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Constructions of Americanism: Three case studies

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Constructions of Americanism: Three case studies

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF AMERICANISM:
THREE CASE STUDIES
by
Anna Dylan
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(Art History)
December 1997
Copyright 1997 Anna Dylan
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UMI Number: 1393194
Copyright 1997 by
Dylan, Anna Lea
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UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CA LIFO RN IA
T H E GRADUATE SC H O O L
U NIVERSITY PA RK
LOS ANGELES. C A LIFO R N IA SOOOT
This thesis, written by
PVca- nJ___________________
under the direction of hSX~— Thesis Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of the
requirements for the degree of
M As t e r ? o' r a£T-5 ^ i t o Hi staffy
THESIS COMMITTEE^
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Constructions of Americanism:
Three Case Studies
Alfred Stieglitz actively sought to position himself
within a debate that has concerned several generations of
Americans for the last century over the discernment of an
art that is somehow uniquely American.
This analysis examines three case studies affected by
American identity as it was constructed in the mid 1920's
in America and abroad. The first part of the paper focuses
on the quest for a national American aesthetic and the
social and political issues that affected the quest. The
second section concentrates on Stieglitz's views, and the
third section is concerned with the ardent interest in
America after World War I in Germany. Finally, the paper
examines Le Corbusier's utilization of Americanism, after
World War I, to highlight modern building approaches.
In effect, Americanism remains impossible to define
because of the shifting properties at work in the
construction of identity.
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Page
THESIS 1
END NOTES 45
REFERENCES 49
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In March, 1925, Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John
Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand, Georgia O'Keeffe, and
Alfred Stieglitz participated in the exhibition entitled,
"Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans,"1 which took
place at the Anderson Galleries in New York City. In a
review of the show, Henry McBride, a journalist for the New
York Sun, reported that
the seven live ones...and their half alive
friends assembled in the Anderson Galleries and
something as near to a French vernissage as we
can manage took place. There was an immense
buzz of talk of people who were as much
interested in each other as in the new pictures,
for the Stieglitz premieres do bring out all the
chic types in town.2
Not only does Seven Americans typify an exhibiting
climate of the visual arts in New York during 1925, but it
illuminates some of the complexities that have arisen
within the discourse of American art. In What Is American
in American Art. Lloyd Goodrich writes that expressionism,
in his words, "the most widespread form of modernism in
America,"3
can be linked to certain elements in the
American mind; our continuing tradition of
romanticism; our partiality for art which
embodies emotions arising from specific
realities; and our preference for free personal
expression as against formalism.4
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Goodrich's position and the title of his book are
indicative of the continuing problem that has concerned
several generations of American artists, critics, and
others interested in the arts for the last century, which
is the discernment of an art that is somehow uniquely
American. Stieglitz's curation of Seven Americans and his
direction of An American Place, a gallery he established in
1929, indicates that Stieglitz actively sought to position
himself within this debate. Stieglitz's interest in the
debate was so strong, in fact, that he frequently added
the epithet "American" to other projects, in addition to
Seven Americans: O'Keeffe's 1923 show was billed "Georgia
O'Keeffe American;" his Intimate Gallery was inaugurated as
an "American Room" in 1925; and in 1929 he opened another
gallery, An American Place. Yet, Stieglitz's presentation
of Seven Americans indicates that he and his contemporaries
faced a problem in defining Americanism and American art,
for there is nothing inherently American about the work
included in Seven Americans.
The issue of defining Americanism that Seven Americans
exemplifies may be viewed as a part of a much larger
phenomenon of the 1920's in America and Europe, which was
characterized by a preoccupation of Europeans with
Josephine Baker in Paris and the interest in Charlie
Chaplin in Germany. Americanism and the issues that it
came to represent became enmeshed in fabric of the period
2
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both in America and in Europe.
Some principal complexities of Seven Americans are
indicated by the title of the exhibition itself. These
include Alfred Stieglitz's portrayal as the "presenter" of
the American artists and the artists' titled portrayal as
Americans, which preceded their portrayal as anything else,
even as artists. Furthermore, it may be notable that the
title does not mention the word "artist" or "art" at all.
The choices that Stieglitz made in his curation of the
show, both in the work and the title, suggest that
Stieglitz believed that there was such a thing as
Americanism, and that he could identify it.
To attempt to define America or Americanism as these
terms were understood in 1925 is an impossible task. The
act of definition requires objective certainty, and
definitions of America and things American are constantly
changing. Because of this, one has to look at particular
circumstances and contexts in which this was a major issue.
Americanism and American art were major concerns for
Stieglitz and his contemporaries, and they were connected
to larger social and cultural problems of the period.
By 1925 the United States was defining its national
identity in relation to the rest of the world. After
America had assumed global responsibility through its
participation in World War I, disagreement arose about the
extent to which Americans should concern themselves with
3
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European conflict. On the one hand, America could act as a
global protector, and on the other, it could embrace a role
of neutrality by staying out of foreign affairs. Abraham
Davidson describes the decade after World War I in America
as "a time of self-absorption, self-congratulation,
complacency, and, concomitantly, disentanglement from the
affairs of Europe."5 The enactment of immigration
restrictions and quota systems after World War X were among
the signs of a growing American nationalism. The National
Origins Act was signed into legislation by Calvin Coolidge
in 1924.
It limited the annual migration to three percent
of 'the number of foreign-born persons of such
nationality resident in the United States' as
determined by the 1910 census. [It] reduced the
national quotas to two per cent, and provided
the formula which would guarantee that the bulk
of future immigration would come from
northwestern Europe.6
Such an enactment may have resulted in part from an
American concern that United States'institutions "were
being undermined by the tidal wave of European
immigrants."7
At this time, when the United States was reexamining
its foreign and domestic roles, it was also being inscribed
with its own distinct and independent artistic identity,
and the "search for and definition of America was an issue
which dominated the thought and art of many American
4
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writers in the 1920's."8
The quest for a National American aesthetic consumed
not only Stieglitz but other American intellectuals,
including Waldo Frank, author of Our America, published in
1919, Robert Coady, publisher of the magazine The Soil, and
the team of William Carlos Williams and Robert McAlmon,
collaborators on the magazine, Contact. The principal
concern of these writers was an indigenous American art.
Frank, for example, called for
artists to re-present the essence of America in
their art. He believed that artists, acting as
spiritual prophets guided by intuition could
most successfully convey this essence in
depictions of the American landscape. This new
American art, distinguishable largely by its
subject matter, could, he thought, help
establish an American culture free from European
influences.9
Coady, Williams and McAlmon, divergently, espoused an
American aesthetic based on the environmental experience.
For example, in the first two essays of The Soil, published
in 1917, Coady' s examples of American art included a broad
range of objects and monuments, such as The Panama Canal,
sky-scraper, East River, bridges, Charlie Chaplin, cigar-
store Indians, and window dressers.10 For Coady, an
American art "would embody the realities of a culture
undergoing radical transformation through its rapidly
growing technology.1,11 Similarly, in Contact Williams and
McAlmon "took up Coady's dilemma with all its ensuing
5
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ambiguities... In order to be viable, art had to conform to
the life of a people in a broad cultural sense."12
Just as The Soil and Contact delineate the cultural
positions of their publishers, so Seven Americans marks
Stieglitz's position in the larger discourse of the
identity of Americanism and American art. Seven Americans
consisted of 159 works. Charles Demuth contributed several
poster portraits of the Stieglitz circle executed in a
signboard style with poster paints on panels. The one
representing Georgia O'Keeffe consisted of a potted plant
(popularly known as a snake plant), beside which the
letters of her surname were arranged. O'Keeffe showed
paintings of enormous yellow lilies and wide-opened
petunias.13 Dove showed 24 works, among which were semi
abstract landscapes and a number of whimsical assemblages,
including a symbolic portrait of Stieglitz composed of a
mirror, a lens, clock spring, and some steel wool.14
Strand's photographs included close-ups of machine parts,
studies of leaves, and views of New York, while Stieglitz
displayed 28 Equivalents photographs, images of clouds.15
Hartley's participation consisted of 25 landscapes and
still lifes executed in Europe, and Marin's consisted of
watercolors of Maine and New York. As this enumeration
clearly demonstrates, and as Whelan has noted, there was
little consensus on the definition of the term
"Americanism."
