DOCSLIB.ORG

American Art: 1908-1940

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
American Art: 1908-1940 10/3/2020 American Art: 1908-1940 • While artists elsewhere moved increasingly toward abstraction, ASHCAN SCHOOL OR american painters kept alive the realist tradition and portrayed THE EIGHT American life with utmost fidelity. LOCALE: • The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined New York City, 1908-13 as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the BEST-KNOWN ARTISTS: United States during the early twentieth century, best known for Henri, Sloan, Bellows works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer STYLE: neighborhoods. The movement is most associated with a group Realistic, sketch-like known as The Eight, whose members included five painters SUBJECT: associated with the Ashcan school: William Glackens (1870- Urban grit and vigor 1938), Robert Henri (1865-1929), George Luks (1867-1933), WHY CONDEMNED: Everett Shinn (1876-1953) and John French Sloan (1871-1951), “Sordid,” low-life subjects along with Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Ernest Lawson (1873- WHY PRAISED: 1939) and Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924). First uniquely American art The Eight are remembered as a group, despite the fact that their work was very diverse in terms of style and subject matter—only five of the artists (Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Shinn, and Luks) painted the gritty urban scenes that characterized the Ashcan School. As noted, the Ashcan School was not an organized group. The first known use of the "ash can" terminology in describing the movement was by Art Young, in 1916, but the term was applied later to a group of artists, including Henri, Glackens, Edward Hopper (a student of Henri), Shinn, Sloan, Luks, George Bellows (another student of Henri), Mabel Dwight, and others such as photographer Jacob Riis, who portrayed urban subject matter, also primarily of New York's working class neighborhoods. (Hopper's inclusion in the group [which he forswore] is ironic: his depictions of city streets are almost entirely free of the usual minutiae, with not a single incidental ashcan in sight.) The artists of the Ashcan School rebelled against the American Impressionism that represented the vanguard of American art at the time. Their works, generally dark in tone, captured the spontaneous moments of life and often depicted such subjects as prostitutes, drunks, butchered pigs, overflowing tenements with laundry hanging on lines, boxing matches, and wrestlers. It was their frequent, although not total, focus upon poverty and the daily realities of urban life that prompted American critics to consider them the fringe of modern art. 1 10/3/2020 John Sloan (1871-1951), was an Early 20th Century Realist of the JOHN SLOAN: STREET LIFEAshcan School, whose concerns with American social conditions led him to join the Socialist Party in 1910. From 1912–1916, he contributed illustrations to the socialist monthly The Masses. Sloan disliked propaganda, and in his drawings for The Masses, as in his paintings, he focused on the everyday lives of people. He depicted the leisure of the working class with an emphasis on female subjects. Among his best known works are Picnic Grounds and Sunday, Women Drying their Hair. He disliked the Ashcan School label, and expressed his annoyance with art historians who identified him as a painter of the American Scene: "Some of us used to paint little rather sensitive comments about the life around us. We didn't know it was the American Scene. I don't Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street (New York City) by John Sloan. Oil 30 x 40. like the name ... A symptom of 1928. nationalism, which has caused a great deal of trouble in this world.” John Sloan (American, 1871–1951) The Picnic Grounds epitomizes the urban comedies of manners on which Sloan's reputation rests. Working, as The Picnic Grounds, 1906–7 usual, from memory, Sloan enlists an informal composition, jagged forms, and vigorous brushwork to express the Oil on canvas; 24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm) youngsters' liveliness. The girls' dresses, makeup, and cheerfulness identify them as working class, and their cricket caps hint that their flirtation is merely a game. 2 10/3/2020 About 1900 the growing middle John Sloan (American, 1871–1951) class, the new employment Chinese Restaurant, 1909 opportunities for women, and Oil on canvas; 26 x 32 1/4 in. (66 x 81.9 cm) the influx of immigrants led to the proliferation of ethnic eateries, which extended New York's dining culture beyond private homes, clubs, and exclusive establishments. Sloan noted in his diary in February 1909: "Felt restless so went to the Chinese restaurant and was glad I did for I saw a strikingly gotten up girl with dashing red feathers in her hat playing with the restaurant's fat cat." He concluded: "It would be a good thing to paint." Sloan's canvas, on which he worked from memory, may portray a woman of easy virtue, as her flamboyant attire and heavy makeup suggest. Yet, instead of any hint of reproach, Sloan conveys a lighthearted acceptance of her droll little performance as she feeds the cat while her slovenly companion feeds himself and two men look on with amusement. Sloan's painting features working women cleaning themselves on a city rooftop. Rather than engaging in polite rituals in the elegant or exotic private habitats that American academics and Impressionists preferred to portray, these lightly clad Three Graces exhibit a forthright relationship to the viewer. Sloan later described these women as unselfconscious performers in "another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street," referring to the view from his studio on John Sloan (American, 1871–1951) Sixth