This lecture traces the evolution of personifications of America from the beginning of European exploration through the emergence of the United States as a modern international superpower. Across this timeframe, artists symbolized America in a range of guises, including as a Native American princess, the classicized goddess Columbia, the personification of Liberty, and Uncle Sam. As emblems of America—the place, the nation, the concept—these figures embodied the values associated with the country and its people. Appearing in many different artistic media, images of personified America reflect shifting ideas about what America is, as well as revealing art’s important role in constructing national identity.
Archives
A Brief History of African American Art through the Civil Rights Era
African American artists occupy an important, though often overlooked place in the history of American art. This lecture surveys the creative work of African American artists from the colonial period through the 1960s—artists including Joshua Johnson, Robert Duncanson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, and Norman Lewis, among others. In addition to examining their diverse subjects and styles, this lecture also places the work of African American artists within broader social, political, and cultural contexts.
Picturing Modern Womanhood: Suffragettes, Flappers, and Other New Women in American Art, 1910-1940
The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed dramatic changes in American society in general and women’s lives in particular. Many women gained new educational, occupational, and political opportunities, while also enjoying unprecedented social and sexual freedoms. Their experiences challenged traditional gender hierarchies and long-held assumptions about female nature. The so-called New Woman embodied modern femininity and proliferated in the pictorial arts during this period. By surveying various permutations of the New Woman—including the ardent suffragette, the liberated flapper, the independent worker, and the gender-bending artist—this lecture explores the shifting and often conflicted attitudes about modern womanhood in the United States.
Pocahontas in Image and Myth
Legends and images of Pocahontas, the young Native American woman who reportedly rescued Captain John Smith of the Jamestown settlement in the early 1600s, became popular in Western culture during her lifetime and continue to evolve into the present day. This lecture examines representations of this renowned yet elusive historical figure in the context of various narratives about her life and period attitudes about Native Americans. In images ranging from seventeenth-century prints, to the VMFA’s 1889 portrait by Richard Norris Brooke, to the late-twentieth-century Disney movie, Pocahontas appears as a complex character invested with diverse meanings as an exotic curiosity, exemplary Christian convert, and feminist heroine.
Winslow Homer’s Civil War
Widely regarded as one of America’s greatest artists, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) first gained national recognition for insightful paintings and illustrations about the Civil War. Informed by his first-hand observations at the Union front in Virginia, Homer adopted an unconventional approach to representing war: instead of depicting dramatic battle scenes and heroic military leaders, he humanized the conflict with pictures that explored soldiers’ daily life in camp and the war’s impact on the home front. This lecture examines Homer’s unique and highly influential vision of the sectional conflict. His images address some of the most complex and pressing issues of his day—the nature of modern warfare, shifting gender and race relations, and the return to normalcy in peacetime. Provocative and visually powerful, as well as deeply nuanced and often witty, Homer’s Civil War pictures continue to resonate in the twenty-first century.
Teacher Workshop: Art in the Modern World: Connect
Robert Rauschenburg once commented “I think art is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.” In this workshop, you’ll explore this thought by considering how artists use found objects to transform materials as they pursue powerful new meanings. By looking closely at works by ground-breaking artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell, Jim Dine, and Sonya Clark, participants will analyze different methods of assemblage. Found materials will be used to experiment in connecting meaning and material, and discussion will cover how these ideas can translate into your classroom. In addition, this is a great way to use personal found art objects as a form of self- expression.
Classicism and Contemporary Art
As a student of the nineteenth century, and as a one-time student of the Classical world, I am intrigued by Aby Warburg’s “afterlife” or “survival” of antiquity unto our own time. The artists I will discuss are drawing upon Classical and Neoclassical artworks and motifs, reactivating them to question, critique, and explore the artistic and intellectual ideals within those artworks. In these moments of inspiration and reinterpretation, artists connect to the past to illuminate current issues and ask how and why these works still speak to us. Artists to be discussed include Sanford Biggers, Igor Mitoraj, Simon Starling, Lily Cox-Richard, Karen LaMonte, Vik Muniz, Kehinde Wiley, and others.
Classicism and Modern and Contemporary Art
As a student of the nineteenth century, particularly the Neoclassical era (ca. 1750 – 1815), and as a one-time student of the Classical world, I am intrigued by Aby Warburg’s “afterlife” or “survival” of antiquity unto our own time. The artists I will discuss are drawing upon Classical and Neoclassical art works and motifs, reactivating them to question, critique, and explore the artistic and intellectual ideals within those art works. In these moments of inspiration and reincorporation, artists connect to the past. Artists to be discussed include di Chirico, Picasso, Dali, Lily Cox-Richard, Karen LaMonte, Vik Muniz, Kehinde Wiley, and others.
Neoclassicism
The Neoclassical era (ca. 1750 – 1815) was when two distinct moments in time, classical antiquity and the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century, were connected through art, architecture, and literature. Classical art from the Greco-Roman period had a strong influence upon the art of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Artists working in this style were looking at ancient art and architecture, particularly Classical statuary, as few examples of ancient painting survived. And there were specific sculptural pieces that were revered above all others; like the Apollo Belvedere. In this lecture, I will discuss the Classical influences that shaped the Neoclassical style, as well as the hallmarks of that style, by looking at specific pieces from both eras and from the VMFA’s collection. I will also discuss topics like early archaeology and the growing scholarly interest in antiquity to lay a foundation for the cultural zeitgeist within which these artists were working.
The Relationship between Teaching and Making Art: Josef Albers as Teacher and Artist
Josef Albers was an artist and educator whose artworks were strongly influenced by his experiences teaching students of all levels in the classroom. At the same time, his teaching was deeply affected by the evolution of his artwork over the course of his career. Albers repeated the notion that he was constantly learning from his students throughout his life. He had a very loose and experience-based approach to teaching that allowed his students to learn from their materials, from one another, and from their own mistakes as much or more than they learned directly from him. This course will explore the relationship of teaching art to making art, using the case study of Albers’ career as our starting point. Students will explore Albers’ work, the work of some of his students including Jacob Lawrence, and the work of other artist/teachers such as Richard Roth.