Art History
Art History
Transcendentalism (Latin = over passing)
Movement centered in New England from 1836-1860
Reacting against organized religions of Calvinism
Faith centered on divinity of nature and man
Mystical aspects influenced by Eastern religions
Novak, Nature and Culture
19th century unification of God and nature
“Nature worship” of Emerson and Wordsworth
“God’s nature”, “God in Nature”
The new significance of nature coincided with the development of landscape painting and the destruction of the wilderness
The Sublime
Finding sublimity in silence
**Kant applied it to “natural cataclysms” ( lightning, storms, mountains,
waterfalls
Kant = the sublime reflects the natural energies (35)
New World v. Old World
The “nature of the new world” exceeds the “culture of the old”
Transcendentalists
By going into nature and writing it, we create an original experience with it—thus becoming closer to God. Painters too. But painters felt the need to demonstrate God’s presence.
God’s encompassing purpose( divine evolution
**“official concerns of the age found their way into landscape painting.” (67)
Humboldt
Exploration, exoticism, baroque energy and observation “infused with flashes of transcendence”
“Cosmos”
“Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of creation” (67)
Landscapists
Concern for creation
( need for a rhetoric/medium to express nature’s “majesty”
Being and becoming(at the center of transcendentalism
Live in the woods
--solitude, gentle spirit (behind both NE and western exploration)
Church and Biertsadt both respond with “quiet images”
Aim: A solitary vision from a single, primal encounter with “undefiled” nature
Nature can be read and interpreted as a Biblical text
Middle-man of symbolism: Mountains don’t “represent the divine, they are the divine.” (266)
Universal question( Emerson’s “serene, inviolable order”
Emerson could be considered the unofficial spokesman for landscapists
Footnote(Emerson comments on nature and God are verbalizations of the ideas and feelings made manifest in the landscape paintings
Unity of REAL and IDEAL
Both landscapists and transcendentalists were products of American sent towards nature in the first half of the 19th century
Emerson
Nature
-Those who came before “beheld God and nature face to face; we through their
eyes.” (190)
-We need to enjoy an “original relationship to the universe”
- call for religion through revelation
“nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design” (191)
Philosophically = universe is composed of nature and the soul
- all that is separated from us, including both nature and art=Nature
Chapter 1
The importance of solitude—we must “retire from the chamber as well as society” (191)
If we saw nature/stars only once, we would be convinced of God
Stars command reverence because although they are always present, they’re
inaccessible
All natural objects make a “kindred impression,” when the mind is open to their influence
Nature(reflects wisdom but awakens the spirit of the child (few adults “see” nature
No one owns the landscape
The poet or the artist integrates all parts into the whole
“in the woods we return to reason and faith” (193)
the painter is Emerson’s “transparent eyeball”
“am nothing but see all”
“the currents of the Universal being circulate through me”
Immanent God ( “I am a part or a particle of God”
Noble want of man is served by nature, namely the love of beauty”
** “light is the first painter –light makes things beautiful” (196)
Aspects of Beauty
1. Simple perception of natural forms=delight
He paints with words (p 196, 4th graph) (finds beauty in sunsets, evenings, shores
“Each moment of the year has its own beauty”, must see each anew (197)
(197 problem)
2. Presence of a higher, namely of the spiritual element, is essential to its perfection (198)
3. beauty as object of the intellect
( of beauty = taste (199)
( love in such excess, not content with just admiring, embody nature in new forms
Creation of beauty= art
Nature is perfect, harmonious = “beauty”
Nothing is beautiful alone—only in the whole
Pg 200 “Truth, goodness and beauty=different faces of the same All”
Chapter 4
Nature subserves man through language
1. words are a sign of natural facts
*Spirit means wind
2. Natural facts are symbols of spiritual facts
*ex. Lamb=innocence, river, in meditative hour, is the “flux of all things”
*universal soul=truth, love, freedom, justice(when considered in relation to nature. Analogies are constant and pervade nature.