6
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The contents of Seven Americans display tremendous
stylistic diversity. On the other hand, the work included
in Seven Americans also shares characteristics insofar as
it appears distinctly different than other work by artists
of the same period, such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart
Benton. Benton's The Lord is Mv Shepherd of 1926, displays
a double portrait of a deaf couple in the American
heartland, while Grant Wood's Woman with Plants of 1929
shows Wood's mother holding a sansevieria plant, which
"symbolizes both her prowess as a gardener and the
hardiness of the pioneer spirit."16 Davidson describes
Benton and Wood as artists of the Regionalist movement,
whose work was identified with "the heartland of
America... celebrations of the fortitude, enterprise,
resilience, and colorfulness of America."17 Such work may
be characterized as having American allegorical content.
Seven Americans' Americanism, on the other hand, typifies
an alternative Americanism, and it may be viewed as
Stieglitz's presentation of America.
Stieglitz was closely identified with the artists that
he chose to exhibit in Seven Americans, as he was friends
with many of them and he had a long term commitment to
their work. Many had previously exhibited at Stieglitz's
gallery, 291. The reasons that Stieglitz chose these
artists could have been because of previous financial
investments in the work, because the artists were all part
7
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of his social circle, or Stieglitz may have chosen them
because he saw the work included in Seven Americans as work
that was particularly American. Even so, it is not clear
how this work relays notions of Americanism, besides the
fact that all artists were born in America.
That Stieglitz was invested in the identification of
Americanism is certain, as indicated in the "American"
entitling of his galleries and exhibitions. The particular
nature of the American character at the heart of his
projects and Seven Americans, however, remains unclear.
This may be due to Seven Americans7 multiple mediums
(photographs, assemblages, and paintings), or due to the
various themes included (images of machinery, still lifes,
landscapes, and abstractions). Despite the fact that the
American identity of Seven Americans remains unclear, it is
Stieglitz's construction. Since there is nothing
inherently American about America, an American identity
must be created.
For Stieglitz and others, such as the publishers of
Our America. The Soil, and Contact and the painters,
Benton, Wood, and Mondrian, Americanism is imbedded in a
larger set of shifting social and cultural issues, which
include democracy, modernism, primitivism, high culture,
low culture, and commercialism. The art of the period of
Seven Americans expresses some of the tension surrounding
these issues, and looking to Stieglitz's discussion of
8
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these issues in his writing about art sheds light on how
Stieglitz's Americanism is constructed.
In view of Stieglitz's promotion of American artists
around the time of Seven Americans, it may seem curious
that years before Seven Americans could be viewed at the
Anderson Galleries, Stieglitz promoted European artists.
His promotion of European artists was so strong, in fact,
that his gallery, 291. became an instrumental force in the
American reception of avant-garde European artists,
including Picasso, Matisse, and Rodin. The shift in the
nationalities of the artists whom Stieglitz promoted is
only one of the many changing aspects of his position
regarding Americanism and American art.
Other views of Americanism in Germany and France at
the same time as Seven Americans are equally contradictory,
and they also help to illuminate the "constructed" nature
of Americanism. Similar to Stieglitz's vacillating model
of America, these examples of European fascination with
America, such as German Americanism, or Amerikanismus, and
Le Corbusier's support of American Taylorism and the
engineer, are imbedded in the same shifting issues of
democracy, modernism, primitivism, high culture, low
culture, and commercialism. These issues affected
Stieglitz throughout his career, which remained productive
from the 1890's until his death in 1946.18
9
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A lasting effect of Stieglitz's career is that he is
perhaps best known as a premier American photographer.
Richard Whelan notes that
...he was also a great discoverer
and promoter of photographers and artists in
other media, as well as a great publisher,
patron, and collector. Through both the
excellence of his own work and his militant
advocacy, Stieglitz won widespread acceptance of
photography as a fine art. He was the publisher
and editor in chief of Camera Work, a
magnificently produced magazine devoted not only
to photography but also to modernist art. At
his gallery, '291', he presented the first
American exhibitions of Cezanne, Picasso,
Matisse, and Brancusi— and he was the first to
show the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he would
marry in 1924.19
Due to the factors that Stieglitz is associated with
multitudinous components of the American and international
artistic landscape, that his career spanned so many
decades, and that social and cultural issues affecting
constructions of Americanism shifted throughout his
lifetime, Stieglitz's views often contradicted each other.
Consequently, Stieglitz's conception of America is
difficult to ascertain.
In America, Stieglitz and others' strong interest in a
national identity is related to the necessity for the
nation to have its own singular defined culture, a need
that may have gone as far back as colonial times. There
are many reasons why it would be important to constitute
America with a culture of its own. From its inception as a
10
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European colony, America was the territory of another
nation. The colonies' break from colonization necessitated
the establishment of a new identity, one which would be
different from that of its colonizer, the British Empire.
Because America has had a relatively brief history,
its lineage lacks tradition, especially compared with the
great imperial powers of the world. One way to deflect the
perception that a new nation may be weak is for it to
actually utilize and strengthen its lack of history by
focusing on the present. Henry Ford, inventor of the
automobile, and integral part of an emerging American
identity, voiced this sentiment:
History is more or less bunk. We want to
live in the present and the only history
that is worth a tinker's damn is the
history we make today.20
Another reason for America to be inscribed with a
defined culture is that its population, a "melting pot" by
its own immigrant nature, consists of many different groups
of people, and these groups need to be unified. The most
effective way to unify may be to incorporate multiple
ethnicities or scrape away the various customs and
assimilate everyone into the same mold. The question
becomes one of the nature of that mold. The answer, the
unifying mold, is at the crux of what Americanism is.
Although bringing America's melting pot to a boil is
culturally important, economics may be the most important
11
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reason why it has been necessary to imbue America with its
own identity and, thereby, its own art. A strong cultural
identity may serve to strengthen a country economically.
Once a national identity has been established, cultural
prescriptions may follow, and those cultural prescriptions
may encourage consumerism. As Christopher Wilson notes:
During the span of the Progressive era, topical
magazines achieved a centrality in American life
never duplicated before or since. They were the
original home of large-scale national
advertising and market research; the primary
popular medium within which the 'helping
professions' and other experts first reached a
mass audience...Topical magazines were a
crucible of modern consumer culture.21
The proliferation of advertising in American magazines
may be viewed as the editors' bestowal of culture on their
readers. Leach notes that consumerism, which advertising
encouraged, became America's distinct culture, which the
nation had been lacking since its birth. As Leach writes:
In the decades following the Civil War, American
capitalism began to produce a distinct culture,
unconnected to traditional family or community
values, to religion in any conventional sense,
or to political democracy. It was a secular
business and market-oriented culture, with the
exchange and circulation of money and goods at
the foundation of its aesthetic life and of its
moral sensibility.22
Consequently, consumerism, which in many ways may have been
contrasted with culture in Europe, became America's
culture. The rise of consumerism and the rise of
12
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Stieglitz7s career occurred simultaneously. Thus,
Stieglitz7s vision of America, through his own work and
through the work of those he promoted, has a strong
relationship to the rise of consumerism in America.
