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“BY POPULAR DEMAND”: the HERO in AMERICAN ART, C. 1929-1945

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“BY POPULAR DEMAND”: the HERO in AMERICAN ART, C. 1929-1945 “BY POPULAR DEMAND”: THE HERO IN AMERICAN ART, c. 1929-1945 By ©2011 LARA SUSAN KUYKENDALL Submitted to the graduate degree program in Art History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Charles C. Eldredge, Ph.D. ________________________________ David Cateforis, Ph.D. ________________________________ Marni Kessler, Ph.D. ________________________________ Chuck Berg, Ph.D. ________________________________ Cheryl Lester, Ph.D. Date Defended: April 11, 2011 The Dissertation Committee for LARA SUSAN KUYKENDALL certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “BY POPULAR DEMAND”: THE HERO IN AMERICAN ART, c. 1929-1945 ________________________________ Chairperson Charles C. Eldredge, Ph.D. Date approved: April 11, 2011 ii Abstract During the 1930s and 1940s, as the United States weathered the Great Depression, World War II, and dramatic social changes, heroes were sought out and created as part of an ever-changing national culture. American artists responded to the widespread desire for heroic imagery by creating icons of leadership and fortitude. Heroes took the form of political leaders, unionized workers, farmers, folk icons, historical characters, mothers, and women workers. The ideas they manifest are as varied as the styles and motivations of the artists who developed them. This dissertation contextualizes works by such artists as Florine Stettheimer, Philip Evergood, John Steuart Curry, Palmer Hayden, Dorothea Lange, Norman Rockwell, and Aaron Douglas, delving into the realms of politics, labor, gender, and race. The images considered fulfilled national (and often personal) needs for pride, confidence, and hope during these tumultuous decades, and this project is the first to consider the hero in American art as a sustained modernist visual trope. iii Acknowledgements I first became interested in the concept of national heroes and leadership in American culture as a college student and recent graduate working at Monticello and Mount Vernon. When I came to the University of Kansas in 2004, I began to realize that my first forays into the study of American icons could lead to a meaningful and challenging dissertation topic. Murphy Seminars on The Modern Portrait with Marni Kessler, David Cateforis, and Tamar Garb and on Reading American Pictures with Charles Eldredge, David Cateforis, and David Lubin shaped my sense of the field of American art and my scholarly priorities in significant ways. Throughout my time at KU, Charles Eldredge has been the most supportive and encouraging advisor. His eloquence, encyclopedic knowledge, and good humor set the standard for my own career of teaching and scholarship. I want to thank David Cateforis, who has taught me so much about teaching, research, writing, and editing, challenging me to be precise in my language and thorough in my explorations of images and texts. Marni Kessler’s advice, candor, and encouragement always made me feel like a colleague and friend. Office manager Maud Humphrey is the glue that keeps the art history department, and its sometimes frazzled graduate students, together. I appreciate the time and effort that Chuck Berg and Cheryl Lester spent to make my defense a spirited conversation about the future of this project. I spent the winter, spring, and summer of 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center. While there I met many wonderful colleagues and benefitted from an extended period of research and reflection that allowed me to finish iv this dissertation in a timely fashion. I want to send my sincere gratitude to Barbara Buhler Lynes, Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Carolyn Kastner, Kate Skelly, Fran Martone, and the entire Georgia O’Keeffe Museum staff. My fellow fellow, Jobyl Boone, helped me settle in and stay on track, and I thank her for that. My dissertation research would not have been possible without the staff of the Murphy Art & Architecture Library at the University of Kansas, including Susan Craig, Ann Snow, and Heather Howard. Research trips to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Archives of American Art, and the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles were funded by the University of Kansas’ Kress Foundation Department of Art History Travel Fund. In October 2008 I visited John Steuart Curry’s Our Good Earth at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I met with curator Maria Saffiotti Dale. I want to thank her for sharing her notes and insights about Curry’s work. I also appreciate the efforts of Tim Gaus and Ed Lehew at the Heinz Corporate Information Center in locating and sharing Heinz advertisements featuring women war workers. I presented portions of Chapters Three and Five at the Great Lakes American Studies Association’s “Imaging America” conference (University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, 2009) and Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association’s annual conference (Alexandria, VA, 2010), respectively. The feedback and discussions at both events helped to steer revisions, and funding from KU’s Graduate Studies office, the Art History Travel Fund, and the Great Lakes American Studies Association allowed me to make those trips. