Amerikanischer Malkasten : American art and Düsseldorf
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines the group of American painters who lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany, in the decades before the American Civil War. By emphasizing that such important works of art as Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware, " Richard Caton Woodville's "War News From Mexico, " and Albert Bierstadt's "Roman Fish Market, Arch of Octavius" were all produced in this small city on the Rhine, "Amerikanischer Malkasten" seeks to reframe the historiography of American art before the Civil War by arguing that the American experience in Düsseldorf was not marginal or incidental to that story, but rather essential to it. In recent years Americanists have rejected or refined narratives of American art that assert its isolated, nationalistic character in favor of ones that see American art as deeply engaged with the wider world. However, the American Civil War remains something of a dividing line for many scholars, who view the generation of artists who came to maturity in the 1840s and 1850s as essentially provincial in character, by contrast with later generations of cosmopolitans. Through in-depth case studies of Leutze, Woodville, and Bierstadt, this dissertation upends this tradition periodization in two ways. First, it shows how these individual artists engaged with a wide variety of transatlantic thought, including theatrical meolodrama; the interrelated discourses of "Bildung" and Self-Culture; and the marketing o the Wild West, in particular its American Indian inhabitants. Second, and most importantly, it articulates a vision of American art before the Civil War that emphasizes not only its cosmopolitanism, but also the ways in which these and other artists were possessed of an essentially outward-facing and communal ethos, which I contrast with the more idiosyncratic and personal vision favored by later generations. Ultimately, "Amerikanischer Malkasten" redefines both the history of American art of the antebellum period and how historians of American art conceive of--and speakabout--that history.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Hamming, Grant Wesley |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History. |
| Primary advisor | Wolf, Bryan, 1960- |
| Thesis advisor | Wolf, Bryan, 1960- |
| Thesis advisor | Meyer, Richard |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Winterer, Caroline, 1966- |
| Advisor | Meyer, Richard |
| Advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Advisor | Winterer, Caroline, 1966- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Grant Wesley Hamming. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Grant Wesley Hamming
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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