Although Stieglitz7s contribution to the history of
visual arts is influential, he is associated primarily with
photography. His association with the photographic medium
enables him to be seen as a modern figure because the
camera may be viewed as an advent of modernity, since its
technological innovation had limitless implications in
daily life, including art making and the reception of print
media. Rejoicing the introduction of the camera into
modern life, Stieglitz exclaimed, "Just as we stand before
the door of a new social era, so we stand in art too before
a new medium of expression - the true medium. .., | 2 3
America is often associated with technology, and one
might well argue that the camera brought the arts into the
technological era. In this modern era, a truly modern man
must have been able to master new technologies. Stieglitz
undoubtedly became a master of photography, as well as a
great photographic innovator. In an article published in
Scribner7s Magazine in 1899 he wrote that
there are recognized but three classes of
photographers - the ignorant, the purely
technical, and the artistic...the third
bring the feeling and inspiration of the
artist, to which is added afterward the
purely technical knowledge...it is only
after an intimate acquaintance with them
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and their productions that the casual
observer comes to realize the fact that the
ability to make a truly artistic photograph
is...the result of an artistic instinct
coupled with years of labor.24
This quotation acknowledges how Stieglitz used the
setting up of a problem and the assertion of himself as the
solution to that stated problem as a tool of persuasion.
This strategy became a manner in which Stieglitz would
campaign for his beliefs throughout his career. In the
case of the 1899 Scribner/s article, the problem is that
there are too many photographers, and Stieglitz has
designated himself as the authority who is able to
distinguish the different breeds of them. Consequently, in
order truly to know photography, a person must have known
what Stieglitz thought about photography. Stieglitz,
thereby, fashions himself as a commodity in an intellectual
market. This was what in fact would occur with the
publication of Camera Work, a magazine that, beginning in
1903, would espouse his artistic beliefs.
In view of the articles that Stieglitz published in
Camera Work. it becomes apparent that he did not see his
professional mission as a small one. He described his
gallery as "not devoted entirely to the ultra modern in
painting and sculpture. It is devoted to ideas. To the
development of such."25 Earlier, in a letter to Sadakichi
Hartmann in 1911 he wrote,
14
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There is certainly no art in America today,
what is more, there is, as yet, no genuine
love for it. Possibly Americans have no
genuine love for anything, but I am not
hopeless.26
In this passage Stieglitz has once again posed a problem
and presented his role in the solution of the problem.
There is no art in America, not because Americans do not
have an innate ability to create art, but because Americans
do not know how to see. Stieglitz would take on the
mission of giving Americans vision, and his desire to
bestow the blind Americans with sight in a world full of
darkness may have been related to his own American
experience.
Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to German
immigrant parents in 1864.27 His early upbringing in
Hoboken and New York was influenced by a cosmopolitan
social environment, which was comprised of his parents'
international friends and family. Because his mother's
cousin was an instructor at City College in New York,
Stieglitz spent some time there. Later, in 1881, his
father, Edward, took the family to Germany. It would seem
that the elder Stieglitz was not pleased with the education
available in the American school system, and so Alfred
attended the Technische Hochschule in Berlin from 1882-
1886. There Stieglitz was displaced, as he was an outsider
in Germany and upon his return to America, his European
experience rendered him an outsider once again.
15
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From this time on, as posited by Richard Whelan,
Stieglitz became very interested in the burgeoning field of
photography, and he spent most of his time perfecting his
photographic craft. Stieglitz not only published many
photographs, but he also became instrumental in
investigating new photographic processes. He used these
processes and discoveries in development companies, such as
the Photochrome Engraving Company, which he established in
1890. His involvement in such commercial enterprises, the
publication of periodicals, and his galleries, may
complicate his notions of commerce and consumerism, as they
relate to his identification of Americanism and American
Art.
The major accomplishments of Stieglitz's career that
may best relay his construction of Americanism and American
art are Camera Work and exhibitions he presented of other
artists' work at 291 and the Anderson Galleries. The
period of his participation in these projects dates from
1886, the year of his first surviving photographs, and
lasted until 1925, the year he arranged the exhibition of
Seven Americans.28 Within the scope of these projects the
issues of democracy, modernism, primitivism, high culture,
low culture, and commercialism conflate at times and at
others were placed in contradiction.
One shifting aspect of Stieglitz's construction of
Americanism involves his intended audience. At times,
16
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Stieglitz spoke to an elite group about high art. In his
article "A Plea for Art Photography in America," written
early in his career in 1892, Stieglitz declared
We cannot compete with those English
fellows, I heard remarked over and over
again...And why not? I should like to ask.
Have we Americans not the same innate sense
for the beautiful? have we not the same
skill to reproduce what we see? have we
not the same material to work with? We
have all of this, and still look at the
difference existing between our work and
that of our English cousins.29
The tone of the excerpt seems to be directed at the
upper class, one which would "compete with those English
fellows." Such a segment of society would have access to
natural beauty, away from urbanity, and the means to
acquire the photographic materials necessary to compete
photographically with the English. Although Stieglitz
seemed to be making a class distinction when he spoke to an
elite group from the upper class about the kind of art it
should promote in 1892, he also attempted to strip class
distinction by implying much later, in 1923, that art
should be universal and free of class privilege. This view
is clarified by Stieglitz in his description of some of his
photographs depicting clouds. Of them, he wrote
I'd finally do something I had in mind for
years. I'd make a series of cloud
pictures...to put down my philosophy of
life - to show that my photographs were not
due to subject matter - not to special
trees, or faces, or interiors, to special
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privileged, clouds were there for everyone
- no tax as yet on them - free.30
Here Stieglitz maintains that clouds are free and
available to everyone, whether of a high or low class, and
it implies that so is all of nature's beauty and art. This
idealist view neglects to acknowledge the irony that
Stieglitz's own galleries, periodicals, and nature, itself,
tended to be relevant and available for only a select
group, the upper class who could afford to patronize them.
Stieglitz's own experience of nature occurred in privileged
locations, such as Lake George, where he vacationed
throughout his life.
Just as Stieglitz yearned for everyone to have access
to natural beauty and art, Henry Ford most likely yearned
for every man to have access to an automobile. Stieglitz
and Ford were similar figures in other aspects, for just as
Ford epitomized American technological ingenuity, Stieglitz
wedded American ingenuity with the quest for an American
art. As Stieglitz noted, "we seem to lack the energy to
strive forward - to push ahead with that American will
power which is so greatly admired by the whole civilized
world, and most of all, by the Americans themselves."31
Similarly, the camera brought art together with modern
technology, for, as Dickran Tashjian declares, "Here was
the camera...an instrument perhaps capable of visualizing a
world we scarcely knew existed."32 Some may have
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associated the camera with the loss of the human touch
because it is a machine. According to this view, the act
of artistic creation lay in the technology of the camera
and not the photographer behind the lens. Stieglitz found
himself lodged in this debate regarding photography. On
the one hand, he praised photography for its mechanical
qualities, and on the other, he stressed that the human
touch was critical for the creation of a superior
photograph. These modernist views echo the clashing
concerns of Americanism: technological innovation and
tradition.