When nature is related to man, it becomes the sublime. Simplicity, truth
3. Nature is the symbol of the spirit
Chapter 5
Against capital, property, debt
Nature is true(tells man, through form, color and motion the laws of right and wrong, “echo the 10 commandments” (208)
Nature is the “ally of religion”
Prophets and priests (including Christ) “have drawn deeply from this source
Unity, circle
Chapter 6
Idealism
Nature and its permanence are important to man( allows us to have faith
- Nature is not more short lived or “mutable than spirit”
- (213) Man and nature are joined
Culture
1. “Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us”
*** Perspective: change in it gives the whole world a pictorial air
*** New perspectives and scenes please and surprise us
Paintings suggest difference between man (observer) and nature (spectacle)
-Pleasure mixed with awe
-Low degree of the sublime
2. “Poet (artist) delineates…not different from what we know them, but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye” (214)
Uses matter as symbol of heroic passion
**(214-216) Bierstadt: sensual man(conforms thoughts to things
Nature as “rooted and fast”
Poet(conforms things to his thoughts, sees nature as fluid and impresses
his being thereon
Imagination(the use that Reason makes of the material world
Emerson—uses Shakespeare and the Tempest to show how nature responds to the control of the poet
3. Beauty and Truth
a. Human can penetrate nature
b. A spiritual life is imparted to nature
c. Nature can exist contrary to all experience
4. (Immanence) No man touches (divine) nature w/o becoming divine himself
5. Religion and ethics
a. Suggests nature’s dependence on spirit
b. Religion treads on nature (western landscapes imply heaven)
“All that is seen is temporal, all unseen is eternal”
Ideal theory (218)
Chapter 7
Spirit
Nature “always speaks of spirit” (219)
(Immanence
** “It suggests the absolute…it is a great shadow pointing always to the sun (god) behind us”
(Nature is always pointing to God and the sublime. It not just a symbol of spirituality, it reflects and possesses it.
Image of Christ
Nature=bended head, hands folded over breast
** “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship” (220)
“Thinks most, says least”(solitude
(220) On God in nature
--See God ( nature stands as an apparition of God
--Silence to worship(universal spirit speaks through it
(Perfectness of nature)
Spirit creates. Spirit is present.
Supreme being not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us
Draw from the nature God gives us.
--Through nature man has access to the Creator********** (221)
Artist(soul cleansing
“it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul” (221
Nature is not subject to the will of man
“its serene order is inviolable by us”
-it is the present expositor of the divine mind” (221)
• “Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath grandeur, a face of him?” (221)
Can’t freely admire landscape if there are laborers digging nearby (Cole(civilizing forces)
Chapter 8
Prospects
There are more important qualities in a student than preciseness and infallibility
*** sense of unity in landscape( interrelation (222)
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common” (226)
“227”
Bierstadt – Art and Enterprise
Developing an American Art – much like Emerson with literature
New England roots (Bedford, MA)
Study in Germany (influence of Kant)
Rocky Mt Trip
“pivotal” – “provided critical visual and emotional experiences that launched career as ‘artist-explorer’”
(Romantic sublime (24)
Large-scale scenery—dramatic use/effect of light
Spirit=divine light, mts
East v. West
Eventually chilly critical reception
**Change in American “tastes and attitude” toward landscape painting
Lander’s Peak
p. 29
critic(Cook
experience for the viewer=theatrical rather than aesthetic
--journey through space and time
** “remoteness of subject” and sheer scale=power
immature, pretentious
“attempt impossibilities”
popular but not well critically received
paintings have a uniquely American subject
p. 29 “They do not appeal to the highest faculties of the mind; that is, they do not confront one’s spiritual moods”, not much genius
(Church—imagination and genius)
Landers Peak( Jarves concludes it was not “indicative” but “superior” to “subsequent work”
** are critics rejecting him or the American art movement? (p. 30)
(30) “He paints with ashes, with clay, with brimstone, but never with light”???
decline in reputation(away from American style of descriptive realism
• change in meaning: from expansion to “private poetry and subjective interpretation of nature” (31)
Painter as priest (or showman) 9are they different?