Avenue at West Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, 1912 Fourth Street. Oil on canvas; (66.4 x 81.6 cm) 3 10/3/2020 GEORGE BELLOWS: BOXING George Bellows (1882-1925), painted city life in New York City. He portrayed the pulsating life of New York docks, gutters and bars with a heroic vitality. His paintings had an expressionist boldness and a willingness to take risks. In his painting titled Cliff Dwellers, (next slight) we find a cityscape that is not one particular view but a composite of many views. George Bellows, New York (1911) George Bellows (American, 1882–1925) Cliff Dwellers, 1913 Oil on canvas; (102.1 x 106.8 cm) Between 1880 and 1910, many immigrants—including thousands of Eastern European Jews—found temporary or permanent shelter on the Lower East Side, along streets such as East Broadway, the setting for Cliff Dwellers. Bellows acknowledges that much life in the neighborhood was lived in the street or on stoops and fire escapes, as residents sought respite from dark, poorly ventilated, overcrowded apartments. Yet he minimizes hardship, using bright colors and showing children at play, laundry snapping in a passing breeze, and other cheerful details. While Jacob Riis made a disquieting photographic record of New York's slums about 1890 and social commentators urged tenement reform, Bellows offers a genial narrative. 4 10/3/2020 He had a fascination with violence as seen in his paintings, thematized “Boxing.” George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo (1924), Whitney Museum of American Art He was a professional baseball player, but as a painter he preferred to represent the dynamism and energy of sport into art. The setting is Sharkey's, a sleazy athletic club located across Broadway from Bellows's studio on Sixty-sixth Street. Bellows summarizes with ferocious painterly shorthand the two pugilists' boxing at peak intensity. He increases the drama by condensing the ring to a bright sliver of space, compressing the towering men's agitated forms with the upper edge of the canvas, illuminating the smoky interior with hellish light, and placing the observer in the second row amid the bloodthirsty crowd. Some seamy neighborhood saloons like Sharkey's were destinations for slumming, as the spectators in evening dress on the far side of the ring indicate. This detail invites bourgeois viewers of the painting to experience the gritty scene as if they, too, were slumming swells. Like contemporaneous images of cowboys and cavalrymen, Bellows's boxing scenes—with which he became identified— glorify virile action more than quiet thought, and popular experience more than highbrow culture. George Bellows (American, 1882–1925) Club Night, 1907 Oil on canvas; 43 x 53 1/8 in. (109.2 x 135 cm) 5 10/3/2020 Art as Activism: Two Forms of Realism during Depression AMERICAN SCENE: SOCIAL REGIONALISM REALISM • The American Scene School was an art movement in America • Term used to refer to the work of painters, printmakers, film during the Great Depression. It features scenes of everyday makers and photographers who draw attention to the everyday American Life and romanticized the American spirit to encourage conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are people during the Depression. Prominent artists were Thomas Hart critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood. Wood described • Social realism, in contrast to Socialist Realism, represents a himself and his movement, essentially, as the American dream led democratic tradition of independent socially motivated artists, by the American dreamer at a time when popular sentiment was usually of left-wing or liberal persuasion. looking hard for a positive national note. • For Grant Wood, Regionalism was a simple concept: artists should • Their preoccupation with the conditions of the lower classes was a paint what is around them, what they know and what they see. result of the democratic movements of the 18th and 19th Wood’s dogmatism remained focused on subject matter; only centuries, so social realism in its fullest sense should be seen as appropriate was what the artist personally knew about.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Regionallst PAINTING and AMERICAN STUDIES Regionalism
    REGiONALlST PAINTING AND AMERICAN STUDIES KENNETH J. LABUDDE Regionalism in American painting brings to mind immediately the period of the 1930's when the Middlewesterners JohnSteuart Curry, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton enjoyed great reputation as the_ painters of Ameri­ can art. Curry, the Kansan; Benton, the Missourian; and Wood, the Iowan, each wandered off to New York, to Paris, to the great world of art, but each came home again to Kansas City, Cedar Rapids and Madison, Wisconsin. Only one of the three, Benton, is still living. At the recent dedication of his "Independence and the Opening of the West" in the Truman Library the ar­ tist declared it was his last big work, for scaffold painting takes too great a toll on a man now 72. Upon this occasion he enjoyed the acclaim of those gathered, but as a shrewdly intelligent, even intellectual man, he may have reflected that Wood and Curry, both dead foi* close to twenty years now, are slipping into obscur­ ity except in the region of the United States which they celebrated. Collec­ tors, whether institutional or private, who have the means and the interests to be a part of the great world have gone on to other painters. There are those who will say so much the worse for them, but I am content not to dwell on that issue but to speculate instead about art in our culture and the uses of art in cultural studies. I will explain that I am not convinced by those who hold with the conspir­ acy theory of art history, whether it be a Thomas Craven of yesterday or a John Canaday of today.
