america and its art

Presented by Elizabeth Maxwell-Carlson, Jacquie Cullen and Robert Ward

Picturing America

http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/

The accompanying resource book is also available online. Search for the art work and look for a pdf file. For example:

http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_15A.pdf

http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/





Cole is considered the Father of the Hudson River School of Art. Cole was born in England in 1801 and emigrated to the United

States in 1818. Cole’s paintings were of a “Romantic” nature which demonstrated

the power of nature through the “visible hand of God”

Hudson River School of Art was the first Native School of American Art.

The subject matter focused on the unique American landscape starting in the New York region of the Hudson River.

The paintings were allegorical in nature capturing the hopefulness of the American experiment and the celebration of the American landscape

The art concentrated on the power of nature and its place in American culture.

Comment on the colors used in this piece. What does the artist wish to express as a theme with the colors he uses?

Explain the panoramic view that the artist creates. What was the artist attempting to capture? What do you notice about the size of the objects in this painting?

Discuss the clarity of the picture. What can you see? What is hazy? What emotions does the image create?

Art critics have stated that landscape artists must decide what we should see. What do you think the artist wants his audience to see?

In this painting, there are no humans. What do you think the artist is making as a commentary about man’s relationship to the environment? If there were humans in this painting, what would be the size of the humans and what would be the human’s relationship to the environment?

Bingham was a self-taught painter of the American frontier. Bingham focused on the unique nature of Americans not

influenced by European traditions. Bingham’s characters are detailed and precise which is

opposite the landscape paintings.

Bingham develops a story in his painting. “The County Election” is one of a series of paintings from

Bingham’s “Election Series” paintings. This painting depicts Election Day in Saline County,

Missouri when Bingham was running for state legislature. The painting depicts the democratic process and the

political life of the Western Frontier.

Compare “The County Election” to a landscape painting. What do you see as similarities and/or differences in the approaches that the artists use?

Choose one person or a small group that caught your attention and develop why this person or group caught your attention.

Why do you think this picture is crowded with people?

How would the election process in this painting compare with today’s election process? What does this election process suggest to us about democracy in America at this time?

What people are voting in this election?

Bierstadt was born and educated in Germany. He was a romantic and landscape painter. Bierstadt was captivated by the majesty of the

American West and his works satiated American curiosity about the West.

Landscape painting focuses on the expression of mood through the depiction of nature unencumbered by man.

The landscape painting uses color to depict the reality of emotion.

The landscape artist does not focus on shape and form as he/she would with portraits.

Write down three to four words which come to mind when viewing the painting. Explain why these were the first words which came to your mind.

When you look at the painting, what do you see? Comment on the form used by Bierstadt in this painting.

If you were in the middle of this picture, what would be your initial impression of this environment?

Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts and was hired by The Harper’s Weekly to create sketches depicting The Civil War.

The sketches focused on common activities of the soldier during the war.

Eventually, Homer shifted his artistic medium from sketches to oil paintings and water color art.

Realism is a form of art which is visible to the eye. Typically, the artist of realism would focus on the

common man. The art would bind the artist to the subject matter –

the artist is doing the seeing.

What are the different interpretations for the phrase “ A New Field”?

What object does this man have in his hand and what does this object symbolize?

What does the field of grain represent? How is the color scheme arranged in this

painting? With the end of the Civil War, what

message does Homer wish to convey to his audience?

Saint Gaudens was born in Dublin, raised in New York, and trained as an artist in Europe.

The 54th Massachusetts Memorial took fourteen years to produce.

To depict each soldier as an individual, Gaudens made forty different portrait studies to create this memorial.

Gaudens was a pioneer in relief work focusing on two kinds of art: monumental public sculpture and small scale portrait reliefs.

BAS RELIEF A term from the Italian basso-relieve meaning low relief. The

sculpture is a technique in which figures and other elements are barely more prominent than the flat surface. The artist creates this piece by either carving away material or adding material on top of a smooth surface.

