Romanian Journal of English Studies 4/2007
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Romanian Journal of English Studies 4/2007 Editura Universităţii de Vest Timişoara, 2007 EDITOR Luminiţa Frenţiu Assistant editors Eliza Filimon Aba-Carina Pârlog ADVISORY BOARD HORTENSIA PÂRLOG, University of Timişoara PIA BRÎNZEU, University of Timişoara CARMELLO CUNCHILLOS JAIME, University de La Rioja MIHAELA IRIMIA ARGHELESCU, University of Bucureşti MIRCEA MIHĂIEŞ, University of Timişoara ISABELLE SCHWARTZ-GASTINE, University of Caen DAVID SNELLING, University of Trieste CHRISTO STAMENOV, University of Sofia MIHAI ZDRENGHEA, University of Cluj-Napoca STUART ELFORD, University of Timişoara Cover Design: Liliana Mercioiu © Romanian Journal of English Studies, no.4, 2007 ISSN 1584-3734 This journal is sponsored by: Universitatea de Vest Timişoara, Office of Public Affairs, US Embassy Bucharest CONTENTS I CULTURAL STUDIES BLACKS IN THE AMERICAN NATION? TESTIMONIES OF 19th-CENTURY GENRE PAINTINGS IREN E. ANNUS University of Szeged 1. Introduction Postmodern theorists, including Benedict Anderson (1991), Werner Sollors (1989), Terry Pickett (1996), and Julia Kristeva (1991), regard modern nations as ideologically framed, artificial constructions. Many scholars, such as Louis Althusser (1971), Pierre Bourdieu (1977), Michel Foucault (1980) and Stuart Hall (1996), position culture as central to the process of nation formation. As the United States is a young country that represents so-called official (Kellas, 1991: 52), religious-ideological (Eisenstadt, 2002: 56) or geo- political (Smith, 1995: 135) nationhood, a nation that developed not out of an ethnic group – which was often the claim presented in Europe – but of a group’s geographical unity and political/ideological identification, it may prove an exciting example for the study of nationhood and its construction. Nation construction is an ongoing process with significant elements tied to particular historical moments. One of these in the context of American nationhood regarded the treatment of the Black population in the middle of the 19th century, on the eve of the Civil War, the conflict which ended slavery in the US and established a legal framework for the integration of the former slave society into the American nation. This essay looks at the ways this new challenge was captured in a tiny segment of American culture, namely genre painting of the mid-19th century, and maps the ways genre painters depicted Blacks in relation to other people and thus imagined their position in the American nation. 2. The Jacksonian era and genre painting The period in question was part of a new cultural, economic and political era, usually referred to as the Jacksonian period, starting with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. The era witnessed the North shifting from commerce to major industrialization, with the South participating in this growth by satisfying the increasing demand for cotton in the textile industry, which in turn strengthened slavocracy in the South. Moreover, the West, offering unlimited land and absorbing an ever-increasing flow of immigrants, expressed the concepts of manifest destiny and American progress, which represented elemental forces that shaped American society. In this historical context, the election of Jackson to the presidency as what Brown et al. calls “the champion of the common man” (1987: 160) bore the promise of cooperation and harmony between these regions, ultimately contributing to the constitution of American national unity and identity. Genre painting came to prominence during this time. Drawing primarily on the Düsseldorf tradition, genre painters depicted common scenes, typical, daily activities of the ordinary men, thus were “concerned with man’s common social relations and activities in a general sense” (Brown et al., 1987: 220). If it is indeed the case, it may be of interest to see how these artists represented one segment of the common people, Blacks, in a period of political maneuvering aimed at economic and social harmonization, which, as the Civil War later signified, was ultimately unsuccessful. An effort of this endeavor is especially captivating as John Michael Vlach in his The Planter’s Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings found that, unlike expected, slaves were excluded from antebellum plantation paintings. He concluded that these paintings served the privileged white Southern population in claiming power over the region. He contended that, based on the plantation paintings, “white people, by default, would have to be recognized as the primary occupants” (Vlach, 2002: 4). These works offered the “visual confirmation of their claims to power and authority … [and] offered a soothing propaganda that both confirmed and justified the social dominance of the planter class” (Vlach, 2002: 4). 