American Art Evolution
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Title: Young Girl at a Window, c. 1883–1885,
Artist: Mary Cassatt (American 1844-1926)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 39-1/2 × 25-1/2 in.,
Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund 09.8
Image Courtesy: Corcoran Gallery of Art
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Money, Land, Politics, Cultural Exchange and The Modern World.
Washington's Corcoran Gallery selected these five themes, which have
shaped American culture, to explore the evolution in American
Art.
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American Evolution: A History through Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art
through July 27, 2008
“This exhibition has work that will appeal to everyone, from people interested
in traditional American painting and history to those more drawn to
contemporary art and culture,” said Sarah Newman, Assistant Curator of
Contemporary Art. “It provides a tour of the most of the great developments
in American art over the past two centuries, but it also puts them into a context
which throws new light on old favorites.”
The works are impressive. Here's just a teaser. Gilbert Stuart’s stately (circa) 1803 portrait of
George Washington; Andy Warhol’s portrait of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Frederic Edwin Church’s dramatic capture of Niagara Falls and Richard Diebenkorn’s abstract
1975 exploring the suburban expanses of Ocean Park, California.
Joshua Johnson
Title: Grace Allison McCurdy (Mrs. Hugh McCurdy)
and Her Daughters, Mary Jane and Letitia Grace, c. 1804
Artist: Joshua Johnson (American ca. 1763-1824)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 43-5/8 × 38-7/8 in.
Museum Purchase through Gifts of William Wilson Corcoran,
Elizabeth Donner Norment, Francis Biddle, Erich Cohn,
Hardinge Scholle, and the William A. Clark Fund 1983.87
Image Courtesy: Corcoran Gallery of Art
Joshua Johnson was the first African-American artist able to support himself and
his family through his artistry. This is particularly poignant to note and
include in this exploration of American Art during this exciting time in American history.
It is the first time an African-American has captured the nomination of a key political party in the upcoming
election for the country's President.
Innovation is a key concept for artists whether breaking convention and
boundaries for themselves or their genres.
Unfortunately little is known about Joshua Johnson; more is known about his subjects. His art career
centered in Baltimore, Maryland.
He was clearly a popular artist of his time from the number of portraits he painted
of families, likely commissions. He
was the most prolific Baltimore portrait artist during the years 1795-1825.
Frederic Edwin Church
Title: Niagara, 1857
Artist: Frederic Edwin Church (American 1826-1900)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 42-1/2 × 90-1/2 in.,
Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund 76.15
Image Courtesy: Corcoran Gallery of Art
Niagara Falls, the Canadian view, is one of the most breath taking scenes nature provides on the global stage.
In 1857, Frederic Edwin Church painting an iconic image of the majesty and power of the water. Look closely
at the foreground, a tree trunk is about to be swept over the falls. Some believe this to be a nod to
Italian Baroque Painter Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) who oft depicted a tree trunk, that had been destroyed
after a powerful storm.
Church belonged to the Hudson River School of painters. The Hartford,
Connecticut painter was widely traveled
spending time in South America, Europe and the Middle East.
Title: The House of Representatives, 1822-1823
Artist: Samuel F. B. Morse (American 1791-1872)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 86-7/8 × 130-5/8 in.
Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund 11.14
Image Courtesy: Corcoran Gallery of Art
The American Leonardo is one of the nicknames given to inventor and artist Samuel Finley Breese Morse.
Credited
with the idea of a single wire telegraph graph; his invention of a code to use on the machine not only bears his name it made
him a fortune.
His talent as a painter allowed him to finance his college education with the sales of small works. Morse
studied with Benjamin West in England.
Richard Diebenkorn
Title: Ocean Park #83, 1975
Artist: Richard Diebenkorn (American 1922-1993)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 81 in.
Museum Purchase with the aid of funds from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the William A. Clark Fund, and Mary M. Hitchcock 1975.30
Image Courtesy: Corcoran Gallery of Art
Edward Hopper's representational style was a strong influence at first on Richard Diebenkorn. The
artist traveled extensively through the United States and went on to develop a
truly unique
vision of Abstract expressionism in his paintings.
Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series began in 1967 and the artist spent 25 years on the project culminating
in over 125 paintings. The works are named for the location of Richard Diebenkorn's Santa Monica art studio.
Gilbert Stuart to Richard Diebenkorn; Mary Cassatt to Andy Warhol; Frederic Edwin Church's iconic
Niagara Falls: the Corcoran neatly ties these multiple themes and innovative artists together in a exploration
of the development of American Art.
“This exhibition is one of the largest and most diverse displays of American art
ever to be mounted at the Corcoran. It is not size and scope alone that distinguish
the installation from earlier presentations of our collection, however. The display
also purposefully rejects the chronological structure of traditional art historical
surveys in favor of a thematic model that highlights continuities in American
artistic production and culture from the colonial era to the present day,”
said Emily Shapiro, Assistant Curator of American Art.
The American Evolution: A History through Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art:
through July 27, 2008
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