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Course: The Seeing America Project > Unit 9
Lesson 5: For teachers: learning resources1870-1980: learning resources
The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty
Key points
- The idea for the Statue of Liberty originated with Édouard Laboulaye, a historian of American history and advocate for French democracy. Laboulaye conceived of a symbol that represented a nation that valued liberty and freedom, prompted by the abolition of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. The sculpture was commissioned in 1876, the centennial year of the United States.
- The statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was financed by the people of France and America, rather than by governments. Sections of the statue were exhibited at World’s Fairs to raise money. The French raised 400,000 francs for the sculpture, and the Americans needed to raise around 250,000 dollars for the pedestal.
- The final pedestal funds were raised in less than six months, mainly from donations of less than a dollar. The people who donated — many of them poor, many of them immigrants — showed their belief in American ideals and ideologies.
-The sculpture takes an abstract idea — liberty — and personifies it in the tradition of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. The seven spikes of her crown reference the seven seas and seven continents, symbolizing the idea of liberty spreading throughout the world. She holds a tablet that holds the date July 4, 1776 written in Roman numerals.
- Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the interior structure of the statue so that it could survive the heavy winds it is subjected to. The thin copper sheets are supported inside by a system of four pylons that have a web of supports connected to them that independently stabilize each copper sheet.
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More to think about
The design of the Statue of Liberty and its pedestal relies on references to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. Do you think that the average person who contributed to Joseph Pulitzer’s fundraising campaign understood those artistic references? If not, why do you think they used those references anyway?
Celebrating America's place in the world
Key points
- The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago in 1893 to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. Such World’s Fairs were an opportunity for countries to showcase their prosperity, culture, and innovations, and it brought international attention to the nation.
- The expansive fairgrounds were a spectacle, earning the nickname of “The White City.” The buildings, however, were temporary structures intended to look like marble. The architecture drew inspiration from European cities.
- Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “Frontier Thesis” at the 1893 Fair, arguing that American identity had been created through its settlement of the frontier. While he saw westward expansion as what had formed America’s national character, he claimed that era had ended.
- While the Impressionists often worked directly from their subject, Childe Hassam was in Chicago before the fair opened, painting images like this for souvenir brochures. He worked from architectural drawings and unfinished construction sites to imagine a welcoming, inviting space for tourists to visit.
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More to think about
The video describes the architecture of the World’s Fair of 1893 as almost like a cross between Rome and Venice. What do you think the architects might have been trying to express by drawing from European styles for these buildings?
In this painting, Childe Hassam depicts the horticultural building, which claimed to include every specimen of plant life. Why do you think a World’s Fair would include exhibits like this?
Cuban cigars, Cuban independence
Key points
- After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Cuba was placed under U.S. government control until it was granted independence in 1902. The years of Spanish occupation had been brutal, and economic hardships had continued under American rule, but Willard Metcalf’s painting Havana Harbor does not allude to these difficulties.
- Metcalf visited Cuba in 1902, researching for a commissioned series of paintings to be displayed in the Havana Tobacco Company store, a luxurious salesroom in New York City designed by Stanford White. The interior was designed to create a tropical vision for wealthy American consumers.
- While Metcalf’s Impressionist brushstroke feels casual, this skillful composition carefully leads the viewer around an idealized panorama of Havana Harbor. Focusing on tropical colors and evoking the sensation of warm breezes, Metcalf erases the complicated history and troubled conditions of Cuba.
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More to think about
Havana Harbor erases the reality of recent Cuban history in order to sell high-end tobacco to wealthy customers in New York City. Compare this painting to Diego Rivera’s Sugar Cane, which directly confronts harsh economic realities of Latin America. How might the circumstances behind each of these commissions have influenced the way the artists portray their subjects?
Beyond New York — Bellows and World War I
Key points
- American entry into World War I was influenced by a series of reports, notably the British Bryce Report of 1915, outlining atrocities said to have been perpetrated by German soldiers in Belgium. While these reports may not have been entirely factual, they swayed public opinion to support American intervention in the war.
- An unusual subject for George Bellows, Return of the Useless is part of his War Series, a group of paintings, drawings and lithographs that created a visual account of the war. His depiction of the brutal treatment of these Belgian civilians being returned from forced labor camps, aimed to generate sympathy among its American audience.
- Bellows drew on art historical traditions, especially Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War prints, to imagine the abuses described in the Bryce Report. His staged interpretation uses dramatic lighting, gestures, and details to convey a sense of danger and suffering.
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More to think about
Many artists created work in support of the war effort, including James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam, which encouraged enlistment in the armed forces. Why do you think Uncle Sam became so iconic, while Bellows’s War Series images didn’t?
The Pueblo Modernism of Velino Shije Herrera
Key points
- In the early 20th century, there was new interest in Pueblo art and culture from modernist artists and the growing tourist industry. This came at a time when Indian Schools endangered Native American cultural traditions in an effort by the U.S. government to eliminate Native American ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture.
- Beginning in 1918, informal painting classes were offered at the Santa Fe Indian School, and Velino Shije Herrera, along with fellow artists Awa Tsireh and Fred Kabotie, developed a genre of watercolor painting on paper that connected European styles with indigenous traditions of painting. Works like Design, Tree and Birds blended traditional symbolism and forms, with elements of modernist painting to create a hybrid for non-native audiences.
- As modernist Pueblo painting grew in popularity, some of its supporters also worked to protect the rights of the Puebloan peoples, supporting organizations like The Indian Rights Association, which helped raise awareness about the devastation created through government policies and practices.
Go deeper
Jessica L. Horton and Janet Catherine Berlo, “Pueblo Painting in 1932 Folding Narratives of Native Art into American Art History” in A Companion to American Art, edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill, and Jason D. LaFountain (Wiley, 2015)
More to think about
Modern Native American artists like Clarissa Rizal and Jamie Okuma have blended their native traditions with contemporary style or meaning. What makes a work of art “traditional”? What other examples can you think of where an artist has blended their own culture with mainstream forms or techniques?