the office of Yale’s president and a prominent World War I memorial. Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks claimed a visible space for the anti-war movement while also poking fun at the solemnity of the plaza. The sculpture served as a stage and backdrop for several subsequent student protests.
Figure \(\PageIndex{32}\): Claes Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks , 1969-74, cor-ten steel, aluminum, cast resin, polyurethane enamel, 740 × 760 × 330 cm, Yale University (photo: vige , CC: BY 2.0)
Oldenburg and the architecture students never intended for the original Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks sculpture to be permanent. They made the base of plywood, and the red vinyl tip of the lipstick could be comically inflated and deflated—although the balloon mechanism didn’t always work. The original remained in Beinecke Plaza for ten months before Oldenburg removed it in order to remake the form in metal. The resulting sculpture was placed in a less-prominent spot on Yale’s campus, where it remains to this day.
Gender, consumerism, and war
Oldenburg had experimented with lipstick forms earlier in the 1960s, pasting catalog images of lipstick onto postcards of London’s Picadilly Circus. The resulting collages showed lipstick tubes looming like massive pillars over Picadilly’s plaza. In the Yale sculpture, the artist combined the highly “feminine” product with the “masculine” machinery of war. In doing so, he playfully critiqued both the hawkish, hyper-masculine rhetoric of the military and the blatant consumerism of the United States.
In addition to its feminine associations, the large lipstick tube is phallic and bullet-like, making the benign beauty product seem masculine or even violent. The juxtaposition implied that the U.S. obsession with beauty and consumption both fueled and distracted from the ongoing violence in Vietnam.
Figure \(\PageIndex{33}\): Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin , 1976, cor-ten steel, 14 x 3.73 x 1.37 m, Philadelphia (photo: Ellen Fitzsimons , CC: BY-NC-SA)
Going public
Oldenburg had been designing large-scale, vinyl versions of household objects since his Green Gallery exhibition in 1962. He had created collages and drawings that played with the notion of massive domestic objects in public places, but Lipstick was his first large-scale public artwork. Oldenburg went on to make several other public sculptures that enlarged everyday domestic items to monumental dimensions. For example, he rendered a clothespin on the scale of an ancient Egyptian obelisk in a 1976 sculpture for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (below).
By bringing both domestic and military objects into a public space, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks blurred the lines between public and private, and between the war in Vietnam and culture of the United States. In doing so, it upheld Oldenburg’s 1961 declaration that “I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum […] I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary […].”1
1. Claes Oldenburg, “I Am For an Art…” in Environments, Situations, Spaces (New York: Martha Jackson Gallery, 1961); reprinted in an expanded version in Oldenburg and Emmett Williams, eds., Store Days: Documents from The Store (1961) and Ray Gun Theater (1962) (New York: Something Else Press, 1967), 39-42.
Go deeper
This sculpture at Yale University
Artist biography and related sculpture at Tate Britain
1980
Superman, WWII, Japanese Americans
Superman makes an appearance in what looks (at first sight) like a Japanese print.
Superman makes an appearance in what looks (at first sight) like a Japanese print.
Video \(\PageIndex{11}\): Roger Shimomura, Diary: December 12, 1941 , 1980, acrylic on canvas, 127.6 x 152.4 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the artist, © Roger Shimomura). A conversation with Dr. Sarah Newman, James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Dr. Beth Harris.
This Seeing America video was made possible by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation and the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
1982
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
A powerful accumulation of names is inscribed on slabs of reflective stone that cuts into the earth on the Mall.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
A controversial design became one of the nation's great memorials
by DR. BETH HARRIS and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{12}\): Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982, granite, 2 acres within Constitution Gardens, (National Mall, Washington, D.C.). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
Key points
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located on the National Mall, in between and pointing to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It consists of two linear cuts that descend into the earth, fronted with black granite panels. The panels contain the names of the more than 58,000 soldiers who died in the Vietnam War, in chronological order of their deaths.
The reflective black granite of the Memorial is meant to do two things: it allows the names to take precedence, but also allows the visitor to feel as though they are looking into the peaceful “other world” of the dead. The Monument is meant to honor the sacrifice of the individuals whose names are on the wall, and allow their loved ones to come to terms with their deaths.
Lin deliberately wanted to make an abstract, apolitical monument that drew attention to individual sacrifice. The contested nature of the war meant that even the black granite for the structure could not be sourced from countries where people who fled the draft had found refuge.
When Maya Lin won the competition to design the Memorial she was an undergraduate architecture student at Yale. When people found out about the design and who she was, there was backlash against both her and the style of the monument.
While the Memorial is usually referred to as a wall and conceived of as such, Maya Lin thought of it as an edge in the earth. In her words, “I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth…an initial violence and pain that in time would heal.”
More to think about
In looking back on her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Maya Lin wrote about an assignment in one of her architecture classes that asked the students to design a memorial to World War III. “My design for a World War III memorial was a tomblike underground structure that I deliberately made to be a very futile and frustrating experience. I remember the professor of the class coming up to me afterward, saying quite angrily, “If I had a brother who died in that war, I would never want to visit this memorial.” I was somewhat puzzled that he didn’t quite understand that World War III would be of such devastation that none of us would be around to visit any memorial, and that my design was instead a pre-war commentary. In asking myself what a memorial to a third world war would be, I came up with a political statement that was meant as a deterrent.” [* ] If you were going to create a memorial for a person or historical event, what would you choose, and how would you design your memorial?
