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This book argues that nativism, the hostility especially to
Catholic immigrants that led to the organization of political
parties like the Know-Nothings, affected the meaning of
nineteenthcentury American art in ways that have gone unrecognized.
In an era of industrialization, nativism’s erection of barriers
to immigration appealed to artisans, a category that included most
male artists at some stage in their careers. But as importantly,
its patriotic message about the nature of the American republic
also overlapped with widely shared convictions about the necessity
of democratic reform. Movements directed toward improving the human
condition, including anti-slavery and temperance, often consigned
Catholicism, along with monarchies and slavery, to a repressive
past, not the republican American future. To demonstrate the impact
of this political effort by humanitarian reformers and nativists to
define a Protestant character for the country, this book tracks the
work and practice of artist William Walcutt. Though he is little
known today, in his own time his efforts as a painter, illustrator
and sculptor were acclaimed as masterly, and his art is worth
reconsidering in its own right. But this book examines him as a
case study of an artist whose economic and personal ties to
artisanal print culture and cultural nationalists ensured that he
was surrounded by and contributed to anti-Catholic publications and
organizations. Walcutt was not anti immigrant himself, nor a member
of a nativist party, but his kin, friends, and patrons publicly
expressed warnings about Catholic and foreign political influence.
And that has implications for better-known nineteenth-century
historical and narrative art. Precisely because Walcutt’s profile
and milieu were so typical for artists in this period, this book is
able to demonstrate how central this supposedly fringe movement was
to viewers and makers of American art.
This book argues that nativism, the hostility especially to
Catholic immigrants that led to the organization of political
parties like the Know-Nothings, affected the meaning of
nineteenthcentury American art in ways that have gone unrecognized.
In an era of industrialization, nativism's erection of barriers to
immigration appealed to artisans, a category that included most
male artists at some stage in their careers. But as importantly,
its patriotic message about the nature of the American republic
also overlapped with widely shared convictions about the necessity
of democratic reform. Movements directed toward improving the human
condition, including anti-slavery and temperance, often consigned
Catholicism, along with monarchies and slavery, to a repressive
past, not the republican American future. To demonstrate the impact
of this political effort by humanitarian reformers and nativists to
define a Protestant character for the country, this book tracks the
work and practice of artist William Walcutt. Though he is little
known today, in his own time his efforts as a painter, illustrator
and sculptor were acclaimed as masterly, and his art is worth
reconsidering in its own right. But this book examines him as a
case study of an artist whose economic and personal ties to
artisanal print culture and cultural nationalists ensured that he
was surrounded by and contributed to anti-Catholic publications and
organizations. Walcutt was not anti immigrant himself, nor a member
of a nativist party, but his kin, friends, and patrons publicly
expressed warnings about Catholic and foreign political influence.
And that has implications for better-known nineteenth-century
historical and narrative art. Precisely because Walcutt's profile
and milieu were so typical for artists in this period, this book is
able to demonstrate how central this supposedly fringe movement was
to viewers and makers of American art.
One of Hyperallergic's Top Ten Art Books for 2021 Approximately 300
daily and weekly newspapers flourished in New York before the Civil
War. A majority of these newspapers, even those that proclaimed
independence of party, were motivated by political conviction and
often local conflicts. Their editors and writers jockeyed for
government office and influence. Political infighting and their
related maneuvers dominated the popular press, and these political
and economic agendas led in turn to exploitation of art and art
exhibitions. Humbug traces the relationships, class animosities,
gender biases, and racial projections that drove the terms of art
criticism, from the emergence of the penny press to the Civil War.
The inexpensive "penny" papers that appeared in the 1830s relied on
advertising to survive. Sensational stories, satire, and breaking
news were the key to selling papers on the streets. Coverage of
local politicians, markets, crime, and personalities, including
artists and art exhibitions, became the penny papers' lifeblood.
These cheap papers, though unquestionably part of the period's
expanding capitalist economy, offered socialists, working-class
men, bohemians, and utopianists a forum in which they could propose
new models for American art and society and tear down existing
ones. Arguing that the politics of the antebellum press affected
the meaning of American art in ways that have gone unrecognized,
Humbug covers the changing politics and rhetoric of this criticism.