HISTORICAL COMMENTS: “Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.” -

Lord Byron “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong

impulse to see it tried on him personally.” – Abraham Lincoln

A striking feature of the work is that this memorial took fourteen years to complete. Another aspect to the work is the detail and precision of this monument. Why would this work take fourteen years to complete? You should focus your response on the artistic nuances of this memorial along with the historical commentary for a comprehensive response regarding this artistic piece.

Gardner became known as a photographer of Civil War soldiers leaving to fight in the war. He also took candid photos of President Lincoln.

Lincoln was the first American president to use photography for political purposes.

Photography created a sense of intimacy between viewer and subject that was different than a painting. However, the photo took several minutes to make an exposure.

This photo was taken in February 1865, the final year of the Civil War.

What do you notice about his clothing?

What do you notice about his physical appearance?

How would you describe the expression on his face?

How old do you think he was in the photo?

He was commissioned by the Ford Motor Company to photograph the Detroit factory over a six week period.

Afterward, he was inspired to paint this picture using geometric shapes to capture the modern industrial landscape. It was viewed as a “triumph of American ingenuity.”

Sheeler created the term “Precisionism” which captured the emotional detached feeling of the modern world.

“According to Sheeler, factories had become ‘a religious substitute for expression.’” This is in direct contrast to the earlier paintings of Bierstadt and Cole.

What colors stand out in the painting? “This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm

where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesques gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling though the powdery air.” (Chapter 2 of The Great Gatsby).

What does this painting suggest about the Valley of Ashes?

What is the tone of this painting?

This cover appeared on the first printing in 1925.

The artist’s image preceded the finished manuscript and Fitzgerald requested that the publisher save the painting for his novel.

There is evidence in the text to suggest that Fitzgerald wrote in the images of the cover into the novel.

Cugat was paid $100 for the painting.

• What colors stand out in the picture?• What details do you notice in the

picture?• What feeling does the picture

suggest?• What do you think the book will be

about based on this picture?

What colors stand out in the picture?What feeling does the picture

suggest?What do you think the book will be

about based on this picture?How is this picture’s depiction of the

book different than the previous cover?

• What colors stand out in the picture?• What feeling does the picture

suggest?• What do you think the book will be

about based on this picture?

The Migration Series depicts the migration of Blacks from the South to North (Harlem Renaissance).

The 60 panels tell the story of how the Black community took control of their lives.

The series was completed between 1940-1941.

What do you notice about the composition of the piece? Comment on the colors and arrangement of items in the picture. Look at the background and the foreground. What do you notice?

Does the painting have a positive or negative feeling? What feeling does the painting convey to you? What elements of the painting convey that feeling?

Take one aspect of the painting that captures your eye and explain why that element has captured your imagination.

What connection exists between this work and the novel? Find one aspect of the artwork and tie it to something in Janie’s life. Find a quote that relates the two.

One of the first artists to depict black popular culture from an African American perspective.

This collage was completed in July 1963, one month before the March on Washington and MLK’s “I have a dream” speech.

What do you notice about the composition of the piece? Comment on the colors and arrangement of items in the picture. Look at the background and the foreground.

What do you think is going on in the collage? Describe the event that is central to the artist’s work.

Does the painting have a positive or negative feeling? What feeling does the painting convey to you? What elements of the painting convey that feeling?


The photo was taken during the largest Civil Rights march in 1965 to bring attention to the Voting Right Act.

The march included 25,000 marchers who, over four days, marched 54 miles.

The photograph “reveal the strength of hundreds of individuals seeking basic human rights”

What do you know about what is going on in the photograph? Describe the event that is central to the photographer’s work.

What details did the photographer capture? Does the photograph have a positive or negative feeling? What elements of the photograph convey that feeling?


The dimensions of the sculpture are 11 ¾ inches wide at the bottom, 36 feet tall and 1 ¼ inches wide at the top.