    [Show full text]
  • Curry, John Steuart American, 1897 - 1946
    National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS American Paintings, 1900–1945 Curry, John Steuart American, 1897 - 1946 Peter A. Juley & Son, John Steuart Curry Seated in Front of "State Fair," Westport, Connecticut, 1928, photograph, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum BIOGRAPHY John Steuart Curry was one of the three major practitioners of American regionalist painting, along with Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 - 1975) and Grant Wood (American, 1891 - 1942). Curry was born on a farm near Dunavant, Kansas, on November 14, 1897. His parents had traveled to Europe on their honeymoon, and his mother, Margaret, returned with prints of European masterworks that hung on the walls of the family home. She enrolled her son in art lessons at a young age, and his family supported his decision to drop out of high school in 1916 to study art. Curry worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad and attended the Kansas City Art Institute for a month before moving to Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute for two years. In 1918 he enrolled at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Curry decided to pursue commercial illustration, and in 1919 he began to study with illustrator Harvey Dunn in Tenafly, New Jersey. From 1921 to 1926, Curry’s illustrations appeared in publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and Boy’s Life. In 1923, while living in New York City, he married Clara Derrick; shortly thereafter he bought a studio at Otter Ponds near the art colony in Westport, Connecticut. In 1926 Curry stopped producing illustrations and left for Paris, where he took classes in drawing with the Russian teacher Vasili Shukhaev and studied old master paintings at the Louvre.
    [Show full text]
  • Teachers for Additional Resources
    for T Museum to the Classroom Joslyn Art Museum Comprehensive Study Lesson Plan Created by Mary Lou Alfieri, Josie Langbehn, Kristy Lee, Carter Leeka, Susan Oles, and Laura Huntimer. 1st Semester – American Regionalism Focus: American Regionalism, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry Objectives: • Understand and create personal narratives. • Recognize and identify American Regionalism artists and their works. • Learn about American culture including jazz. • Discover how these artists used their art to respond to movements such as lynch mobs. Instructional Strategies that Strongly Affect Student Achievement – Robert J. Marzano 01 Identifying similarities and differences 06 Cooperative learning 02 Summarizing and note taking 07 Setting goals and providing feedback 03 Reinforcing effort and providing recognition 08 Generating and testing hypotheses 04 Homework and practice 09 Activating prior knowledge 05 Nonlinguistic representations Resources: Check out the Teacher Support Materials online, and http://www.joslyn.org/education/teachers for additional resources Suggested Materials: Benton, Curry, and Wood teaching posters and prints, newsprint, charcoal, drawing pencils, recorders, Creating a Musical Dialogue lesson plan, 1900-24 Racial Tensions activities and lesson plan http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0700/resources/06race.pdf Vocabulary: agricultural terms, array, art terms, jazz, lynching, narrative, non-standard measurement terms, primary sources, Regionalism, rural. Procedure: • Engage: Introduce students to paintings by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry, and art movement, American Regionalism. Ask them how the phrase “lived experience” relates to the Regionalists’ works. Ask students to consider how lived experiences become part of their own narrative. • Art Talk: These three artists were defined as American Regionalists before they met.