The issues that help construct Americanism may be
found within Stieglitz's photographic work and his writings
about the work. Two of the most renowned photographs of
Stieglitz's vast oeuvre are Hand of Man. of 1902, and The
Steerage. taken in 1907.
Whelan's description of Hand of Man details:
a steam-belching locomotive approaching across
the grim expanses of a railroad yard. In this
picture, which Stieglitz said was meant to
demonstrate the 'pictorial possibilities of the
commonplace,' the tracks seem to outline the
fingers of a great hand reaching forward.33
Hand of Man has a strong relationship to Stieglitz's
construction of Americanism, especially as it concerns the
issue of modernism, brought on by American technological
innovation and the conflict that came with it at the time
the photograph was taken. American mass production and
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city living enabled America to become a strong economic and
social force in the world, but with this new power came the
potential loss of humanity. Hand of Man presents this
dilemma of technological innovation in America.
Stieglitz's "Hand of Man" is not human at all but the
shadow of railroad tracks. The photographic irony mirrors
the tension between technological progress and its
attendant problems in the early twentieth century.
The Steerage was taken by Stieglitz in 1907, while on
a sailing trip aboard the German Kaiser Wilhelm XI with his
family, and it presents some of the difficulties that
Stieglitz encountered when constructing a stable identity
for his image of America. Whelan details Stieglitz's
recollection of the photograph's conception. According to
this recounting, Stieglitz was uncomfortable in the company
of the upper class on the ship, as he was
so repelled by the faces of the nouveaux
riches among their fellow passengers in
first class that he spent much of the first
few days sitting in his steamer chair with
his eyes closed.34
Eventually, he escaped the upper class, or the "nouveaux
riches," (a term, which itself may indicate Stieglitz's
view that this group was superficial) and instead ventured
toward the steerage passengers, or the lower class on the
ship. According to Whelan, although Stieglitz was
physically separated from both the upper class and lower
class on the ship, he identified more closely with the
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lower class. He writes:
Standing alone at the railing that
separated him from the steerage,
[Stieglitz] wished he could change places
with any of the people before him. Neither
the situation nor the feelings were new.
Stieglitz always identified with the
poor. . .35
Just when Stieglitz appears to be making a call for social
action, he steers the description away from social standing
and enacts a discussion of the formal qualities of the
photograph, or as Whelan repeats Stieglitz's narration of
The Steerage. Stieglitz
was especially struck by the formalistic
qualities of what he saw. He felt that his
own emotions were perfectly embodied by the
specific, complex arrangement of shapes at
that moment - as he himself described it,
'a round straw hat, the funnel leaning
left, the stairway leaning right, the white
draw-bridge with its railings made of
circular chains, white suspenders crossing
on the back of a man...below, round shapes
of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the
sky, making a triangular shape./3&
Stieglitz has constituted The Steerage with a
particular meaning, and it is nearly impossible to strip
the photograph of it. The Steerage, and especially the
story attached to it, helps to illuminate and examine the
issues of modernism, primitivism, high culture, and low
culture, which are all concerns of Americanism. That The
Steerage may be viewed as a construction of meaning is
further emphasized, as Whelan points out, in that
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It is amusingly ironic that Stieglitz's
photograph - which is frequently reproduced
to represent hopeful immigrants on their
way to America - actually depicts people
returning to Europe. Although some of them
may have been turned back because of
failure to meet the financial or health
requirements for entrance, most were
probably 'birds of passage,' skilled
artisans who worked in the construction
trades and more or less commuted between
Europe and America in two-year cycles.37
Stieglitz's account of The Steerage simultaneously
displays primitivism, or a belief in the superiority of a
simple way of life close to nature, and formalism, a method
of art interpretation which only takes formal qualities of
art into consideration. On the one hand the photograph,
for Stieglitz, is about his envy of the noble savage, which
in this case is the poor immigrant on the ship. The poor
immigrant is further defined by its contrast to the
"nouveaux riches," or the upper class. Although Stieglitz
states that he wanted to trade places with the poor on the
ship, he does not state that he in fact did trade places
with any of them. He merely visited their habitat as an
outsider and went back to where he came from. Stieglitz's
narration of The Steerage attempts to place Stieglitz with
an objective perspective, but his experience is not that of
the lower class; he simply observes the lower class from a
distance.
Stieglitz's fascination with the primitive also
surfaces in an article he penned, entitled "Two Artists'
Haunts," published in Photographic Times in January 1895.
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In it Stieglitz recounts the photographic expedition he
took in rural Dutch villages, including Schwarzwald. In
the article he describes the people of Schwarzwald as a
quaint oddity, and he nearly characterizes them as mythical
creatures:
Unlike our cosmopolitan America, where the
people of every section possess almost the same
characteristics... The people of
Schwarzwald.. .are like the phase of nature that
surrounds them. Immense in stature, hardy,
brave beyond belief, stoical from long
habit...
The interest in the primitive that Stieglitz expressed
in this passage was one that came with industrialization
and the increase of city dwelling. In order to escape the
rigors of modern life, a primitive, more simple life became
desirable to some. For Stieglitz, the city peasant became
the primitive or the "other."
Stieglitz seems certain that the people of Schwarzwald
are "brave beyond belief," however, one must question how
he comes to this conclusion. What is his measure of
visible courage? It would seem that Stieglitz has written
about the people of Schwarzwald because they are different
than Stieglitz and his audience. By doing so, Stieglitz
has rendered them the "other" in order to show what is
lacking in his present company.
The complex issue of class prevents Stieglitz from
constructing a unified conception of American identity.
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Stieglitz would vacillate between the categories of high
class and low class for the rest of his life. In his
narration of The Steerage, he does not claim to be part of
either group, but he hints that he is a part of both of
them. One must question the nature of Stieglitz's intended
audience, as it related to class, and it may be the case
that stieglitz altered his view of Americanism and American
art for multiple audiences. This may account for some of
the contradiction in his positions.
Another facet of Stieglitz's art that illuminates the
issues that make up Americanism is the American practice of
democratic voting. Although the Stieglitz of the Steerage
recollection experienced an envy of the poor passengers on
the boat, another Stieglitz wrote:
The American has a vote, therefore he
thinks he must have an opinion. The
American is superficial, and he lacks
different feeling. I as an American have a
right to say this, for I have lived a life
which has given me the opportunity to test
and judge.
Just as Stieglitz's The Steerage narration sets
Stieglitz apart from and at the same time, within a
particular group, here he does the same by stating his view
of Americans and their opinions. In doing so, Stieglitz
attempts to strengthen his authority by inferring that he
is an objective, yet well informed, party. His stated
observation may be considered another of Stieglitz's
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methods of persuasion. His criticism of Americans is
validated by the fact that he is one of them, but he has
spent time outside of America. It would seem that his
European education came from economic privilege, while for
most Americans the only opportunity to go abroad came with
participation in World War I.
Stieglitz's method of persuasion, one in which his
position is part of yet separate from, his intended
audience, is similarly utilized when Stieglitz discusses
commercialism, another subject that illuminates the
contradictory nature of Stieglitz's prescriptions for
America. He simultaneously appears to have opposed
commercialism as a form of American identity and embraced
it as a system in which he could prosper both as a
businessman and artist. Most notably, his activity in
Camera Work and as a gallery director may be considered
activities that required consumer exchange.
