This article traces the career of Addison “Add” Bates, a furniture maker, dancer, and sometime-gallerist who was active in Harlem art circles from the 1930s through the 1960s. It highlights his connections to painters Jacob Lawrence—who may have painted him in his workshop—and Romare Bearden—for whom he staged the artist’s first solo show; as well as commissions for Richard Wright and a working relationship with Ralph Ellison. His artistic philosophy encompassed formal rigor—a belief in the expressive power of simple, bold forms in compelling composition—and social justice—an abiding commitment to the dignity of the human body and equal opportunity for African American artists. His career demonstrates the centrality of artist networks in supporting and nurturing artistic experimentation and growth, in particular the multimedia connections that sustained African American artists in the twentieth century in the face of institutionalized racism.
{"title":"Add Bates, the 306 Studio, and Interlocking Modernisms in Mid-Twentieth-Century Harlem","authors":"Kristina Wilson","doi":"10.1086/713573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713573","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the career of Addison “Add” Bates, a furniture maker, dancer, and sometime-gallerist who was active in Harlem art circles from the 1930s through the 1960s. It highlights his connections to painters Jacob Lawrence—who may have painted him in his workshop—and Romare Bearden—for whom he staged the artist’s first solo show; as well as commissions for Richard Wright and a working relationship with Ralph Ellison. His artistic philosophy encompassed formal rigor—a belief in the expressive power of simple, bold forms in compelling composition—and social justice—an abiding commitment to the dignity of the human body and equal opportunity for African American artists. His career demonstrates the centrality of artist networks in supporting and nurturing artistic experimentation and growth, in particular the multimedia connections that sustained African American artists in the twentieth century in the face of institutionalized racism.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713573","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45958748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay investigates a pair of early American andirons that depict identical African figures, each holding a decanter and wine glass. Manufactured by enslaved laborers at an unidentified iron foundry, the andirons depict Black bodies laboring in service. The andirons resemble contemporary representations of enslaved attendants serving White subjects in portraits, as well as woodblock-printed figures that decorated newspaper advertisements for slave auctions. Yet because of their materiality, they complicated the fantasies these visual artifacts proclaim. When considered in their original context of use in an early American parlor, the andirons reveal dis-humanization through spectacularized violence. Produced of iron, these smiling sculptures could be subjected to a fire’s flames without damage. They forged racialized understandings of personhood and supported a view of fireplaces as sites for violence against enslaved people. The andirons reveal that early American refined interiors were not simply zones for performing politeness but also anti-Black.
{"title":"Dancing in the Flames","authors":"J. Van Horn","doi":"10.1086/713572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713572","url":null,"abstract":"This essay investigates a pair of early American andirons that depict identical African figures, each holding a decanter and wine glass. Manufactured by enslaved laborers at an unidentified iron foundry, the andirons depict Black bodies laboring in service. The andirons resemble contemporary representations of enslaved attendants serving White subjects in portraits, as well as woodblock-printed figures that decorated newspaper advertisements for slave auctions. Yet because of their materiality, they complicated the fantasies these visual artifacts proclaim. When considered in their original context of use in an early American parlor, the andirons reveal dis-humanization through spectacularized violence. Produced of iron, these smiling sculptures could be subjected to a fire’s flames without damage. They forged racialized understandings of personhood and supported a view of fireplaces as sites for violence against enslaved people. The andirons reveal that early American refined interiors were not simply zones for performing politeness but also anti-Black.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713572","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45728049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Swiss immigrant Sonja Sekula (1918–1963) enjoyed a brilliant early career at the crux of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism in New York circa 1950. Mental illness interrupted that career, and in 1955 she was forced to move “home” to Switzerland for treatment, which was more affordable there than in the United States. Sekula’s exile led to a fatal disjunction between herself and her American artistic community, which never again received her work so sympathetically—and subsequently largely forgot her. In addition to reacquainting us with Sekula’s work, this essay underlines the necessity of supportive community and helps us reconsider the category “art of the mentally ill,” which has heretofore included the work of severely ill patients but not flourishing, if ill, professional artists. Inclusion of the latter humanizes the mentally ill and allows us to contemplate how a wide range of illnesses affects art, artists, and their legacies.