    [Show full text]
  • Kansas Curricular Standards for Visual Arts Are Aligned with the National Standards for the Visual Arts
    Model Curricular Standards for Visual Arts State Board of Education May 2007 Kansas Curricular Standards for Visual Arts Joyce Huser Fine Arts Education Consultant Kansas State Department of Education 120 Southeast 10th Avenue, Topeka, Kansas, 66612-1182 [email protected] (785) 296-4932 Table of Contents Mission Statement ii Introduction iii Acknowledgements iv Document Usage v Major Objectives of Art Education vi What Constitutes a Quality Art Education? vii Standards, Benchmarks, Indicators, Instructional Samples 1 Basic 2 Intermediate 24 Proficient 46 Advanced 68 Exemplary 90 Scope and Sequence 112 Appendix I 128 Blooms Taxonomy 129 Assessments in Art 135 Kansas Art Teacher Licensure Standards 139 Competitions and Contests 142 Displaying Artwork 144 Shooting Slides of Student Work 145 Museums 146 Needs of Special Students 147 A Safe Work Environment 149 Stages of Artistic Development 151 Technology Time and Scheduling Standards 153 Appendix II 156 Resources/Books 157 Websites 159 Art Museums in Kansas with Educational Materials 162 Appendix III 165 Lesson Plans 166 Appendix IV 253 Glossary 254 i The Mission of the Kansas Curriculum Standards for the Visual Arts The visual arts are a vital part of every Kansas student’s comprehensive education. ii Introduction The Kansas Curricular Standards for the Visual Arts are designed for all visual art students and educators whether experienced or in the preservice years of their teaching career. A range of benchmarks engages students in reaching their greatest potential in the visual arts. Quality activities involve students in thoughtful, creative, and original expression of self. In all cases, students will learn life-skills including critical thinking, astute observation, viewing from multiple perspectives, higher order learning, and authentic problem-solving skills.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Hart Benton
    - Presentation – THOMAS HART BENTON September 2008 Who was Thomas Hart Benton? 1889 – Born in Neosho, MO to a famous political family. Started drawing at a young age – his created his first mural with crayons. Educated as an artist at the Art Institute of Chicago and Academie Julian in Paris. Thomas Hart Benton in his studio, 1936. Photo courtesy of The Kansas City Star. Who was Thomas Hart Benton? Originally influenced by European art, then experimented with abstraction Considered outspoken, opinionated and often abrasive and surrounded by controversy One of the principal Regionalists Through painting, Benton was able to support himself Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14589825 Benton’s Techniques Early on attempted Modernism, Abstraction, Synchromism, Master Works Benton denounced the contemporary art of his time, but never fully broke from his Modernist roots Mural and canvas paintings focused on American history and sometimes “less savory” subjects of American life through varied subjects Early 1930s vs late 1930s Compare Benton and Michelangelo’s artworks New York Rooftops, c. 1920-23 Thomas Hart Benton, The Bather, 1917 Michelangelo Buonaratti, Figure from the Sistine Chapel, Rome, 1508-1512 Benton’s Techniques “Sold out” in a sense by creating artworks for the tobacco industry and the military. His canvas - dramatic action, loud colors, sculptural volumes He intended to create distinctly American art Landscapes in his later years have a “feeling of harmony between man and nature” Tobacco Sorters, 1944 Picnic, 1952 Private Collection Benton and Pollock The Teacher and The Pupil Benton taught Pollock at the Art Students League of New York Regionalists influenced Abstract Expressionists Compare Benton and Pollock’s works Jackson Pollock n 1928.