--quasi-religious vocation free of worldly goals
Jarves=”sensational landscapes”, “emotionless, soulless”
(struggle for national commission (capitol)
History Paintings (always viewed as higher brown than landscape)
He had dinner with Longfellow in Europe (1867-1869)
Awareness of transcendentalism
Lobbyist, self promoter
Pushed to be included
Decline of American school
(Moran’s work=different, better received in 70s)
Swiss Alps(we had nothing like them. Rockies
Constant comparison
Bierstadt positive about them
While some wanted factual info, Bierst. “invented the Western American landscape by skillfully joining passages of carefully observed and meticulously rendered detail with freely configured compositions that met national needs” (74)
Lander’s Peak(find “American equivalent for the European sublime”
American scene (75)
Abt Church “not an actual scene, but the subtle essence of many scenes combined into a typical picture” (76)
(less concerned with factual representation than presenting a notion of “nature”
p. 76 Mountain Peak=Sublime, God
Winthrop(”snow, peak” ‘the sublimest of material objects’ and extolled the ‘great white thrones of the Almighty’ that ‘demand our worship for their sublimity” (76)
Yosemite
“Original site of the Garden of Eden” (81)
Ludlow
(Not seeing a new scene on the old familiar globe, but a “new heaven and a new earth into which the creative spirit had just been breathed” (81)
--No words to translate the “scripture of Nature”
Review of Mt Hood (Eden Pastoral) Thankful for painting
“Enables us through it to testify to the greatness and the power of that being who
Created it” (85)
--offered a national landscape for which there is no equivalent
**Peace in answer to Civil War (Emerson)
pg 88 Indians in picture=”narrative element”
did he retain, as one critic questioned, “those individual details which make up the truth og nature?” (90)
Yosemite picture(free of man
“Echoing, visually, the descriptions of FitzHugh Ludlow and others, Bierstadt offered a landscape that appeared to b fresh from the hand of God” (91)
Euro critic said it was a “work of art” not just a “literal reproduction” or nature
Artist “must employ all the resources possible to him”(92)
*’No picture that we have ever seen has more entirely conveyed a sense of natural sublimity” (92)
!!Transcendental vocabulary
(Bier. Wasn’t trying to accurately portray western landscape but instead impose transcendental ideas onto natural pictures
Ironically he took hold in Europe
**Among Sierra**
Important, fully constructed
Possessed “the poetic imagination” necessary for landscape painter
Combination of panorama and detail***
Surrounded by it, but step into then scene into nature!!!!
“pg 94” Walden
Sierra( existed outside of time. “Visual embodiment of the wilderness myth at the core of America’s definition of itself” (94)
(Supplied by transcendentalists
Over time, the scenes changed
1881 America’s taste in landscape changes—also lit(realism
critic “in his later days, mere scenery has found its proper place” (100)
B dies 2/18/1902 in NY
“The most active element of the painting is light” (97)
“America as pristine land, divinely favored” (102)
Read Letter!!!!! 307
Slides:
Rocky Mt Lander’s Peak (Mt divine, use of light)
Valley of Yosemite (divine light, garden of Eden)
Looking down, 1865
Storm in Rockies, wrath, light
Among Sierras(heaven, grandeur.
Bierstadt, Baigell
Just because he hung with the crowd doesn’t lessen his appreciation for nature
“We know nothing of Bierstadt’s feelings about being in nature, although we must assume he took both physical and spiritual pleasure in it” (page?)
Letter to “Crayon” July 10, 1859
Pg 10-11 describing mountains
“The scenery might elevate the soul, but it provided no vehicle for transcendence” (11)
God=author
(writers, scientists, explorers, artists=”dissect” his script carefully”
11-Religion not unified them or “organizing force for Biersatdt”
**(descriptions of plates is helpful)
“replaced religion with an aesthetic of the secular sublime” (11)
Landscapes of Frederic Church
By Franklin Kelly
Student of Cole
Famous in his own time (2)
Hard work (8-9)
His career was not created by the “Great Paintings” (Niagara, Heart of Andes)
Making himself known (10)
(Emerson)
1. participated in professional organizations
2. painted ambitious pictures
3. publicity
4. articles and press
(New England Scenery, 1851)
“great paintings”(pay as you enter
5 feet wide (literary and spiritual allegory “Christian on the Border…valley”
critics writing about him—“some of the longest and most thoughtful reviews ever penned about American art” (16)??