Author Wendy Katz demonstrates how the penny press's drive for a
more egalitarian society affected the taste and values that shaped
art, and how the politics of their art criticism changed under
pressure from nativists, abolitionists, and expansionists. Chapters
explore James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald and its attack on
aristocratic monopolies on art; the penny press's attack on the
American Art-Union, an influential corporation whose Board
purchased artworks from living artists, exhibited them in a free
gallery, and then distributed them in an annual five-dollar
lottery; exposes of the fraudulent trade in Old Masters works; and
the efforts of socialists, freethinkers, and bohemians to reject
the authority of the past.
One of Hyperallergic's Top Ten Art Books for 2021 Approximately 300
daily and weekly newspapers flourished in New York before the Civil
War. A majority of these newspapers, even those that proclaimed
independence of party, were motivated by political conviction and
often local conflicts. Their editors and writers jockeyed for
government office and influence. Political infighting and their
related maneuvers dominated the popular press, and these political
and economic agendas led in turn to exploitation of art and art
exhibitions. Humbug traces the relationships, class animosities,
gender biases, and racial projections that drove the terms of art
criticism, from the emergence of the penny press to the Civil War.
The inexpensive "penny" papers that appeared in the 1830s relied on
advertising to survive. Sensational stories, satire, and breaking
news were the key to selling papers on the streets. Coverage of
local politicians, markets, crime, and personalities, including
artists and art exhibitions, became the penny papers' lifeblood.
These cheap papers, though unquestionably part of the period's
expanding capitalist economy, offered socialists, working-class
men, bohemians, and utopianists a forum in which they could propose
new models for American art and society and tear down existing
ones. Arguing that the politics of the antebellum press affected
the meaning of American art in ways that have gone unrecognized,
Humbug covers the changing politics and rhetoric of this criticism.
Author Wendy Katz demonstrates how the penny press's drive for a
more egalitarian society affected the taste and values that shaped
art, and how the politics of their art criticism changed under
pressure from nativists, abolitionists, and expansionists. Chapters
explore James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald and its attack on
aristocratic monopolies on art; the penny press's attack on the
American Art-Union, an influential corporation whose Board
purchased artworks from living artists, exhibited them in a free
gallery, and then distributed them in an annual five-dollar
lottery; exposes of the fraudulent trade in Old Masters works; and
the efforts of socialists, freethinkers, and bohemians to reject
the authority of the past.
The Trans-Mississippi Exposition of 1898 celebrated Omaha's key
economic role as a center of industry west of the Mississippi River
and its arrival as a progressive metropolis after the Panic of
1893. The exposition also promoted the rise of the United States as
an imperial power, at the time on the brink of the Spanish-American
War, and the nation's place in bringing "civilization" to
Indigenous populations both overseas and at the conclusion of the
recent Plains Indian Wars. The Omaha World's Fair, however, is one
of the least studied American expositions. Wendy Jean Katz brings
together leading scholars to better understand the event's place in
the larger history of both Victorian-era America and the American
West. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume cover an array of
topics, from competing commercial visions of the cities of the
Great West; to the role of women in the promotion of City Beautiful
ideals of public art and urban planning; and the constructions of
Indigenous and national identities through exhibition, display, and
popular culture. Leading scholars T. J. Boisseau, Bonnie M. Miller,
Sarah J. Moore, Nancy Parezo, Akim Reinhardt, and Robert Rydell,
among others, discuss this often-misunderstood world's fair and its
place in the Victorian-era ascension of the United States as a
world power.
Although the framework of regionalist studies may seem to be
crumbling under the weight of increasing globalization, this
collection of seventeen essays makes clear that cultivating
regionalism lies at the center of the humanist endeavor. With
interdisciplinary contributions from poets and fiction writers,
literary historians, musicologists, and historians of architecture,
agriculture, and women, this volume implements some of the most
innovative and intriguing approaches to the history and value of
regionalism as a category for investigation in the humanities. In
the volume's inaugural essay, Annie Proulx discusses landscapes in
American fiction, comments on how she constructs characters, and
interprets current literary trends. Edward Watts offers a theory of
region that argues for comparisons of the United States to other
former colonies of Great Britain, including New Zealand, Australia,
and Canada. Whether considering a writer's connection to region or
the idea of place in exploring what is meant by regionalism, these
essays uncover an enduring and evolving concept. Although the
approaches and disciplines vary, all are framed within the
fundamental premise of the humanities: the search to understand
what it means to be human.
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