If it is true that America was instilled with a
commercial identity, then it would seem that it would be
important for Stieglitz to replace this identity with an
identity of culture, one that would be exhibited by
Americans' conceptions of older nations, such as France or
Germany. Stieglitz's utilization of the amateur, a concept
which he wrote about at length in articles at the turn of
the century, appears to be related to commercialism, an
increasing force, which emerged at the time of his articles
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related to the amateur. Through his writings, Stieglitz
simultaneously may be found to reject commercialism and
support it, and so Stieglitz's Americanism at once is
commercialism and its opposite.
Stieglitz criticizes Americans for not having the
proper enthusiasm for cultural subj ects, as he wondered
••would a crowd of Americans ever stand before a picture of
real value with a fraction of the enthusiasm spent on
baseball."40 This statement implies Stieglitz's
condescension towards Americans' ability to discern and
their tendency toward popular culture, which he sets in
opposition to art.
Correspondingly, the views of Stieglitz that are
concerned with the amateur, who engages in a pursuit,
study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than a
profession, are espoused in an inconsistent fashion. The
pursuit of amateur activity is dependent on commercial
culture, and the amateur engages in it, not as a craft, but
rather for recreation. The idea of the amateur is
imbedded in the proliferation of the camera in the late
1800's. Whelan describes that
By the summer of 1884 so many visitors to the
fashionable American resorts were snapping away
at their fellow vacationers...that the New York
Times complained of the 'camera epidemic,' which
seemed nearly as pestilential as the cholera
epidemic then ravaging Europe...41
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Stieglitz utilized the amateur as a method of
persuasion, and as he wrote in the 1890's in his first
published article, "A Word or Two about Amateur Photography
in Germany,": "Why is Germany the most musical land of the
world?... Why do you find music there more appreciated than
in any other part of the world? Because we have so many
musical amateurs.1,42
Amateurism is linked to commercialism in an inherent
fashion, for it promotes commercialism and vice versa. It
is not surprising that in this regard, Stieglitz's views
are contradictory. In praise of amateurs, those "who are
following photography for the love of it, and not merely
for financial reasons"43 Stieglitz declared that amateur
photography was among the best work in the world.
Conversely, Stieglitz espoused an unflattering view
concerning the amateur when amateur photography became a
consumer frenzy. The apparent target of his complaints
regarding the popularity of the hand held camera was no
doubt the Kodak Company, and as Stieglitz complained in
1897:
Every Tom, Dick and Harry could, without
trouble, learn how to get something or
other on a sensitive plate...The climax was
reached when an enterprising firm flooded
the market with a very ingenious hand
camera and the announcement, 'You press the
button, and we do the rest./44
Stieglitz's strong distaste for commercialism is
captured again in another of his articles, entitled "Twelve
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Random Dont's" of 1909, where he commands "Don't believe
you became an artist the instant you received a gift Kodak
on Xmas morning."45
It is perplexing that the Stieglitz would oppose the
camera frenzy, for his own enterprise, Camera Work, appears
to have sought to achieve the same purpose of celebrating
the work of the camera. Stieglitz separates himself from
the advertisement strategy of Kodak, which he appears to
have denigrated. Ironically, Stieglitz was no stranger to
the medium of advertising, for Camera Work not only
contained advertisements in its issues, but Kodak was one
of the companies it advertised. One such advertisement,
clearly addressed to the amateur photographer, proclaimed,
"Snap-Shots on cloudy days, snap-shots in light shade— even
in-door snap-shots when conditions are right— all these are
easily possible with the Special Kodaks."46
In "Twelve Random Dont's," Stieglitz seems to be
putting the amateur patrons of Kodak at the opposite end of
the spectrum from American art and his galleries. It was
in these exhibition spaces that Stieglitz was able to leave
an artistic legacy, in which he is known as
"unquestionably-the individual most responsible for the
introduction of modern art to America. He was as a.. .John
the Baptist in the American desert of modern art."47
Stieglitz's galleries and periodicals were created as a
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part of his mission in bestowing on Americans the ability
to see.
At 291 Stieglitz displayed many European works, and in
1908 he
opened the gallery to a showing of fifty-eight
drawings by the noted French sculptor Auguste
Rodin. This show represented the first in a
series of important exhibitions of modern art
held at the gallery, which soon became known
simply as '291' (from its street address on
Fifth Avenue). Between 1908 and 1917, some of
the most important and influential sculptors and
painters on both sides of the Atlantic were
given their first American showing
at the gallery: Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso,
Paul Cezanne, and Constantin Brancusi...48
In an effort to bring modern art to America, Stieglitz
paraded European art. However, given his investment in
America's claim to an art of its own, the privileging of
foreign artists became problematic. In 1924, he
wrote to Henry McBride to let him know that
he was tearing up his remaining issues of
Camera Work and 291... The reason Stieglitz
took such a critical view of his earlier
efforts is that now he had decided that the
continued influence of European art could
serve only to hamper the development of an
indigenous American art. Choosing to
forget that he had given a number of
important European artists their first
showings in America, in 1923 he proclaimed
that he had always fought for an 'America
without that damned French flavorI'49
Stieglitz may have utilized external forces, such as
the European artists who displayed at 291. to illuminate
what was lacking in American art at the time. The conflict
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of showing Europeans' work in an effort to establish an
American art was in part a result of America having little
artistic identity at the time, or rather, for Stieglitz,
America not having an acceptable artistic identity.
Identity, whether artistic or cultural, is a fundamental
ingredient of Americanism and what it means to be American.
It is not fixed, and many times it is defined merely as a
contrast to what it is not. Herein lies one of Stieglitz's
contradictions: At times the imperative for Stieglitz was
a call for American nationalism, with shows such as Seven
Americans. and earlier it had been a call for modernism,
which may have been the case of his participation in his
involvement in the first exhibition of the American Society
of Independent Artists of 1917.
The show was to be modeled on the French Societe des
Artistes, and it
bridged four major groups: the Stieglitz
circle, the Arensberg salon, the Eight, and
Robert Henri's students, who included
Rockwell Kent and George Bellows.50
Although Stieglitz was not a member of the exhibition's
board of directors, he did play a role in a scandal which
ensued from the organization of the exhibition. The
scandal, which has been viewed as one of the most important
events in American modernism, erupted from reception of
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain of 1917. The piece "has become
one of the most famous and/or infamous objects in the
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history of modern art...,"51 and it "entered the history of
art in April 1917 on the occasion of the first exhibition
of the American Society of Independent Artists..."52
The exhibition, organized in a democratic spirit,
proclaimed that its founding principle was "No jury, no
prizes."53 Camfield notes that Duchamp "decided to
render...[a] service..., namely a test of its
principles...1,54 He entered a prefabricated commercial
urinal, or "ready-made" into the exhibition after altering
it slightly and signing the fictitious name, R. Mutt.55
The piece was rejected from the non "jury or prizes"
exhibition, and later it was photographed by Stieglitz at
291 in front of a Marsden Hartley painting in the gallery.
As Camfield quotes Beatrice Wood, a friend of Duchamp's and
fellow organizer of the exhibition of the American Society
of Independent Artists,
At Marcel's request, he [Stieglitz] agreed
to photograph the Fountain for the
frontispiece of the magazine fThe Blind
Man]. He was greatly amused, but also felt
it was important to fight bigotry in
America. He took great pains with the
lighting, and did it with such skill that
the shadow fell across the urinal
suggesting a veil. The piece was renamed:
'Madonna of the Bathroom. /56
Stieglitz's photograph of the urinal is the sole
visual remainder of the Fountain scandal, since the urinal
was either lost or destroyed around the same time as the
exhibition in 1917. It illuminated a fundamental issue in
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modern art, the role of the artist, because the Fountain, a
urinal, was in fact manufactured by a plumbing company. By
titling the object and entering it into the exhibition,
Duchamp suggested that art is created when the artist
chooses from what already exists. In this manner art
production is about choice and not divine creation. Such a
view of art would encourage an artist to utilize modern
technology and mass production and not turn away from them,
as a traditional painter may have done. The Fountain also
illuminates other issues, besides modernism, such as
democratic exhibition and censorship.