It is suspended three feet off the floor.Booker T. Washington was born into

slavery but eventually worked for the advancement of his race which he knew would be a long and slow process.

Comment on the colors and arrangement of items in the sculpture. Look at the background and the foreground.

What do you think the artist was trying to capture in designing this sculpture? Is it a positive or negative experience?


Although he was born in New Orleans, Motley’s artwork depicted life in the Black community in Chicago in the 1930s.

Nightlife presents his experience in Bronzeville. It was painted during World War II and captures the movement and energy of a Chicago Jazz Club.

Motley said of the painting that it is "an expression of the numerous shades and colors which exist in such great variety" among African Americans in Chicago.

The painting is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

What does the artist want us to focus on?

What colors stand out in the painting? What can you conclude about the

people in the picture? What kind of music might they be

listening to while they dance? What feeling does the painting

convey? What contributes to the feeling?

A Visual Journey

•How does the use of light impact the portrayal of Washington?•How do you know the soldiers & their general are determined to win this battle?•Where do you see straight lines? What is accomplished by the use of straight lines?

•How does this bronze relief show men united by a cause?

•Visually, how are the soldiers depicted differently than Colonel Robert Shaw (the man on horseback)?

Allies Day, MAY 1917By Childe Hassam

•Does the painting emit a feeling of lightness or of heaviness? Explain.

•What is the focal point of the painting? Why?

•Why portray the people as tiny and the flags as large?

•Overall, then, what does this painting suggest about America after WWI?

•What feeling does this memorial convey? Explain.

•How does the structure convey a sense of wholeness? Of unity?

•How would this poster motivate an American to support WWII?

•What does this poster suggest about good & evil in WWII?

•What does the image of all that smoke suggest about Nazi Germany?

•Discuss the juxtaposition of the little girl and the swastika. What is the effect of their placement?

•What features of this Japanese officer are exaggerated? What is the effect of the caricature?

•This Japanese officer is clasping his hands in ______.

•Why would he want an American to “take day off”? (effect of the missing “a”?)

•So, overall, how does this poster motivate Americans to work even harder to support WWII?

•What does this poster suggest about good & evil in WWII?

When Tim O’Brien gets his draft notice in “On the Rainy River,” he implicitly contrasts WWII with The Vietnam War. Unlike WWII, in Vietnam . . .

“Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? . . . . Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither?”

He then goes on to say,

“There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would’ve willingly marched off to the battle.”

Apply O’Brien’s statements above to the images from WWII we just examined.

Let’s further examine what made The Vietnam War different from all previous wars . . .

•Discuss the contrast in colors between this poster & WWII one, and what that contrast suggests.

•What has Vietnam done to America? Use details from Uncle Sam’s appearance in your answer.

How does the nature of the Vietnam War change conventional notions of Courage?

Find quotes in “On the Rainy River” that show O’Brien’s definition of courage.

When he thinks about the American people, including his town & family, O’Brien writes,

“They didn’t know history. They didn’t know the first thing about Diem’s tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French—this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading—but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.”

Identify O’Brien’s tone here.

Fiction as TruthFiction as Truth

““Fiction reveals truth that Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”reality obscures.”

Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson

American GothicGrant Wood, 1930

What “truth” may be What “truth” may be told by this painting? told by this painting?

The Problem We All Live With Norman Rockwell 1963

Is this painting fiction or truth?

Truth or Fiction? Truth or Fiction?

V-J Day in Times Square1945

Are there elements of fiction in Are there elements of fiction in this photograph?this photograph?

“Migrant Mother”Dorthea Lange (1936)

What “truth” does this print tell What “truth” does this print tell us about Marilyn Monroe? us about Marilyn Monroe?

Marilyn Monroe pop artAndy Warhol (1967)

What story do the What story do the following covers following covers from LIFE from LIFE magazine tell?magazine tell?