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
Figure \(\PageIndex{34}\): More Smarthistory images…
1990
An artist asks: war or healthcare?
Sue Coe's Aids won't wait, the enemy is here not in Kuwait , 1990
An artist asks: war or healthcare?
Sue Coe's Aids won't wait, the enemy is here not in Kuwait , 1990
by MONICA ZIMMERMAN, PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS and DR. BETH HARRIS
Video \(\PageIndex{13}\): Sue Coe, Aids won't wait, the enemy is here not in Kuwait , 1990, photo-etching on paper, 23.8 x 32.5 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, © Sue Coe). Speakers: Monica Zimmerman, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Dr. Beth Harris
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
Although HIV/AIDS was known in the early 1980s, the crisis was initially ignored and then under-acknowledged, with research poorly funded by the American government. In large part, this lack of action was accepted because HIV/AIDS emerged in marginalized communities of gay men and intravenous drug users. This government silence framed the disease as a moral issue, rather than a medical issue and contributed to widespread fear and discrimination.
In 1990, the growing AIDS crisis coincided with the government’s call for a war to defend Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. With territorial and economic interests at stake, the Gulf War was highly present in the American media. The artist juxtaposes these two crises and the attention they received from the government and the media.
By using the format of a battlefield, confronting the viewer with the dead and dying strewn on the ground, Sue Coe critiques media silence about the epidemic, the death and suffering of Americans, and government inaction. She asks the viewer to think about the choices made in supporting war in the Middle East rather than providing healthcare to Americans.
More to think about
As a black and white print, Sue Coe’s AIDS won’t wait confronts the viewer with a dark, gloomy landscape and creates a stark contrast between the crisp, orderly government building and the randomly placed bodies of the dead and dying. How do these choices help to convey her political message?
Think of a visual image from today that deals with a contemporary crisis. How does that artist make their meaning clear to the viewer? Do you think that messages like this are effective in creating change?
1991
A desert on fire, Salgado in Kuwait
Finding heroism amidst one of the world's great environmental disasters.
A desert on fire, Salgado in Kuwait
Photographing one of the world's most tragic environmental disasters
by EVE SCHILLO, LACMA and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{14}\): Sebastião Salgado, Kuwait , 1991, gelatin silver print, 45.24 × 30.1 cm (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Gary Sato, AC1998.162.1, ©Sebastião Salgado), a Seeing America video, speakers: Eve Schillo, Assistant Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
In 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein led an invasion of its oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait. An international coalition, led by the United States, forced his withdrawal in February 1991. As Iraqi troops fled, they were ordered to set fire to 605 oil wells, causing one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters.
Photographer Sebastião Salgado documents geopolitical actions that have widespread impact; during this crisis, he was on assignment in Kuwait and captured an image of the dangerous labor required to extinguish these fires and cap the oil wells. He described the scene as a living hell, as these workers were surrounded by flammable pools of oil and endless fields of fire in the aftermath of the war.
While this photograph conveys the hazards and labors of these highly-skilled workers, Salgado uses a range of sensuous tonalities to create a work of fine art. Coated in oil, the men look like bronze sculptures, frozen in time. Trained as an economist, Salgado’s work often features labor and aims to inspire political action.
More to think about
In this work, Salgado creates a strikingly beautiful image of a devastating environmental tragedy. Why do you think he might have chosen such a visually-appealing presentation? Does this help the photograph to have a greater effect on society and bring about change? Why or why not?
2013
Correcting the lies of history
How can we begin to correct the lies of history? Artist Kenseth Armstead suggests a poetic solution.
Correcting the lies of history
Kenseth Armstead’s Surrender Yorktown 1781
by KENSETH ARMSTEAD and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Video \(\PageIndex{15}\): Kenseth Armstead, Surrender Yorktown 1781 (2013), graphite on paper, 86 x 68 inches (Newark Museum, © 2012 Kenseth Armstead). Speakers: Kenseth Armstead and Steven Zucker
Test your knowledge with a quiz
START
Key points
The British defeat at Yorktown was a decisive victory in the American Revolutionary War, made possible through the combined efforts of the American Continental Army (led by George Washington) and the French Army and Navy. This drawing is based on Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe’s painting, The Surrender of Yorktown (1786), which was commissioned by King Louis XVI to celebrate the victory.
Kenseth Armstead’s drawing technique highlights his creative process in order to remind the viewer that historical images are constructions that must be made. Armstead points out that neither van Blarenberghe nor his patron had ever been to America. The original painting creates an illusion of the event that is pure fantasy, but makes it seem like we’re looking at the truth.
In his work, Armstead removed the fictional elements of van Blarenberghe’s painting, which results in an empty and desolate landscape where a massive battle had taken place. This emptiness points out that truths often go missing from historical depictions, notably the contributions of enslaved African-Americans who made up 20% of the soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary War. Armstead wants us to realize that all histories are incomplete.
More to think about
Figure \(\PageIndex{35}\): Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware , 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Kenseth Armstead erases a conventional historical rendering of the Battle of Yorktown, both to call our attention to the constructed and highly invented nature of history painting and to suggest the realities omitted from these accounts. Working in small groups, take a critical look at Emmanuel Leutze’s iconic Washington Crossing the Delaware . What elements of this painting might not be historically accurate? What changes would you make to create a more truthful version?
Today, photographs are frequently used to record historical moments and commemorate public events. Discuss with a classmate whether you think photographs can be trusted to present truthful accounts. Find an example of a news photograph and look at it critically for ways the image may skew or manipulate the viewer’s understanding of what really happened.