    [Show full text]
  • CLASS and SOCIETY
    CLASS and SOCIETY: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN REALISM and PHOTOGRAPHY: FOCUS (Regionalism, the Harlem Renaissance, and American Photography) ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: http://www.phillipscollection.org/r esearch/american_art/artwork/La wrence-Migration_Series1.htm TITLE or DESIGNATION: Migration of the Negro series ARTIST: Jacob Lawrence CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Early American Modernism DATE: 1940-1941 C.E. MEDIUM: tempera on hardboard ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: http://smarthistory.khanac ademy.org/american- regionalism-grant-woods- american-gothic.html TITLE or DESIGNATION: American Gothic ARTIST: Grant Wood CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: American Regionalism DATE: 1930 C. E. MEDIUM: oil on beaverboard ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: http://smarthistory.khan academy.org/hoppers- nighthawks.html TITLE or DESIGNATION: Nighthawks ARTIST: Edward Hopper CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Twentieth-Century American Realism DATE: 1942 C.E. MEDIUM: oil on canvas TITLE or DESIGNATION: Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley ARTIST: Dorothea Lange CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Twentieth-Century American Photography DATE: 1935 C. E. MEDIUM: gelatin silver print CLASS and SOCIETY: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN REALISM and PHOTOGRAPHY: SELECTED TEXT (Regionalism, the Harlem Renaissance, and American Photography) EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN REALISM and PHOTOGRAPHY Online Links: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series - Philiips Collection Hopper's Nighthawks – Smarthistory Grant Wood's American Gothic Grant Wood's American Gothic - Art Institute of Chicago Top Left:
    [Show full text]
  • Oklahoma Today November-December 1985 Volume
    NOVEMBER-DECEMBER '85 SQUARE DANCE: RUFFLES, RlCK RACK & YELLOW ROCKS HAM FOR THE H0LInIYS: THE OKLAHOMA SMOKEHOUeF - I SQUARE DANCE ROUNPUP I If the words squaw hnce make you Y think of Gene Autry movies or junior high gym class, come to Oklahoma City this November. Some 5,000 Sooners just may t convince you there's more to it than rick rack and do sa dos. LAST OF THE BIG TOPS I ,0 I Have a yen for circus the way it used to 10 be? ~ookno further than Hugo and the HAM OPERATORS Carson & Barnes Circus, the biggest outfit still under canvas-and the greatest On the shores of Grand Lake, some show in Oklahoma. Green Country entrepreneurs took a dollop of 19th-century expertise, added a dash of microchi~sand cooked up 7V The circus at home-in a flourishing business, heOklahoma Hugo. Photo by Phillip Smokehouse. I OKLAHOMA PORTFOLIO Radcliffe. Inside front. Fall A seasonal sampler by photographer scene near Spavinaw dam. Ivan McCartney. Photo by Howard Robson. 22 Back. Autumn oak, Wichita THE MONK, THE MUMMT Mountains. Photo by Steve & MABEE - Wilson. RlDlNQ HERD ON THE WEST Meet Mr. Jim Jordan of No Man's Land. DEPARTMENTS FEATURES Today in Oklahoma ....................................4 BookdLetters...........................................4-5 8 I It took a monk. an oilman and Uncommon Common Folk .........................6 Princess ~enndof the 23rd Dynasty Oklahoma Omnibus...................................17 CULTIVATING CHRISTMAS - I to create one of the state's most Destinations: Remm Bend .....................38 Not many farmers can claim a holiday distinctive museums-the Mabee-Gerrer On to Oklahoma.........................................49 tradition as their cash crop.
    [Show full text]
  • Harries Thesis FINAL
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Communication Arts and Sciences THE CONTESTABLE JOHN BROWN: ABOLITIONISM AND THE CIVIL WAR IN U.S. PUBLIC MEMORY A Thesis in Communication Arts and Sciences by Anne C. Harries © 2011 Anne C. Harries Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts December 2011 ii The thesis of Anne C. Harries was reviewed and approved* by the following: J. Michael Hogan Liberal Arts Research Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Stephen H. Browne Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Jeremy Engels Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Kirt H. Wilson Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Director of Graduate Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Abolitionist John Brown is a divisive figure in United States history. He features prominently in our national historical narrative, but his radical politics, religious fanaticism, and violent methods have led to polarized memories of his contributions to the abolitionist cause and his role in the coming of the U.S. Civil War. Some consider Brown a hero or a martyr of abolitionism, while others view him as a violent extremist, even a madman. Over time, Americans from across the political spectrum have mobilized Brown’s memory to advance particular political and social causes, sometimes on opposing sides of the same issue. This thesis examines three instances of public controversy over the memory of John Brown. In each of these case studies, Brown’s public memory has been rhetorically constructed and vigorously contested. First, I explore a controversy over regionalist painter John Steuart Curry’s depiction of Brown in the Kansas Statehouse mural, The Tragic Prelude.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Cadmus As Exemplary Foil to a Homegrown American Art Maxine Marks
    University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Art & Art History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2014 Touching Nether-Regionalisms: Paul Cadmus as Exemplary Foil to a Homegrown American Art Maxine Marks Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/arth_etds Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Marks, Maxine. "Touching Nether-Regionalisms: Paul Cadmus as Exemplary Foil to a Homegrown American Art." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/arth_etds/25 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art & Art History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maxine Roush Marks Candidate Art & Art History Department This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Thesis Committee: Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick, Chairperson Aaron Fry Dr. Catherine Zuromskis i TOUCHING NETHER-REGIONALISMS: PAUL CADMUS AS EXEMPLARY FOIL TO A HOMEGROWN AMERICAN ART by MAXINE ROUSH MARKS B.A.F.A. ART HISTORY THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO 2006 THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Art History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May 2014 ii Dedication For Dad — In memory of your curious, adventurous and kind life. iii Acknowledgments In gratitude and with love for my husband, my mother, my brother, my deceased father, all of whom have always been daring in their adventures and generous with their love.