3. Black figures in genre paintings And, although Hugh Honour was right when he concluded that during the first half of the 19th century “the whole Black presence was understated in paintings of the American scene” (quoted in Vlach, 2002: 4), genre painting emerged as a style which depicted Black figures in a number of works. In fact, this was the very first style to integrate Blacks frequently in the composition in American painting. This section offers a theme-based iconological reading of a representative selection of paintings, also introducing the highly simplistic typology of the age, reflective of contemporary social typification regarding Blacks. 3.1. Music and Blacks William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) was the first master of genre painting. He was from Long Island and painted life as he saw it in the rural northeast. He traveled around in his mobile studio and each time he caught a glimpse of something noteworthy, he stopped his horse and immediately made a sketch of what he saw. His paintings present a cast of American characters, men and women, adults and children, whites and blacks. A series of his paintings depict Blacks either playing or listening to music, already signifying an elemental cultural association between African Americans and this art form. Two single portraits, The Banjo Player (1830) and The Bone Player (1856) depict African Americans playing music. Both representations convey an image in which the musicians are just like any white man in terms of their clothing and pose. However, on closer observation, the banjo player is more reminiscent of an entertainer (see his funny, childish hat) while the bone player may evoke an image of a mulatto playing the castanets. Both are romanticized portraits, depicting Blacks as fitting into mainstream society through their outward appearance, but not by their actions – both are engaged in playing instruments specifically associated with Blacks. The third picture, The Power of Music (1847), captures two very separate realms: on the left, inside the barn, protected by its wall and roof, as if on an elevated platform, we can see a group of three white men, probably farm laborers, who have gathered in their free time to play music. Separate from them is a Black man standing by himself: although he is invisible for them, he is the central figure of the composition. His separate sphere is accentuated by his position in a number of ways: he is standing alone, on the lower ground level, outside, in the heat of the sun, leaning against the barn door, longingly listening to the music filtering from the inside. This image shows how he is dissociated from, if not deprived of, the cultural capital his people tend to be associated with. Instead, symbolically, he is marked by his worn coat – old, already patched, but still clean – and his hat, doffed, as well as by the liquor battle and the axe both carelessly placed on the ground next to him. His marked difference becomes more apparent when compared to the figure standing on the other side of the door: although his body is exactly in the same position, he is visually signified as different in many, essentially superficial ways regarding appearance. Ambivalence has been associated with these paintings. Some, such as Deborah J. Johnson et al., interpreted Mount’s depictions of Blacks as allegorical commentaries of a painter, a Democrat at heart, on slavery. Others disagree. For example, in his criticism of Johnson, Alan Moore makes the argument that “these paintings suggest a nostalgia for a time before abolition ended …in the North in the early 1800s” (1999). He contended that Mount’s “sentimental recollection of African-Americans must come from his experience” (Moore, 1999), growing up in a slaveholding family on Long Island. While I agree that Mount painted idealized images of Blacks, I regard these as expressive of a transitory phase and thus reflective of Jacksonian efforts: on the one hand, the whitening of the Blacks had begun in these portraits, in a highly superficial way, as marked by their clothing and pose, while their difference was also marked. However, this difference was represented as evocative of a deeply rooted cultural distinction symbolized by the cultural capital of music. The longing face of the Black man in The Power of Music, I would argue, is not expressive of his fully grown self-awareness and subsequent desire to reclaim this cultural capital, nor of his longing for the past and some antebellum mistreatment; it rather signifies his desire to join the white group, in concrete as well as in symbolic terms, and to share in their joy of music—and of life. 3.2. Blacks resting Another popular Mount piece is Farmers Nooning (1836). This is a group composition, with two distinct vignettes, to use Nona Martin’s term. One is on the left side, comprised of a group of three farmers taking their noon break, with one of them reading and the others simply lolling about. The second vignette is on the right, constructed around the heystack, where a Black man is lying with a child just about to tickle him. The group of three men are yet again protected, not by a barn, but by the shade of the tree, leaving no place for the Black man who is lying a bit further away, in the sun, with arms apart and with his whole front exposed to the viewer, with the handle of a pitch fork sticking diagonally out of the haystack – though it could almost be sticking into him.