{"title":"Sonja Sekula and “Art of the Mentally Ill”","authors":"J. Anger","doi":"10.1086/713578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713578","url":null,"abstract":"Swiss immigrant Sonja Sekula (1918–1963) enjoyed a brilliant early career at the crux of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism in New York circa 1950. Mental illness interrupted that career, and in 1955 she was forced to move “home” to Switzerland for treatment, which was more affordable there than in the United States. Sekula’s exile led to a fatal disjunction between herself and her American artistic community, which never again received her work so sympathetically—and subsequently largely forgot her. In addition to reacquainting us with Sekula’s work, this essay underlines the necessity of supportive community and helps us reconsider the category “art of the mentally ill,” which has heretofore included the work of severely ill patients but not flourishing, if ill, professional artists. Inclusion of the latter humanizes the mentally ill and allows us to contemplate how a wide range of illnesses affects art, artists, and their legacies.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713578","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41715711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the early twentieth century, several artists from Pueblo communities in New Mexico and Hopi in Arizona took up watercolor painting, using the new (to them) medium to produce largely representational scenes of community activities. Cochiti Pueblo artist Tonita Peña was the only woman in this group, necessitating her navigation of gender as well as racial stereotypes. Peña was expected to produce the abstracted imagery seen on Pueblo pottery, a visual style and an art form long coded as women’s work. Using a series of images in which Peña depicts women making Pueblo pottery as an interpretive linchpin, this article argues that these scenes foreground the care Peña took to avoid inappropriate revelations of Pueblo sacred knowledge. Moreover, they evince an epistemological celebration of a practice considered women’s work even as she pictorialized it in a medium and style deemed inappropriate for her gender.
{"title":"Tonita Peña and the Politics of Pueblo Art","authors":"Elizabeth S. Hawley","doi":"10.1086/713577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713577","url":null,"abstract":"During the early twentieth century, several artists from Pueblo communities in New Mexico and Hopi in Arizona took up watercolor painting, using the new (to them) medium to produce largely representational scenes of community activities. Cochiti Pueblo artist Tonita Peña was the only woman in this group, necessitating her navigation of gender as well as racial stereotypes. Peña was expected to produce the abstracted imagery seen on Pueblo pottery, a visual style and an art form long coded as women’s work. Using a series of images in which Peña depicts women making Pueblo pottery as an interpretive linchpin, this article argues that these scenes foreground the care Peña took to avoid inappropriate revelations of Pueblo sacred knowledge. Moreover, they evince an epistemological celebration of a practice considered women’s work even as she pictorialized it in a medium and style deemed inappropriate for her gender.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713577","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43088473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay reassesses Paul Thek’s best known work, the Technological Reliquaries series, commonly referred to as the Meat Pieces (1964–67), which are wax-based mixed-media sculptural works that imitate mutilated flesh in gory, viscous details. While they are generally understood as Thek’s “hot” answer to “cold” Pop and Minimal art, I read them through the lens of a religious visual culture that dislodges the hold of unique, individual authorship and suggests a model of authorship that defers to the sacred chain of meaning through contact. This framework is prompted by Thek’s own account of his struggle to “serve two masters”: religion and secular modern art. In theorizing Thek’s attempt to work through this internal conflict, exacerbated by his queer sexuality, the essay also opens up new avenues of inquiry for thinking about religious faith in modern art.
{"title":"An Artist in the Secular World","authors":"P. Aramphongphan","doi":"10.1086/713576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713576","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reassesses Paul Thek’s best known work, the Technological Reliquaries series, commonly referred to as the Meat Pieces (1964–67), which are wax-based mixed-media sculptural works that imitate mutilated flesh in gory, viscous details. While they are generally understood as Thek’s “hot” answer to “cold” Pop and Minimal art, I read them through the lens of a religious visual culture that dislodges the hold of unique, individual authorship and suggests a model of authorship that defers to the sacred chain of meaning through contact. This framework is prompted by Thek’s own account of his struggle to “serve two masters”: religion and secular modern art. In theorizing Thek’s attempt to work through this internal conflict, exacerbated by his queer sexuality, the essay also opens up new avenues of inquiry for thinking about religious faith in modern art.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713576","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42125274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While primarily known as a photographer of sweeping American landscapes, Ansel Adams also served as a corporate consultant, most notably for the electronics company Polaroid. During the course of his thirty-five-year-long consultancy, Adams tested every major Polaroid film and camera. This article argues that Adams’s consultancy was a form of design work, focused as he was on the usability and functionality of Polaroid prototypes, as well as the aesthetics of the test prints he produced. Occupying the roles of designer and user, Adams found that communicating effectively with engineers and scientists was far from straightforward, as he grappled with the problem of translating his experience with the prototypes into usable feedback that could be put into practice in Polaroid’s laboratories and eventually its factories. Adams’s consultancy, which functioned as a laboratory for examining his own aesthetic practice, also illuminates broader historical transitions in the relationship between artists and corporations in postwar American society.