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family and friends for their support of this and every endeavor. My parents, Butch and Sara Kuykendall; in-laws, Jim and Gee Scherman; and siblings, Andrew and Kirsten Kuykendall and Kimberly Scherman cheered me on throughout this process. I want to thank Sarah Smith, Shona Colglazier, and Alexa Hutchins, v my wahoos, for providing much needed humor, understanding, and warm beds from Los Angeles to New York to Washington, DC. My graduate school friends at KU, known to some as the “Jayhawk Mafia,” provided the intellectual stimulation, camaraderie, and comic relief that made these last few years go by too quickly. Specific thanks go to Ashley Elston for hosting “scholar camps,” to Madeline Rislow for spending countless hours at coffee shops with me, and to my fellow Americanists in the class of 2011, Clair Robertson, JoLee Stephens, and Kate Meyer. Kate deserves a special thanks for her generosity in sharing ideas, notes, and photographs of Curry material, and for joining me on that trip to Wisconsin. Stephanie Knappe shared her knowledge of all things Aaron Douglas, which helped me a great deal. Finally, I want to dedicate this project to my husband, Mike Scherman. Thank you for keeping our home intact whether I was sequestered in a library, at a conference, or away on fellowship. You are truly wonderful. Here’s to the next chapter of our life together. vi Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................iv List of Figures..........................................................................................................................viii Introduction: Heroes by Popular Demand..................................................................................1 Chapter One: Two Saints on One Canvas: Florine Stettheimer’s Cathedrals of Wall Street ..18 Chapter Two: “Our Workers are Heroes”: Philip Evergood’s American Tragedy ..................44 Chapter Three: The Hero of the Harvest: John Steuart Curry’s Our Good Earth ...................77 Chapter Four: Palmer Hayden’s John Henry Series: Inventing a Black, American Hero .....103 Chapter Five: The Burdens of Womanhood: American Heroines of the 1930s and 1940s ...138 Conclusion: The Heyday of Heroism.....................................................................................174 Figures ....................................................................................................................................177 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................178 vii List of Figures Fig. 1-1 Florine Stettheimer, Cathedrals of Wall Street, 1938-40 Fig. 1-2 Florine Stettheimer, Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929 Fig. 1-3 Florine Stettheimer, Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue, 1931 Fig. 1-4 Florine Stettheimer, Cathedrals of Art, 1942-44 Fig. 1-5 Florine Stettheimer, Set and Costume Designs for Four Saints in Three Acts, 1934 Fig. 1-6 Florine Stettheimer’s Living Quarters and Studio Fig. 1-7 Florine Stettheimer, Soirée, 1917-19 Fig. 1-8 George Washington, Collier’s cover, 27 February 1932 Fig. 1-9 Carrie Hall, George Washington Bicentennial Quilt, c. 1932 Fig. 1-10 James Earle Fraser, George Washington, 1939, New York World’s Fair Fig. 1-11 Postcard depicting the colossal recreation of John Quincy Adams Ward’s statue of George Washington that stands on Wall Street, 1939, New York World’s Fair Fig. 1-12 John Quincy Adams Ward, George Washington, 1882, Wall Street, New York, NY Fig. 1-13 Inauguration Fête on Wall Street, The New York Times, 30 April 1938 Fig. 1-14 Edward P. Buyck, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933 Fig. 1-15 Henry Salem Hubbell, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1939 Fig. 1-16 John Vanderlyn, George Washington, 1834 Fig. 1-17 Roosevelt addressing Congress in House of Representatives, 1942 Fig. 1-18 Miguel Covarrubias, The Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vanity Fair, March 1933 Fig. 1-19 M. Falk, “The Greatest Presidents God Ever Created,” 1945 Fig. 1-20
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