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Aaron Bohrod,War Artist

April 30, 1945

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“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing things men have always done.” Tim O’Brien

• Do the covers from LIFE Magazine during WWII tell a “true war story”? Explain.

The Story of

the Vietnam War

as told through the covers of

LIFE Magazine

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“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing things men have always done.” Tim O’Brien

• Do the covers from LIFE Magazine during The Vietnam War tell a “true war story”? Explain.

“In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh.’”

-Tim O’Brien

And now that we have finished the novel, let’s look at how painters tell a similar story as Tim O’Brien.

Discuss the placement of the American soldiers in the painting.

What does this drawing say about America? About patriotism?

“”Minh”A common first & middle name of Vietnamese people. Ho Chi Minh was president of North Vietnam.

•What is the effect of the deep blue background?

•Connect this image to O’Brien’s depiction of the Vietnamese people in his novel.

What connections to The Things They Carried can you see in this photo? Address color, body language, and physical placement of the soldiers.

And of Vietnam today?

Let’s examine the National Memorial in Washington, D.C.

But first, remember the WWII Memorial? What did we say about its color? Light? Shape?

From TIME, Nov. 9, 1981

An eloquently simple design for Washington's Mall draws fire. Though Viet Nam veterans never got big parades, by next year they should at least be able to dedicate a memorial to their fallen comrades. But as with so much else touched by that tragic war, the memorial's eloquently understated design is stirring controversy. Designated for a site on two acres of gently rolling park land on Washington's Mall, the monument will consist of two black granite walls that meet in a V and recede into the ground. One critic, Viet Nam Veteran Tom Carhart, calls it "a black gash of shame." The National Review labels it "Orwellian glop.”

The winning design, picked from among 1,421 entries last May in a national competition, was submitted by a Chinese American, Maya Ying Lin, 22. "I've studied funerary architecture, the relation of architecture to death," says Lin. She has pointed the 200-ft.-long walls of her memorial west to the Lincoln Memorial and east to the Washington Monument. On those walls will be listed the names of the 57,709 Americans who died or were declared missing in Viet Nam. The names will appear in chronological, not alphabetical, order (another source of criticism). The roll begins on the right wall, with the name of the first American killed in Viet Nam, in 1961. It continues on the left and ends with the year 1975. Thus the first and last to die meet in the center and, as Lin puts it, "the war is 'complete,' coming full circle."

What does this painting suggest about the purpose of the Memorial?

. . . . That simplicity disturbs those who want a more assertive memorial. The National Review, calling for a sculpture, sees the black granite, sunken walls and unalphabetical roster as a conspiracy to dishonor the dead. Carhart, a Purple Heart winner who lost out in the design competition (he proposed a statue of an officer ' offering a dead soldier heavenward) says the jury should have consisted of war veterans, as if a beauty contest should be judged only by beauties.

However heated the criticism has been of the Viet Nam veterans' dark chevron, it has been tepid compared with the storms that have raged over other public monuments . . . .

Those bothered by abstract design might consider that grand obelisk, the Washington Monument. We have come to love it. Some day the Viet Nam memorial, too, may win the hearts and minds of the American people.

Today, the Vietnam War Memorial

is the most visited memorial in our nation’s capital. Why, do you think?

Consider both the artistic components of the memorial and what you learned about the war through The Things They Carried.

Why do you think people underestimated the future popularity of this memorial?

Answer these questions in a 1-paragraph response.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

The Things Our Soldiers Are Now Carrying

After finishing Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, what do you now see in these images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you might not have seen before?

What is the story truth you see in these images?

And after the war. . .

The artist for the drawings that follow is Michael Fay, a veteran of the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars.

What do you think he is trying to convey about the soldiers of these wars through his drawings?

What do you think Michael Fay is trying to convey about the soldiers of these wars through his drawings?

How is the impact of drawings different than the impact of photographs?

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