Stieglitz's photographing of the Fountain may portend
his support of Duchamp and the democratic exhibition
process. Alternately, Stieglitz's photograph of the
Fountain may not have any deeper meaning. This is
doubtful, for Stieglitz photographed the object in front of
a painting executed by one of the artists whose work was
shown at Stieglitz's gallery. Because the scandal had
already ensued at the time of its removal from the American
Society of Independent Artists, Stieglitz must have known
that he would become embroiled in the controversy by
photographing it. Possible reasons that may explain why
Stieglitz would have lent his artistic credibility to such
a project are that he had intended to promote himself,
Duchamp, Marsden Hartley, or his gallery. The photograph
has become an important component in the Fountain's
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history, and Stieglitz's participation in it assisted in
bringing him to the forefront of modern art in America.
Stieglitz separated himself from the founding of the
Museum of Modern Art, established in 1929, and
Alfred, who had nothing good to say about
the venture, dismissed the museum's three
'founding mothers' - Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mrs.
Cornelius J. Sullivan - as rich women whose
interest in art was superficial,
dilettantish, and merely fashionable...[He]
hated the very idea of institutions being
run by committees and denounced them as
'contrary to the spirit of art. '57
Instead, he set his forces toward An American Place,
at 509 Madison Avenue in New York, which Stieglitz directed
from 1925 to 1945. The gallery featured works by American
artists, and
Although Stieglitz did not make any formal
announcement dedicating An American Place
to the Seven Americans, their work would
overwhelmingly dominate the gallery's
exhibitions during its seventeen seasons
under his direction. O'Keeffe, Dove, and
Marin - his 'Big Three' - would each have a
one-person show every year...58
Stieglitz's absence from the founding of the Museum of
Modern Art may indicate that he considered his artistic
perspective to be different that its founders and that he
sought to give other artists he sanctioned the opportunity
to show their work. Furthermore, because of his criticism
that the Museum of Modern Art was organized by committees
of "superficial, dilettantish, and merely fashionable"
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women, it is clear that Stieglitz's artistic vision of
American art would have been non superficial, non
dilettantish, non fashionable, and independent of women's
approval. One must question if the artists who
participated in Seven Americans adhered to these
qualifications.
There are many reasons that may explain Stieglitz's
promotion of particular artists, including Georgia
O'Keeffe, Arthur G. Dove, John Marin, and the others in
his privileged circle, as American modernists. Among the
many reasons are that Stieglitz's promotion may have
involved a desire for him to espouse his artistic
philosophies in order to educate the ignorant American
population he pitied, or he may have attempted to create a
commercial market for himself and his circle. In this way,
Stieglitz's construction of Americanism and the issues it
stood for may have been wielded for professional gain.
Just as Stieglitz manifested his own identity of
Americanism, Europeans constructed various forms of
Americanism at the same time as the exhibition of the
American Society of Independent Artists of 1917 and into
the following decade, when Stieglitz exhibited Seven
Americans.
European fascination with Americanism during this time
may be exemplified by the works of George Grosz and his
contemporaries in Germany, the prescriptions of Le
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Corbusier in France, the interest in Josephine Baker and
Jazz music in Paris, and the jazz-inspired paintings of
Mondrian. Resembling Stieglitz's construction of
Americanism, European Americanism became the site for the
"other" and the social and cultural issues Americanism
stood in for.
The European interest in America after World War I in
Europe is connected to economic and political instability
in Europe. Americanism, thus, became an escape mechanism
for expressing some issues and a model for changing others.
Europe had suffered economically because of war
losses, while America had thrived as a global power, and
for Europeans, whose sense of history was now qualified by
before and after, America represented a "brave new world,"
a country without history, a nation untouched by war or
revolution and thus intact.59
In Germany, an ardent interest in Americanism may be
exemplified in the work of George Grosz and his
contemporaries around 1915. Grosz invented an American
history for himself, as he "anglicized his first name and
cultivated an American persona, persuading not a few of his
friends that he was half-American or least had been to New
York..."60 Often his drawings, such as "Texas Picture for
my Friend Chingachgook, 1915-1916" depict the artist
surrounded by a saloon, cowboys, and an Indian of the
American Far West, a land far away from Berlin. Tower
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writes that "Grosz described his vision of the Far West as
fantasies born of drinking and listening to ragtime music
in a seedy bar, escapist dreams amid the dreariness of war
time Berlin.1 , 6 1
America had become the model of technological progress
and a prospering economy after World War I. After Germany
was ready to begin modernizing the nation, it looked to
America as a model of the industrialized society, and "In
the wake of the Dawes Plan of 1924, an enormous influx of
American credits, manufactured goods, and cultural imports
'Americanized' the Weimar Republic and made deep
impressions in the fabric of German society."62 Germany
also looked to "American concepts of rationalization and
scientific management in business and industry."63
German Americanism, or "Amerikanismus," may be viewed
in accordance with some of the same issues that complicated
Stieglitz's vision of America, including democracy,
modernism, primitivism, high culture, low culture, and
commercialism.
American democracy was employed in Germany as an
example, and it was seen as
new model of mass democracy and a different way
of thinking: rational, pragmatic, always open
to the new; the capitalist countermodel to the
Russian 'experiment' with communism. To critics
Amerikanismus raised the Spenglerian specter of
a materialistic, mechanized, success-and
business-oriented civilization of 'machine-men'
without culture or character, a threat to
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European and especially German traditions of
thought.64
Americanism became both the site of constructions of
the distant past and of modernism. The distant past may be
exemplified by an interest in primitivism in Germany, and
Between circa 1910 and 1925 the Far West held a
particular fascination for a generation of
German artists, among them Rudolf Schilchter,
George Grosz, and Otto Dix. In envisioning the
Far West the artists traveled back to the
childhood!! of America and to their own
childhood of adventure literature, the delights
of circus shows as a refuge for European
misfits. The Far West represented freedom,
wilderness, and individualism, an archaic place
where nature and civilization met.65
Interest in Jazz music in Europe at this time was also
evidence of primitivism. Tower writes "American jazz was
epitomized by the black performer...both dance and blacks-
primarily of African origin-served as vitalistic metaphors
of instinctual, savage, and sexual forces."66 Such an
association of a primitive life with a more noble and
satisfying one reminds one of Stieglitz's use of the
primitive in his narration of The Steerage. For artists in
Germany the American cowboy and Indian came to signify a
simple life, which they perceived to be lacking in Germany
at the time.
Tower notes that Americanism also signified the modern
experience. Just as photography became a modern experience
for Stieglitz, New York became the site of modernism for
German artists, for whom American skyscrapers "symbolized
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the unbridled modernity that put America in advance of the
Old World."67
Although German artists depicted the primitive and the
modern in what would be thought of as opposites, the two
were often conflated, and
the theme of the Far West served a dual purpose:
in imagining themselves into the Far West they
could escape from the narrow world of a small
town upbringing and from the horrors of the war;
in their guises as Stadtindianer (urban Indians)
and Asphaltcowboys they rehearsed survival in
the jungle of the big city. By evoking
America's frontier past they allegorized their
urban present.68
In effect, in Germany, Americanism came to
simultaneously stand for the cowboy and jazz musicians, to
signify the return to a simpler life, the skyscraper, to
signify modernism and a turn to technological advancement,
the dollar, to signify capitalism, and advertising, to
signify commercialism. No matter what the symbol for
Americanism, its reception in Germany was dependent on what
it represented there.
