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Lesson 3: Go deeper: oppression and resistance- The triangle trade and the colonial table, sugar, tea, and slavery
- An African muslim among the founding fathers, Charles Willson Peale’s Yarrow Mamout
- Before the Civil War, the Mexican-American War as prelude
- Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York
- Cultures and slavery in the American south: a Face Jug from Edgefield county
- Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves
- Cotton, oil, and the economics of history
- Representing freedom during the Civil War
- Martyr or murderer? Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown
- An artifact of racism: a Connecticut Klan robe
- A beacon of hope, Aaron Douglas's Aspiration
- Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (*long version*)
- Romare Bearden, Factory Workers
- Horace Pippin's Mr. Prejudice
- Harlem 1948, Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks and the photo essay
- A Harlem street scene by Jacob Lawrence, Ambulance Call
- Identity and civil rights in 1960s America
- An unflinching memorial to civil rights martyrs, Thornton Dial's Blood and Meat
- History and deception: Kenseth Armstead’s Surrender Yorktown 1781
- Reflecting on "We the People"
- Titus Kaphar, The Cost of Removal
- Turning Uncle Tom's Cabin upside down, Alison Saar's Topsy and the Golden Fleece
- Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
- The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
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History and deception: Kenseth Armstead’s Surrender Yorktown 1781
Kenseth Armstead discusses his drawing, "Surrender Yorktown 1781," highlighting the importance of truth in art. He critiques the original painting for its historical inaccuracies, like dancing slaves and a lush landscape post-battle. Armstead's version leaves an empty space, inviting viewers to populate it with a truer history.
Video transcript
(soft piano music) - [Interviewer] I'm in the Newark Museum with Kenseth Armstead, looking
at Surrender Yorktown 1781. This is not a painting. It's a drawing. And, I see your hand all over it. - [Kenseth] The vast majority
of history paintings, you can't see the brushstrokes. So, in my rendition of history, you can see the hand of the artist. - But then what does it
mean to take that genre, to take history painting,
and to remake it, in the 21st century? To take its grand scale, but
to transform it completely. This is pencil, this is graphite. - The King of France at the
time of the American Revolution had invested his ships
and capital, literal cash, in our American Revolution. And he wanted a memento of how it is that the American Revolution ended with the British defeated. This, as a Frenchman,
made him extremely happy. So he commissioned Blarenberghe to make a painting called
Surrender Yorktown 1781. And what he did was
piece together a fantasy of the British surrendering at Yorktown that would satisfy this one patron who needed a memento of his investment in the American Revolution. The original painting by Blarenberghe it has in it dancing slaves. I doubt very seriously
slaves were at the moment of the American Revolution dancing since they weren't being freed. It has in it landed gentry
and it has a landscape that's lush and beautiful, which wouldn't actually be realistic after a battle had just concluded. This is the idea of the New World from somebody who's a
fantasist about the New World. They've never been, the King
of France has never been, the painter's never been,
Blarenberghe makes a painting that will satisfy the patron, but doesn't have that
much to do with history. - There are two kinds of lies at work. There's the lie of illusionism. We're looking at a flat
canvas, or in this case, a flat piece of paper. And yet, we have this vast landscape that stretches out before us. But there's another lie, which is the history. Which is the story that's being told. And you've treated this in
a completely unexpected way. Instead of trying to imagine what that battlefield looked
like populated, you've removed. - I started out looking
at Blarenberghe's work and I wanted to be honest about
it and really work with it. As I started to compose it, I'm like, "Well that's fiction and that's fiction." - So far we've mostly
discussed what you've removed. How you've stepped away from
the illusionistic traditions of history painting and
from their falsehoods. But what you have created is
this majestic empty space. The aftermath of a terrible battle where hundreds of people died. - The first person to die
in the American Revolution is a descendant of Africans. The war would not end
without the participation of Africans, specifically
James Armistead Lafayette. But also the 20% of Washington's troops. And the French who
allowed us the financing and the ships to keep
Cornwallis cordoned off so he couldn't leave by ship. So my work allows a entry point to explore that all of the histories
that we are given are needing work. They're all incomplete. When people look at this work in depth they'll see layer upon
layer of mark making. Making a history painting
is not a passive act, it's a proactive act. You have to go and shape it. - You've given us a stage set, you've given us an open space. You've given us an arena
that we can repopulate with a truer history.