{"title":"Designing Polaroid","authors":"J. Quick","doi":"10.1086/713575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713575","url":null,"abstract":"While primarily known as a photographer of sweeping American landscapes, Ansel Adams also served as a corporate consultant, most notably for the electronics company Polaroid. During the course of his thirty-five-year-long consultancy, Adams tested every major Polaroid film and camera. This article argues that Adams’s consultancy was a form of design work, focused as he was on the usability and functionality of Polaroid prototypes, as well as the aesthetics of the test prints he produced. Occupying the roles of designer and user, Adams found that communicating effectively with engineers and scientists was far from straightforward, as he grappled with the problem of translating his experience with the prototypes into usable feedback that could be put into practice in Polaroid’s laboratories and eventually its factories. Adams’s consultancy, which functioned as a laboratory for examining his own aesthetic practice, also illuminates broader historical transitions in the relationship between artists and corporations in postwar American society.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713575","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45153161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Design can be understood as the planning, shaping, and altering of things, places, and experiences, so the possibilities for its study are boundless. Design is, by its very nature, inclusive. As discussed in this set of Commentaries, design can, and often does, foster discriminatory practices. Yet what is thought of as design, and its commercial connections, provides a broader sense of history, because it touches so many lives. It is the implicit intellectual intent of the four short essays in this special section that studying design permits a deeper understanding of the ways in which material and visual culture reflect, constitute, and construct the larger American experience. The articles in this issue do not encapsulate the entirety of American design history. However, these authors do provide a speculative window into the debates, ideas, and pedagogical conversations that are changing the field of art history.
{"title":"Design Intervention","authors":"David Brody","doi":"10.1086/713571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713571","url":null,"abstract":"Design can be understood as the planning, shaping, and altering of things, places, and experiences, so the possibilities for its study are boundless. Design is, by its very nature, inclusive. As discussed in this set of Commentaries, design can, and often does, foster discriminatory practices. Yet what is thought of as design, and its commercial connections, provides a broader sense of history, because it touches so many lives. It is the implicit intellectual intent of the four short essays in this special section that studying design permits a deeper understanding of the ways in which material and visual culture reflect, constitute, and construct the larger American experience. The articles in this issue do not encapsulate the entirety of American design history. However, these authors do provide a speculative window into the debates, ideas, and pedagogical conversations that are changing the field of art history.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713571","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43892024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One Sunday in fall 1953, Robert Rauschenberg placed a ream of paper on the road outside his studio in New York. He poured paint in front of a wheel of the Model A Ford belonging to his friend, the composer John Cage, and asked him to drive the car over the paper. The resulting Automobile Tire Print remains a remarkable work of art, which simultaneously questions the agency of the artist and the process of mark-making. It has been variously interpreted in the contexts of performance and conceptual art, printmaking, and semiotics. This article highlights the hitherto overlooked significance of the Model A for Rauschenberg. Parallels are drawn to Profile Airflow of 1969 by Claes Oldenburg, a relief multiple modeled on the Chrysler Airflow. In the course of exploring conditions of artistic collaboration and printmaking, both Rauschenberg and Oldenburg also activate icons of American car design.
