By that, I don’t mean
“it’s November” or “it’s autumn.” I suspect that I’m not the only one who is
tired of political ads with mean-spirited denunciations of opponents. Probably,
though, each quadrennial election we endure is no worse than any that have gone
before, since the first presidential election of 1788–1789. Well, maybe that
one was more civilized because George Washington was in it. Voting and
elections have not escaped the realm of subject matter in art. Here are three
examples from radically different time periods, and, times that were
contentious as they are in the present day.
I’m not certain why John Sartain engraved this George Caleb
Bingham painting in 1854. It may have been because the congressional election
of 1854 was fraught with conflict in the Midwest over the Kansas-Nebraska Act
passed in August of that year, which did away with the Missouri Compromise on
slavery of 1820. That allowed Kansas and Nebraska territories to choose to be
either slave or free, and led to violent civil conflict in Kansas ultimately
called Bleeding Kansas. I’m sure there were many elections fraught with heated
rhetoric as the country headed toward the Civil War (1860–1865).
The painting from which this is taken was painted by Bingham
in 1852 to commemorate the congressional elections of 1850, in which Bingham
unsuccessfully ran for Congress. The opponent, E.D. Sappington, apparently
bought votes with liquor. This is Bingham’s wry comment on the foibles of a young
American democracy, where, obviously only the men voted (after taking an oath on
a Bible, which I did not know). Bingham depicted himself in the center on the
courthouse steps probably sketching, ignoring the tomfoolery around him.
Bingham was the first significant painter of genre subjects
in American art. Born in Virginia, he was raised in Missouri, and had a solid
respect for the hardy frontier people who helped settle the West. His
paintings, meant for east coast audiences, elevated frontier people into folk
heroes, although the genuine aspects of their hard-living were never glossed
over. Like Dutch Baroque genre paintings, his figures are based on real people.
Bingham endowed them with a dignity, however, that has sometimes earned his
style the name “Missouri Classicism.”
Jacob Lawrence was a keen observer and documenter of the
African American experience. His paintings are a valuable historical record of
the progress of blacks in the US after the Great Migration. This painting
relates the experience of the southern migrants finding it a lot easier to vote
in the North than in the South. Despite the passage of the 15th
Amendment in 1870, which guaranteed all Americans the right to vote (including
African Americans), many southern states passed restrictive laws (such as a
land ownership requirement, or a poll tax) to prevent black participation.
Unfortunately, aside from jobs and the ability to vote in the North, African
Americans still found a lot of discrimination.
The migration (Great Migration) of African Americans from
the rural South to northern industrial cities in search of jobs changed the
course of history for blacks in America. In cities such as New York and
Chicago, the black populations increased dramatically between 1918 and 1925.
Cohesive African American communities formed within the cities, and African
Americans found a new self-awareness and pride in their heritage. During the
1920s, a significant number of artists were brought together within these large
and varied African American communities, something that could not have happened
in the rural South. One of the most vital African American communities was in
the Harlem section of New York.
The Worcester Art Museum’s copy of this print is currently on view in
their exhibit Picket
Fence to Picket Line; Visions of American Citizenship.
We certainly know what this photograph commemorates. It was
the election of the first African American president of the US. It was a
spectacular moment in American history, and, in typical understated Zoe Strauss
fashion, she uses the red-white-and-blue as a symbol for a truly landmark
event.
Strauss’ work is reflective of the sophisticated evolution
of the Snapshot Aesthetic style of photography. Although the style developed
late in the 1800s, it flowered during the 1960s in the hands of such artists as
Diane Arbus (1923–1971) and Garry Winogrand (1928–1984). The style mimicked the
candid, un-posed, spur-of-the-moment pictures taken by amateurs and middle
class families. Interestingly, between the 1960s and the 2000s, the style has
been refined to subtly reveal psychological investigation by the photographer.
Works by Arbus opened up a type of personal investigation
into subjects that most people see on the street and ignore because it may not
be “beautiful.” Strauss’ works address the same phenomenon. Born in
Philadelphia, she received her first camera when she was 30. She began
photographing the not-well-off areas of Philadelphia, and within ten years was
documenting the compelling subject of overlooked realities throughout the
country.
While largely self-taught, Strauss’s work displays a sophisticated
sense of composition. She is particularly adept at suggestion, and a monumental
contrast of positive and negative space. Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss would
hold yearly exhibitions of her work in the form of Inkjet prints that she sold
for $5 in a makeshift “gallery” under the I-95 underpass in Philadelphia.
Correlation to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 3:
intro; A Personal Journey: 1.1, 2.3; A Community Connection: 7.6, Experience
Printmaking: 5; Exploring Visual Design: 2, Focus on Photography: 7, Discovering
Art History: 15.4, The Visual Experience: 9.5
No comments:
Post a Comment
We appreciate your feedback. Thanks for blogging with us. Your friends at Davis!