People in NY began to “assimilate the implications” of his work(from thereon he was not the only landscape painters in town
**Became more reclusive(chose solitude of the Hudson River property
Attacked by critic Jarves
Needed travel, rest(internationally recognized
“The Afterglow” (23)( 4 “rays of setting sun, electrifying surrounding clouds, while storms whirled on wither side” (23)
“one of his finest works”
“fascination with phenomenon” (traced to Cole)
The foundations of his fame were New England scenery
“not finer views in the world than he can command from his windows” (28)
(look into his own backyard
(Olana was his Walden)
Chapter 2
Giant spectacular landscapes
*** “great summation pieces meant not only to impress and entertain the public…but also to instruct and edify” (p. 31)
“A great work of art is a delight and a lesson” (p. 31)
***The Quote*** (pg 32)
convey complex ideas about mankind
“His goal was always the same: to make landscape painting rise above the merely descriptive and do far more than simply record the basic facts of the external world. He wanted his art, through landscape, to address issues of profound significance and , in doing so, to convey complex ideas about the world and mankind.” (MORE)
Catskills at 18 years old(Church **was Cole’s only pupil
Cole(”virtues and beauties of American landscape” (33)
(science, religion and national identity)
Americans began to notice/have an awareness of surroundings
Church( “higher style of landscape”
Express “elevated truths about mankind and his earthly existence” (33)
Important to Cole, not for what it says about nature but about “human condition”
Raise landscape from traditionally low position
Not Old World themes, new world themes
Cole in 1844 (shortly before Church became student)
Pg 34 “They are subjects of a moral and religious nature and on such I think it the duty of the artist to turn—his works ought not to be mere dead imitations of things—w/o the power to impress a Sentiment or enforce a moral or religious truth” (pg 35)
Pattern/trend(landscape more imaginary
Church. From Hartford – “how to create landscape that were repositories of important ideas” (36)
Church wants to develop personal and a communal moral” (39)
(42) use of “radiant light”(force of “revelation and clarity”
Rays of light, not always accurate
“These rays…suggest the rays of light seen emanating from God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, or Saints in countless Christian images” (42)
Physical journey becomes spiritual journey
*Late 1840s(paints New England (42)
--nice, “picturesque landscapes” but he also had works that were more dramatic, or sublime interpretation of nature
clouds, charged light
not just peaceful viewing, active
--created “first hand experience with world” 46
Emerson’s original relationship with universe
P. 46 “transcendentalist response”
Critics preferred realistic landscape (47) (against argument?)
“west Rock”(success, critic, Ruskin, First “fully mature work” established him as “independent artist” (50)
“Harvest” (Thoreau)
pg 51 “Church’s work is full of matter-of-fact reality of the here and now. His view closely parallels that of his contemporaries. HDT (pg 51)
( on the great NE landscape (Thoreau)
( for both, a precise description of the world they observed led to a deeper more profound truths”(in the particular, they were able to find the universal” (51)
Chapter 3
Visions of NE
“West Rock” made him one of the leading landscape painters, sketching tour of VT in 1849
Church trying to establish himself separate from Cole
Spring 1850 (sketching tour of Maine) –Thoreau
What sought there? The dramatic scenery and sublime landscape (57)
In Maine, one could see the New World as it was seen by the first settlers
Thoreau went to Maine for the first of three trips in 1846
(derived a new understanding of the American wilderness and an increased appreciation for its power” (58)
Church wanted a new scene, inspiration
--taste for the sublime(previously demonstrated in his imaginary work, now wanted to apply those effects to the real. Here he was seeking the intersection of the real and ideal !!!!!!!
He had never attempted such objects as in Maine (The new challenges of the frontier), discover self
1840s and 50s Americans “advised to study the works of the Dusseldorf masters” because they showed/demonstrated what Americans lacked.
“Beacon”
(”stark in its simplicity”, success because of its “fidelity to nature” (62)
1851 “NE Scenery”
-composite picture—many details specific to the portrayal of NE generally (Church showing the universal in the details)
New England (Cole, Pastoral state)
“for Church, this was the perfect stage of development for the American nation, poised between nature and civilization, cultivated Paradise, but not destroying it.” (66)
Making high art out of the simple—he did not need allegory or historical event!