1953年秋天的一个周日，罗伯特·劳森伯格(Robert Rauschenberg)在纽约工作室外的路上放了一沓纸。他在他的朋友、作曲家约翰·凯奇(John Cage)的一辆a型福特(Model a Ford)汽车的车轮前倒了油漆，让他驾驶汽车在纸上行驶。由此产生的“汽车轮胎印”仍然是一件非凡的艺术作品，它同时质疑了艺术家的代理和标记制作过程。它在表演艺术、观念艺术、版画和符号学的语境中得到了不同的解释。这篇文章强调了迄今为止被忽视的模型A对劳森伯格的意义。相似之处是由Claes Oldenburg绘制的1969年气流剖面，以克莱斯勒气流为模型的浮雕多重。在探索艺术合作和版画条件的过程中，劳森伯格和奥尔登伯格也激活了美国汽车设计的图标。
{"title":"Driving the American Dream","authors":"Rhoda Eitel-Porter","doi":"10.1086/713574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713574","url":null,"abstract":"One Sunday in fall 1953, Robert Rauschenberg placed a ream of paper on the road outside his studio in New York. He poured paint in front of a wheel of the Model A Ford belonging to his friend, the composer John Cage, and asked him to drive the car over the paper. The resulting Automobile Tire Print remains a remarkable work of art, which simultaneously questions the agency of the artist and the process of mark-making. It has been variously interpreted in the contexts of performance and conceptual art, printmaking, and semiotics. This article highlights the hitherto overlooked significance of the Model A for Rauschenberg. Parallels are drawn to Profile Airflow of 1969 by Claes Oldenburg, a relief multiple modeled on the Chrysler Airflow. In the course of exploring conditions of artistic collaboration and printmaking, both Rauschenberg and Oldenburg also activate icons of American car design.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/713574","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42841262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About the Authors","authors":"Hong Kong, W. Chan","doi":"10.1086/712754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712754","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712754","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43833820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For fifty years, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has fostered new scholarship through its residential fellowship program, the oldest and largest in the world for the study of American art. This essay chronicles the program’s growth, probes its prehistory, and introduces Smithsonian figures key to its formation and development. It argues that SAAM’s program emerged from the confluence of three factors: the Smithsonian’s long-standing commitment to national education and research, a new institutional investment in the arts and humanities beginning at midcentury, and the strategic appointment of several Smithsonian leaders and administrators between 1964 and 1970. On the golden anniversary of the program’s founding in 2020, this introduction and the commentaries that follow it engage with the newly created SAAM fellowship archive to reflect on this institutional milestone. Using historical records and ephemera, authors for this iteration of Collaboration2 commemorate and critically assess the SAAM fellowship program’s history and influence on the greater field of American art.
50年来，史密森尼美国艺术博物馆(Smithsonian American Art Museum, SAAM)通过其住宿奖学金项目培养了新的奖学金，这是世界上最古老、规模最大的美国艺术研究项目。这篇文章记录了该计划的发展，探讨了它的史前，并介绍了史密森尼的关键人物，它的形成和发展。它认为，SAAM的计划源于三个因素的汇合:史密森尼对国家教育和研究的长期承诺，世纪中叶开始对艺术和人文学科的新机构投资，以及1964年至1970年间对几位史密森尼领导人和行政人员的战略任命。2020年是该项目成立的黄金周年纪念日，本介绍和后续评论与新创建的SAAM奖学金档案一起反思这一机构里程碑。作者利用历史记录和蜉蝣，对SAAM奖学金项目的历史和对美国艺术更大领域的影响进行了纪念和批判性评估。
{"title":"Visionaries and Stewards","authors":"A. Goerlitz","doi":"10.1086/712744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712744","url":null,"abstract":"For fifty years, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has fostered new scholarship through its residential fellowship program, the oldest and largest in the world for the study of American art. This essay chronicles the program’s growth, probes its prehistory, and introduces Smithsonian figures key to its formation and development. It argues that SAAM’s program emerged from the confluence of three factors: the Smithsonian’s long-standing commitment to national education and research, a new institutional investment in the arts and humanities beginning at midcentury, and the strategic appointment of several Smithsonian leaders and administrators between 1964 and 1970. On the golden anniversary of the program’s founding in 2020, this introduction and the commentaries that follow it engage with the newly created SAAM fellowship archive to reflect on this institutional milestone. Using historical records and ephemera, authors for this iteration of Collaboration2 commemorate and critically assess the SAAM fellowship program’s history and influence on the greater field of American art.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712744","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44575866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：