Weir, Robert Walter 1803-1889 Criticism and interpretation Search this
Catlin, George 1796-1872 Criticism and interpretation Search this
Moran, Thomas 1837-1926 Criticism and interpretation Search this
Bierstadt, Albert 1830-1902 Criticism and interpretation Search this
Russell, Charles M (Charles Marion) 1864-1926 Criticism and interpretation Search this
Physical description:
xiv, 299 p. : col. ill
Type:
Books
Place:
United States
Date:
2009
Notes:
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Iowa, 2009.
Photocopy. Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI, 2010. 22 cm.
Summary:
"Since the early nineteenth-century when Americans began recording their short history in earnest, European explorers have held a central role in the nation's historical narrative, standing alongside the Founding Fathers as symbols of American ingenuity, determination, and fortitude. The nineteenth century also saw an explosion in the number of representations of first contacts between native populations and European and Euro-American explorers. These works range from fine art examples to illustrations in the popular media and were produced by artists across the artistic spectrum. Despite the popularity of the First Contact subject and its longevity within American art history, the importance of these images has, as of yet, been unexplored. This dissertation examines First Contact images created in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth-century by artists Robert Walter Weir, George Catlin, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles M. Russell. I argue that the subject's popularity can be attributed not just to their importance as depictions of epic moments of transition in national and cultural history, but to the openness, or the mutability, of the subject itself. The first meeting of two people is an event of great possibility and potential, but, as this extended examination of the subject demonstrates, it can also be transformed to communicate vastly different messages at different moments in history. As Americans simultaneously struggled to create a past, understand the present, and visualize the future, the First Contact subject, with its focus on the ambiguous meeting of two cultures, allowed a site in which to grapple with central questions and anxieties of the period, even as it depicted the past. They are thus complicated paintings that speak not to the facts of contact, but to the purposes served by these constructions and corrupted histories."--Abstract.
Topic:
Indians of North America--First contact with other peoples--In art Search this