“Americans were, at last, ready to find in their own surroundings and their own lives the stuff of a modern mythology” (67)**
From then on, no more allegories or imaginaries….Church sought to convey ideas through his landscape
“Home by the Lake”, 1852
Lake, cabin, stumps (clear trees to plant crops and build home)
Walden
*Mt Ktaadn, 1853
Thoreau, 1846
In search of the “pure wilderness experience”(71-72)***
South American trip represented a turn to the commercial
121
Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture
Art history in context
“American landscapists, unlike some of the writers, were the avatars of faith, belief” (xiv)
“by virtue of their exercise of creative powers and privileged readings of nature they could be recognized as faux-clergymen of a sort”
Views are a composite of religion, philosophy
Recognize in nature a “connection with creation and directly or indirectly, with God” (xiv)
“transcendentalists accepted God’s immanence”
-God and nature were interchangeable
“ideas of God’s nature and of God in nature became hopelessly intertangled.” (3)
Distinctly American art
Influence of Cole who depicted nature/West as Eden
Perry Miller “Nature…in America means wilderness” (4) Garden of West
As much as West represents manifest destiny, it was also Eden reclaimed
The landscapists were not imposing holy images onto landscape, instead they were revealing the sublime
Nature as “church”(no, instead, see God’s image in it (pg 14 Nature and Art)
Religion and philosophy projected onto nature
“Nature worship”
God’s immanence( shown through light
Chapter 3
Sublime—1700s—fear, majesty, gloom
Mts=deity, divine
Humility, awe
New way to see the Sublime(through silence
18th century sublime from Huge to impressive—landscape artist, convey the sublime
Cole(Mts of NH “a union of the picturesque, sublime and the magnificent” (38)
Silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths
Thoreau lake(landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature (Cole, Walden)
Light(landscape artist turns matter into spirit” (41)
Pg 42 “In the large paintings by Church and Bierstadt, light moves, consumes, agitates and drowns. Its ecstasy approaches transcendence…it extends the esthetic to a religious attitude.” ( Emerson, “The Oversoul” “The soul in man is a light”
Abandonment of self
Chapter 4
What is striking about Church and Bierstadt(not scientific accuracy, ability, but expression of a philosophy and religion through art (quote?)
Church like Humboldt(who also influences Emerson
Example of how “concerns and ideas of the age found their way into landscape painting” –broad interests
• “He is a paradigm of the artist who becomes the public voice of a culture, summarizing its beliefs, embodying its ideas, and confirming its assumptions”—“harmonious co-existence of science, religion, and art(”ideal worldview of the 19th century (67)
interest in laws of the universe, reveal the soul
why go to the tropics? Influence of humb. (68)
Heart of the Andes “Church’s pictorial affirmation of God in nature” (71)
Connection and segue from Emerson and Bier.
Solitude, self-meditation(viewer takes on role
Thomas Cole, Essay on Scenery
Importance and significance of American scenery(Americans are fortunate to have it, not many appreciate or take time to see it
Unity of past, present, future( give a taste of immortality an, prepare selves for greatness
“There is in the human mind an almost inseparable connection between the beautiful and the good” (4)
each must find inspiration, beauty on our own
solitude(spiritual experience
“feels like a calm religious tone steal through his mind” (5)
**page 6 first and second paragraphs
“taste, which is the perception of the beautiful, and the knowledge of the ….”
Study of art and nature is “conducive to our happiness and well-being”
America scenery “has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe” (8)
“those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched” (8)(God, creator, undefiled, eternal
Mts
Water(expressive feature: unrippled lake(”expression of tranquility and peace” (9)
Speaking of small lakes in NH (“they have such an aspect of deep seclusion, of utter and unbroken solitude, that, when standing on their brink a lonely traveler, I was overwhelmed with an emotion of the sublime, such as I have rarely felt.” (11)
Not the individual aspects, but the “whole” that “brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths” (11))
Both those quotes could have come from HDT
Forest, primitive, all stages of life
Nature quickly passing into civilization
Church and Bierstadt do it in different ways—focus
August 26, 1856 Thoreau Journal
The Maine Woods
Footnote, pg 58(Church visited many of the same places
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