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Course: The Seeing America Project > Unit 4
Lesson 5: For teachers: learning resources1875-1980: learning resources
Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
Key Points
- The emergence of the Aesthetic movement in Britain in the 1860s signaled a turning point for painting and other art forms. Artists moved away from expected portrayals of narrative scenes that underscored moral or historical lessons. Instead they focused on more philosophical portrayals of beauty, exploring the formal qualities of visual imagery such as color, tone, shape, and line, and striving for the creation of “art for art’s sake.”
- Artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler employed the metaphor and language of music to describe his images, emphasizing how the formal qualities of his artwork convey emotion and beauty. Whistler’s nocturnes conjured the experience of nighttime at a moment when scientific advances in electrical lighting and pyrotechnics were intensifying the brilliance of after-dark illumination.
Go Deeper
Hélène Valance, Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890–1917 (Yale University Press: 2018).
Mary Zajac, "How James McNeill Whistler Became a Brand and Fought for it in Court," HUMANITIES 35 no. 5.
More to Think About
How is Nocturne in Black and Gold an example of “art for art’s sake”?
Where do you locate the most value in a work of art–in the ideas expressed, the technical skill of the artist, or somewhere else? Debate this question as a class and cite examples of artworks that support your case.
Brown, View of the Lower Falls, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
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Dayton Duncan, "George Melendez Wright and the National Park Idea," National Park Service Centennial Essay Series
Robert J. Chandler, San Francisco Lithographer: African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).
Dreck Spurlock Wilson, ed., African-American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945(Routledge, 2004).
William Loren Katz, The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States (Touchstone, 1996).
Before Pennsylvania Station, George Bellows and old New York
Key points
- George Bellows documents the construction site for the majestic Pennsylvania Station, part of a process of modernizing New York City through transportation networks in the early 20th century. This project also involved tunneling railway lines under the Hudson River, physically connecting New York to national transportation networks.
- In Pennsylvania Station, Bellows does not celebrate the triumph of technology, but instead suggests the underside of the progress. This construction project displaced thousands of residents of the Tenderloin district, including African-American communities and recent immigrants.
- Pennsylvania Station was demolished in 1963 to make way for a modern terminal and Madison Square Garden. Outrage over the destruction of this Beaux-Arts building helped to create the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which now registers and protects significant buildings and sites.
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More to think about
Compare Bellows’s Pennsylvania Station with this documentary photograph of the excavation project. What details are included in both images? What does Bellows add, or leave out, which suggests his more critical opinion of urban progress?
North Wind Mask
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Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B Phillips, Native North American Art, 2 ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
Igor Krupnik, Yupik Transitions: Change and Survival at Bering Strait, 1900–1960 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2013)
The City at night, Joseph Stella's The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted
Key points
- With electrification and the rise of the skyscraper, New York transformed into a modern urban metropolis in the early 20th century. Many immigrants, who often arrived from rural and agricultural communities, experienced culture shock upon their arrival.
- Avant-garde artists like Joseph Stella experimented with ways to convey the dynamic experience of the modern city. They sought to celebrate this new industrial world and elevate it as a subject for art, often reinterpreting traditional formats, materials, or symbolism to blend elements of the old with the energy of the new.
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More to think about
Discuss some of the ways Stella references other art forms to evoke the sounds and energy of New York City in a static painting. How do you think his use of poetry to accompany each panel expands on his visual imagery? If you were hired to create a modern art installation that would celebrate your hometown, what components and materials would you use?
Choose one of the panels in Stella’s painting that seems to sum up your ideas of a big bustling city like New York. What are your impressions of the city based on–your own experience, images on television, movies, and other popular media? How do you think the ideas expressed in Stella’s painting from 1920 compares to the atmosphere of the city today?
Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater
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Eldzier Cortor, Southern Landscape
Key Points
- At first glance, in this image we see a woman prepared for a picnic on a bright day in a verdant setting. A closer look at the contents of her picnic basket and the background, however, suggests a narrative of loss. Flooding, graves, and multiple crosses fill the landscape behind her, a scene to which she has her back turned. Her basket includes a picture of a man, possibly a loved one no longer present or with whom she hopes to reunite.
- In the late 1930s and 40s, record flooding in the American South forced relocation and migration upon many people. Within this historical context, Eldzier Cortor’s painting presents us with ambiguity: is it about hope or despair in the face of devastation such as flooding and dislocation? Is the woman mourning from the events behind her or looking towards a hopeful new future elsewhere, or possibly both?
- Cortor’s work is often identified as a type of surrealism, which typically presents unexpected juxtapositions and evokes scenes of dreams or the imagination. This classification is evidenced in Southern Landscape by the contrast between the woman in the foreground and the landscape behind her, along with the distinctive coloration of both the sky and water.
Go Deeper
Read an oral history from Eldzier Cortor, in which he talks about Southern Landscape and another image he made in response to the flooding he witnessed in the South.
More to Think About
Throughout his career, Cortor turned repeatedly to the Black female as his subject. Knowing that many people lost homes and livelihoods in the floods of the American South, consider the choice and impact of representing a singular female in this scene rather than a family or a group of people. Can you imagine how this image might read if he had chosen a different protagonist?
Cars, highways, and isolation in Postwar America
Key points
- The post-World War II era was a period of economic prosperity and growth in America. The automobile came to be a symbol for postwar wealth, and the dream of the open road was joined with the construction of new interstate highways.
- While technological advances such as the automobile and television had the capability to bring people together, they were also new products that facilitated individual, rather than communal, experiences. Some people considered these innovations a threat to American culture, as people were divided and isolated by these new products.
- George Tooker’s Highway presents a dystopian vision, with a dehumanized, unnatural landscape populated with menacing machines and isolated people. He blocks the viewer’s vision, instead confronting them with an elevated highway that seems to go nowhere.
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More to think about
The video discussion of George Tooker’s Highway describes anxieties around how American culture following World War II became centered around individual rather than community experiences. How would you compare those anxieties to concerns about modern American culture? What might today’s version of this painting look like?
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty
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Excerpt of Robert Smithson's Film on Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson Estate)