The Visual Creation of the State Apparatus, Nineteenth Century American Landscape Paintings

The Visual Creation of the State Apparatus, Nineteenth Century American Landscape Paintings A thesis submitted to the College of Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts by Jonathan J. Hacker May, 2019 Thesis written by Jonathan J. Hacker B.A., Kent State University, 2015 M.A. Kent State University, 2019 Approved by _______________________________________ John-Michael H. Warner, Ph.D. Advisor _______________________________________ Marie Bukowski, M.F.A. Director, School of Art _______________________________________ John R. Crawford-Spinelli, Ed.D., Dean, College of the Art TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..iii LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….………..iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………..v CHAPTER I. Ideology and Rhetoric in Nineteenth Century American Landscapes……………………………..1 II. The Visual Creation of the State Apparatus Through Experiential Ideologies….…………..…8 III. Conclusion…………………………..……………………….…..………………………………………………….....….31 IV. FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..……34 V. BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..37 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1835-36……………………………………………………………………………………………………………34 2. Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860…………………………………………………………………………….…….35 3. Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863.……………………………………………………….……..….……36 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To those who instill the love of learning, and lovingly guide us in the direction we must go. I am yours. Thank you to my parents for my love of nature, art, and education, and for encouraging me in my pursuit of all three. To Dr. Carol Salus and Dr. Diane Scillia, for helping me find, explore, and develop my topic, may you both enjoy your retirement! To Dr. John-Michael Warner who redirected my research, teaching me to embrace theory which, under his guidance, then became a driving force in my thesis. I would also like to thank my thesis committee and other members of the faculty for contributing to my experience at Kent State in pursuing my masters degree. And finally, to my friends, who have been a constant source of motivation and support. Just like this thesis, “a painting is never finished, it just stops in interesting places.” – Anonymous v 1 CHAPTER 1 IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LANDSCAPES One way the United States represented itself as a nation in the nineteenth century, and ultimately sought to define itself, was through its’ landscape. Embedded with nationalistic overtones, images and general accounts of the landscape often became idealized portraits of the nation which, as suggested by art historian Angela Miller, implied a “collective identity that was…unmistakably American.”1 An identity that was created through artists’ use of visual rhetoric in the depiction of the landscape to speak to, and illustrate, the predominant nineteenth century ideologies of national pride. For the contemporary audience the experience of looking at representations of the landscape in the nineteenth century became what Miller characterized as a “soul-expanding ritual of national self-affirmation.”2 In this thesis I will be examining my theory of how the artist’s personal history and depiction of the landscape plays a role in the experience of the art patron and viewer of the finished work.3 To this end I will be examining Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1835-36 (fig. 1), Frederic Church’s Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860 (fig. 2), and Albert Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863 (fig. 3), as examples of how 1 Angela Miller, “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Making of the National Landscape,” American Literary History, 4, no. 2 (1992): 208. 2 Angela Miller, “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Making of the National Landscape,” 211. 3 In this discussion, the term experience refers to direct observation and past participation as something that has been personally encountered or lived through: the act, or process of perceiving events or reality: and the events that make up an individual’s life, based on the conscious past. 2 the visual creations of the landscape can further be interpreted as images that depict a sense of American nationalism itself—the idea of America. Experience By examining how these nineteenth century American landscape paintings functioned as nationalistic images, it becomes apparent we need to consider the deeper significance of how they were intended to be interpreted and how they can be understood as one of the vehicles for national ideals. Dissecting these thoughts involves not only considering what the landscape meant ideologically to the artist and subsequently the viewer, but also looking critically at how the landscape was composed. What do representations of the nationalized landscape mean ideologically? How do depictions of the landscape function? And, how is the artist present and what is their role in using the landscape to create imagery that conveys the abstract principles of the nation? In exploring these questions of interpretation and intent, a two-fold idea emerges that connects the notions of ideology, with the inherent experience of the landscape, being depicted with equal importance. Indeed, the experience in these depictions of nature and perceived through the act of looking are just as important as the national ideology being presented, in creating the ritual of national self-affirmation—the two being inherently intertwined in what I consider an experiential ideology. As such, it seems that understanding these two notions (ideology and experience) become necessary for this discussion of landscape paintings as images of a collective national identity. Landscapes which serve as the mechanism of national thought and are understood and delivered through personal experience. Numerous scholars have explored concepts of experience, such as John Dewey’s theorization of nature as experiential, Henri Lefebvre’s emphasis on importance of the 3 everyday, or Michel de Certeau’s articulation of experience by means of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Although Dewey, Lefebvre, and de Certeau are most often cited, Göran Therborn’s Marxist discussion of experience, filtered through national ideology, resonates more closely with my discussion here of experiential ideology, in which the objective is to examine both landscape paintings as a representation of nationalism and the painter as an individual who gives it meaning. Therborn enters this discourse primarily through ideology, his formal definition of which states “[t]he operation of ideology in human life basically involves the constitution and patterning of how human beings live their lives as conscious, reflecting initiators of acts in a structured, meaningful world...interpellating human beings as subjects.”4 Established in his project: The Power of Ideology and the Ideology of Power, Therborn further articulates that to study ideology is “to focus on the way it operates in the formation and transformation of human subjectivity.”5 Here, Therborn takes philosopher Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology as subject producing—“transform[ing] individuals into subjects”6—and explores how ideology develops with the individual and their personal experiences. The individual as subject can take on two meanings in this context; one suggesting the individual is the subject in terms of what the work of art is about, while another suggesting the individual is controlled by the visual apparatus or more accurately by the ideas presented (as 4 Göran Therborn, The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology, (London; Redwood Burn Ltd, 1980), 15. 5 Therborn, The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology, 4. 6 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,” “Lenin and Philosophy” and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press 1971, translated by Andy Blinden, 35. 4 one is subject to a monarch or to a higher authority).7 Subject as meaning and subject as controlled set up the basis for Therborn’s fundamental understanding of how ideology works through what he refers to as “subjection-qualification.”8 For Therborn, subjection refers to the process of the individual becoming subjected in either meaning of the term (subject or controlled). Once this subjection is established, Therborn asserts that a qualification is needed for the concept of ideology to be understood and internalized by the viewer. It is here, in the qualification of the subject, that experience becomes an important element in understanding ideology. Qualification effectively suggests that interpreting the actual or implied subjection requires an understanding of the societal roles or position of the artist and the viewer—their class, education, regional affiliations, etc.— as well as the historical context in which the work of art (the apparatus) is created.9 Essentially, Therborn contends we cannot understand and internalize an ideology unless it speaks to our personal lives and social interactions, as shaped (or qualified) through our experiences. As such, ideology accepts experience through the connection of the viewer and the work of art that serves as the vehicle to present it. Further, Therborn writes “ideologies subject and qualify subjects by telling them, relating them to, and making them recognize: what exists… what is good… and what is possible.”10 The notion of “what exists,”

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