Americanism was also prevalent in France, where for
example, America served as a model for reconstruction after
World War I by Le Corbusier, an architect and city planner.
Le Corbusier encouraged the nation to turn away from French
tradition and embrace new building approaches. Concepts
such as technological innovation and engineering in America
were invoked by Le Corbusier to highlight what was lacking
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in France at the time of reconstruction efforts. He
supported American mass production and Taylorism, the
American system of labor efficiency based on scientific
investigation, in the hopes that France would adopt these
strategies and forge ahead into a modern and prosperous
age.
America was utilized as example by Le Corbusier
because its presence as a thriving economic and military
force had successfully employed mass production. In The
Citv of To-Morrow and Its Planning, he stated "If in
America they feel and produce, here we think!"69 Although
he praises some of America's technological achievements, Le
Corbusier makes the distinction that France is able to use
rationality, while America can only manufacture and rely on
emotions. It seems that for Le Corbusier, the goal would
be for a city to function as a machine, which would
incorporate both reason and mass production. In the most
efficient city planning, he wrote, the city is a machine,
for
The city which is to be will contain in itself a
formidable mechanism, a powerful force, a
workshop containing innumerable and precise
implements, a harnessed tempest.70
Some models for France's reconstruction planning of
modern cities were taken directly from American examples,
and Le Corbusier proposed that "the streets would be
arranged on the 'gridiron7 plan common in American
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cities..."71 Le Corbusier's perfect city incorporated
American models of city planning, not just in street plans,
but also in urban and suburban dwellings. These plans
utilized mass production and industrial materials, which
would be the most efficient way to enact a transformation
because the technology and materials were readily
available, since they were left over from the war. Le
Corbusier asked rhetorically:
...so many cannons, airplanes, lorries and
wagons had been made in factories, someone
asked the question: 'Why not make
houses?'...Dwellings, urban and suburban,
will be enormous and square-built and no
longer dismal congeries; they will
incorporate the principle of mass-
production and of large-scale
industrialization.72
Just as these strategies invoked modern technology, Le
Corbusier's notion of the engineer, the agent that would
transform France, invoked primitivism. His writings about
the engineer, "inspired by the law of Economy and governed
by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with
universal law...[and] achieves harmony,"73 is, similar to
Stieglitz's interest the low class passengers of The
Steerage. evidence of a fascination with the primitive or
the "other." The engineer's ability to transform was
contingent on a primitive state and a spiritual placement
outside of urban society, where natural rational talents
could flourish.
40
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Throughout his books, Towards A New Architecture and
The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning. Le Corbusier points
to American strengths by incorporating images of American
objects, such as skyscrapers, grain elevators, and
automobiles, as illustrations of his prescriptive text. It
is clear, however, that although Le Corbusier praised the
American engineer, he only supported Americanism as a model
for France so that it could to rise to its full potential
as a national power. Le Corbusier proclaimed, "Let's
listen to American engineers, but let's fear American
architects.1,74 Golan notes
Such a distinction is certainly telling.
For all too often the French admiration for
American innovation went hand in hand with
an equal disdain for what was perceived as
its cultural dependence on Europe. Thus,
while they felt ready to emulate America in
terms of its material culture, it was no
place, as far as they were concerned, for
high culture.75
Once again class becomes a factor in the
identification of Americanism, and for Le Corbusier,
America is low culture or the "other," to which France
could compare itself. In this way, Le Corbusier's
Americanism became the site for modernism and primitivism,
not to privilege America, but rather as a convention to
highlight France's rebuilding dilemma.
It is ironic that some of the strongest admirers of
the American aesthetic in 1920's, such as Grosz, had not
41
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had much experience in America at the time of their fervent
American praises, which accentuates that Americanism is a
construction and suggests that the fascination with
Americanism served to illuminate the complex problems in
Europe. In this way, Americanism became a convention to
express the "other."
Over 70 years later, fascination with American icons,
such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, and
Mickey Mouse, from outside America, continues because
America's delineation as the land of the "other" experience
renders its identity ubiquitous. Americanism is impossible
to define, and so too is the distinct character or identity
of American art, what Stieglitz proposed to encapsulate at
the time of Seven Americans.
Identity has everything to do with how we see
ourselves and how we see others. It is a convention that
does not, in fact, exist, yet it is crucial for a nation's
survival because without it, there is no way to defend
itself against external forces. Thus, the proposition that
art movements and art categories have distinct identities
will remain and be perpetuated. Clement Greenberg argued
that American art could not only be identified, but that it
triumphed by 1940 with the coalescence of the group that
would later be known as the Abstract Expressionists. He
characterized that New York after World War II
42
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had caught up with Paris as Paris had not yet
caught up with herself, and a group of
relatively obscure American artists already
possessed the fullest painting of their
time...Never before had this occurred in
American art.76
The triumphant possession of New York artists with the
"fullest painting culture of their time"77 is Greenberg's
construction of Abstract Expressionism, and it is
deconstructed by Thomas Crow, who writes that
American painting did not exactly triumph over
Europe; rather, it succeeded on Europe's behalf.
Modern art...was - and has returned to being -
an essentially European proposition. The
devastation of World War II threatened to
extinguish its development for a generation or
perhaps forever, but the Americans, at a safe
remove from the conflict, were able to keep the
sacred flame of the avant-garde alight until the
early '70's when Europeans were once more
prepared to resume their natural priority.78
Crow suggests Greenberg's positioning of modernism as
an American proposition was actually an expression of
America as a site for the "other" because of its distance
from European conflict, and it is as problematic as the
positioning of America with its own distinct artistic
identity.
Alfred Stieglitz and European views of Americanism
have helped shed light on the incongruities of
constructions of identity. Identifying the incongruities
strengthens the position that history is subjective, and
there is not a singular objective reality.
43
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Americanism is impossible to define because the nature
of that construction is shifting, multiple, and transitory,
and it cannot be fixed absolutely. It may not be as
important to ask what is the construction of Americanism,
but rather who is the constructor, and what are the
underpinning social and cultural problems at work.
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END NOTES
1 Richard Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz (New York: Little,
Brown, and Co., 1995) 469.
2 Whelan 469.
3 Lloyd Goodrich, What Is American in American Art
(New York: M. Knoedler and Co., Inc., 1971) 20.
4 Goodrich 20.
5 Abraham A. Davidson, Earlv American Modernist
Painting 1910-1935 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1981) 182.
6 James P. Shenton, History of the United States from
1865 to the Present (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and
Company, 1964) 268.
7 Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commager, and
William E. Leuchtenburg, editors, A Concise History of the
American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)
591.
8 Sarah Greenough and Juan Hamilton, Alfred Stiealitz:
Writings and Photographs (Washington: National Gallery of
Art, 1983) 211.
9 Timothy Robert Rodgers, "False Memories: Alfred
Stieglitz and the Development of the National Aesthetic,"
Over Here: Modernism. The First Exile 1914-1919
(Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, 1989) 59.
10 Dickran Tashjian, Skyscraper Primitives (Middletown,
Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1975) 73.
1 1 Tashj ian 83.