    [Show full text]
  • 254 Kansas History a New Chronology of the Development of John Steuart Curry’S Murals for the Rotunda of the Kansas State Capitol
    John Steuart Curry, The Homestead and Building of the Barbed Wire Fence, 1937-1939, as depicted in a mural at the Interior Department in Washington D.C. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 43 (Winter 2020-21): 254–271 254 Kansas History A New Chronology of the Development of John Steuart Curry’s Murals for the Rotunda of the Kansas State Capitol by Julia R. Myers n May 1942, Kansan John Steuart Curry traveled to Topeka to put the “finishing touches on the [Tragic Prelude and Kansas Pastoral] murals,” which he had started painting on the Kansas State Capitol’s second floor in the summer of 1940.1 There he had intended to create, in his words, a “historicalI allegory” that would tell the story of Kansas. The allegory begins in the east corridor with the Tragic Prelude, which depicts both the Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado, who arrived in Kansas in 1541, and the abolitionist John Brown, who fought against proslavery forces in 1856 during the period known as Bleeding Kansas. The eight murals in the rotunda, which were never painted, would have told the history of Kansas in more detail with scenes from both before and after 1856, including references to early settlement by whites and the Dust Bowl. In the west corridor, Kansas Pastoral (Fig. 1) portrays, in Curry’s words, “the ideal unmortgaged farm home,” a hopeful vision at a time when many Kansas family farms were in foreclosure or on the edge of it, as was the Curry family farm in 1938–1939.2 Curry scholar Patricia Junker considers the statehouse mural cycle, even in its incomplete state, one of the “crowning Julia R.
    [Show full text]
  • Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (Active Before 1945)
    Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945) Compiled by Susan V. Craig, Art & Architecture Librarian Univ. of Kansas August 2006 1 This book began with a 1981 reference question about John Noble, a name I did not recognize despite having studied art history and worked as an art librarian for more than 10 years. Learning that John Noble was a Kansas artist, I went looking for the best available book on Kansas art only to learn the resources were few. As a new faculty member at the Univ. of Kansas, I needed to establish a research project so I decided to prepare a dictionary of Kansas artists thus fulfilling both the research requirement and educating myself about the history of the visual arts in my native state; I just didn't intend the project to take 25 years or realize that I would have more than 1750 entries in the dictionary. I began by defining the scope of the work: • "Kansas artist" was loosely defined as artists who were both born in the state as well as artists who were born elsewhere but were artistically active in Kansas. Under this latter definition, I included artists who produced significant artworks such as the murals installed in Kansas post offices. Occasionally, artists who lived or worked primarily in Kansas City, MO may be included. I did not deliberately include all Kansas City artists but neither did I exclude them if the name came from a Kansas source such as the Kansas State Gazetteer. • Another choice I made was to look for artists who were artistically active before 1945.
    [Show full text]
  • Print Study Sheet
    TRAGIC PRELUDE by John Steuart Curry 1897-1946 John Steuart Curry was born in 1897 in the state of Kansas. When he was 18, he left home to study art in Kansas City and Chicago. He made a living by illustrating books and magazines. For eight months he studied in Paris, France. When he returned from Paris, he moved to Connecticut. There he painted "The Baptism". People were not painting about this subject at the time, but a wealthy woman saw it. She liked it so well that she told Curry that she would support him financially. Baptism in Kansas was an oil painting created in 1928. Notice the white robes of the other candidates for baptism. It is a large painting, 40x50 inches, containing bright colors and many details. He has included birds in the picture reminiscent of the dove which appeared at the baptism of Jesus. (Look at the link, "Article about Curry" to read an article about him. You can click on the Real Audio link and hear the interview that is recorded here.) Curry's painting Tragic Prelude is a mural painted in the Kansas State Capitol. It shows John Brown, an anti-slavery leader before the Civil War. In 1859 he was hanged for leading a raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. The state of Kansas asked him to paint the mural in the state house, but they didn't agree with his ideas for the pictures, and they asked him to stop painting it. He was very upset and wouldn't even sign the paintings that he had already finished.
    [Show full text]