12 Tashjian 84.
13 Whelan 470-471.
14 Whelan 472.
15 Whelan 472.
16 Edward Lucie-Smith, American Realism (London: Thames
and Hudson Ltd., 1994) 104.
17 Davidson 3.
18 Greenough and Hamilton 240.
19 Whelan inside jacket.
20 Terry Smith, Making the Modem (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1993) 4.
45
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21 Christopher P. Wilson, "The Rhetoric of
Consumption: Mass-Market Magazines and the Demise of the
Gentle Reader, 1880-1920," The Culture of C o n s u m p t i o n :
Critical Essavs in American History. 1880-1980 ed. Richard
Whightman Fox and T.J.Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1983) 42.
22 William Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Vintage
Books, 1993) 3.
23 Alfred Stieglitz, "To Heinrich Kuhn," 14 October
1912 Letter of Alfred Stieglitz: Writings and Photographs.
Greenough and Hamilton, 194.
24 Alfred Stieglitz, "Pictorial Photography,"
Scribner's Magazine 1899, Greenough and Hamilton, 185.
25 Alfred Stieglitz, "Letter to Willamina Parrish," 8
May 1917 Greenough and Hamilton 200.
26Greenough and Hamilton 193.
27 Whelan 13.
28Greenough and Hamilton 240.
29 Alfred Stieglitz, "A Plea for Art Photography in
America," Photographic Mosaics 1892 Greenough and Juan
Hamilton 181.
30 Alfred Stieglitz, "How I Came to Photograph Clouds,"
Amateur Photographer and Photography 19 September 1923
Greenough and Hamilton 207.
31 Alfred Stieglitz, "A Plea for Art Photography in
America," Photographic Mosaics 1892 Greenough and Hamilton
181.
32 Tashj ian 17.
33 Whelan 161.
34 Whelan 224.
35 Whelan 224.
36 Alfred Stieglitz, "Four Happenings," Twice A Year
No. 8/9:128, 1942.
37 Whelan 225.
38 Alfred Stieglitz and Louis H. Schubart, "Two
Artists' Haunts," Photographic Times January 1895 Greenough
and Hamilton 178-179.
39 Alfred Stieglitz, "Letter to W. Orison Underwood,"
1914 Greenough and Hamilton p. 198.
40 Alfred Stieglitz, "Letter to Sherwood Anderson,"
46
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Greenough and Hamilton 213.
41 Whelan 81.
42 Whelan 81-82.
43 Alfred Stieglitz, "Pictorial Photography,"
Scribner's Magazine 1899 Greenough and Hamilton 185.
44 Alfred Stieglitz, "The Hand Camera - Its Present
Importance," The American Annual of Photography and
Photographic Times Almanac for 1897 Greenough and Hamilton
182.
45 Alfred Stieglitz, "Twelve Random Dont's,"
Photographic Topics January 1909 Greenough and Hamilton
191.
46 Eastman Kokak Company, Advertisement Camera Work
August 1912.
47 Francis Naumann, New York Dada 1915—23 (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994) 12.
48 Naumann 13.
49 Naumann 218.
50 Whelan 381-382.
51 William A. Camfield, Marcel Duchamp Fountain
(Houston: Fine Arts Press, 1989) 13.
52 Camfield 14.
53 Camfield 18.
54 Camfield 20.
55 Camfield 22.
56 Camfield 33.
57 Whelan 521.
58 Whelan 524.
59 Romy Golan, "Americanisme/Amerikanismus: The
Adventures of a European Myth," Precisionism in America;
1915-1941: Reordering Reality (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1994) 60.
60 Beeke Sell Tower, Envisioning America (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990) 13.
61 Tower 23.
62 Tower 14.
63 Tower 14.
47
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64 Tower 14.
65 Tower 17.
66 Tower 88.
67 Tower 17.
68 Tower 17.
69 Le Corbusier, The Citv of To-Morrow and Its Planning
Translated from the 8th French Edition of Urbanism with an
introduction by Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover
Publications, 1987) xxvi-xxvii.
70 Le Corbusier, The Citv of To-Morrow and Its Planning
64.
71 Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning
xii.
72 Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture Translated
from the thirteenth French edition and with an Introduction
by Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1986) 233-234.
73 Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture 1.
74 Golan 61.
75 Golan 61.
76 Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970) 25.
77 Sandler 25.
78 Thomas Crow, "Lafayette, We Are Here," Artforum 32
(N'93) 82-4.
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REFERENCES
Banham, Reyner. A Concrete Atlantis. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1986.
Baur, John I. H. Revolution and Tradition in Modern
American Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1951.
Camfield, William A. Marcel Duchamp Fountain. Houston:
Houston Fine Art Press, 1989.
Crow, Thomas. "Lafayette, We Are Here," Artforum 32 (N'93)
82-4.
Davidson, Abraham A. Early American Modernist Painting
1910-1935. New York: DaCapo Press, 1981.
Eastman Kokak Company, Advertisement Camera Work August
1912.
Golan, Romy. "Americanisme/Amerikanismus; The Adventures of
a European Myth." from Precisionism in America; 1915-
1941: Reordering Reality. New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1994.
Goodrich, Lloyd. Catalogue by Mary Black. What Is American
in American Art. New York: M. Knoedler and Co., Inc.,
1971.
Greenough, Sarah, and Juan Hamilton. Alfred Stieglitz:
Writings and Photographs. Washington: National Gallery
of Art, 1983.
Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art:
Abstract Expressionism. Freedom, and the Cold War.
Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Joachimides, Christos M. and Norman Rosenthal, editors.
American Art in the 20th Century. London: Royal
Academy of Arts, 1993.
Le Corbusier. The Citv of To-Morrow. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1987.
, Towards A New Architecture. Translated from the
thirteenth French edition and with an Introduction by
Frederick Etchells. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
1986.
49
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
Leach, William. Land of Desire. New York: Vintage Books,
1993.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. American Realism. London: Thames and
Hudson Ltd., 1994.
Morison, Samuel Eliot, Henry Steele Commager, and William
E. Leuchtenburg, editors. A Concise History of the
American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press,
1983.
Naumann, Francis M. New York Dada. New York: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 1994.
Rodgers, Timothy Robert. "False Memories: Alfred Stieglitz
and the Development of the National Aesthetic." From
Over Here: Modernism. The First Exile 1914-1919.
Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, 1989.
Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of American Painting. New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.
Shenton, James P. History of the United States from 1865 to
the Present. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and
Company, Inc., 1964.
Silver, Kenneth E. Esprit De Corps. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
Smith, Terry. Making the Modem: Industry. Art, and Design
in America. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1993.
Tashjian, Dickran. Skyscraper Primitives. Middletown,
Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1975.
Taylor, William. In Pursuit of Gotham; Culture and C o m m e r c e
in New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Tower, Beeke Sell. Envisioning America. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 1990.
Whelan, Richard. Alfred Stieglitz. New York: Little,
Brown, and Co., 1995.
Wilson, Christopher P. "The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass-
Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader,
1880-1920." The Culture of Consumption: Critical
Essays in American History. 1880-1980. Ed. Richard
Whightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears. New York:
Pantheon Books, 39-64, 1983.
50
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Wiser, William. The Crazv Years; Paris in the Twenties.
York: Atheneum, 1983.
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IMAGE EVALUATION
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1653 East Main Street
Rochester, NY 14609 USA
Phone: 716/482-0300
Fax: 716/288-5989
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Creator Dylan, Anna Lea (author)

Core Title Constructions of Americanism: Three case studies

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Art History

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,Architecture,Art History,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-26615

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