On Art

...On Art AMERICAN CONTRASTS BY VIVIEN RAYNOR American landscape painting bloomed somewhat later than European, naturally, but it, too, was part of the Romantic movement Its practitioneis are grouped loosely under the heading Hudson River School, in a period extending roughly from the end of the first quarter of the 19th century to the beginning of the last That Romantic landscapes showed here on literally so large a scale-the famous Niagara panoramas, for example-has to do with the salivating optimism of the men opening up the continent, which even the Civd War could not discourage All that territory to be tamed and tidied, all those resources to be developed, and by a "science" that was going to insure the good life for the masses and magnates alike-it must have been a heady time As the country expanded, painters like Albert Bierstadt pushed the frontiers of landscape far beyond the Hudson River Born in Germany m 1830 and brought to this country at the age of two, Bierstadt was to find his place among those who specialized m the Far West The mam news he relayed East was the gigantic scale of everything, particularly the Rockies In 1859, after four years of tram ing in Dusseldorf and tune spent traveling in Germany and Italy, Bierstadt made his first trip to the West (Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas) and was overwhelmed by the experience The wilderness pictures that ensued sold very well, their prices reportedly reaching $30,000 By the mid-'60s he was married and had built a mansion overlooking the Hudson at Irv-ington But decline set m quickly too By 1889, when the American selec tion committee lor the Paris Exposition rejected The Last of the Buffalo his reputation had collapsed He continued to paint, virtually without exhibiting, and to travel luxuriously, since he and his wife were of socialite standing His death in 1902 was noted perfunctorily To get the most out of the Whitney show devoted to Bierstadt (through November 5), it helps to consider his historical context Artists of the time were clearly intoxicated by the mighty geological gestures to be seen on the new continent Niagara and Yosemite may seem almost postcard jokes to us now, but the first sight of them was awe-in-spiring Remarkably, Bierstadt was able to capture the excitement, though in a style that obtrudes occasionally, especially in the overly geometrical drawing of foregrounds, and the msistant "note" of red that is supposed to enliven a landscape He was very fond of a composition involving a plain leading back to a lake, set against snowy mountains swathed in mists and clouds But he was geologically faithful There is usually a waterfall cascading over the glacially-formed escarpment, and rock stratification is dihgendy described During his prime period, color and brushwork were fresh and alive, with Indian encampments and wildlife skillfully incorporated into the pictures Once in a while Bierstadt's scenes are unbelievable, largely because the morphology of huge land masses is unbehevable Yet he did take a few liberties Perspective appears to curve at times, prompting one con temporary to calculate that given the artist's proportions, a group of his mountains was 10,000 miles high His weather effects could also verge on the Wagnerian Presented by the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth a little apologetically-Bierstadt was not the greatest artist America has produced"-the show has been diffidently reviewed, critics seizing on the small sketches at the expense of the studio canvases This is the modern tradition of course, even Constable gets the same handling In fact the sketches are generally better than the larger pictures, but m those days they were considered merely notes tor the densely-worked, formal canvases through which the artist presented his opinions and his life experiences It is difficult for us to perceive the majestic messages today because we tend to measure landscape by Impressionist paintings, although a good many ot these were similarly worked up in the studio Whether or not Bierstadt was corrupted by success and hanging out with the Estabhshment, we certainly need no biographical background to see his deterioration The early luster is replaced by a dead reddish tone, and the drawing, while never sensational, gradually becomes tired, as if he had lost the courage of his imagination The rejected buffalo picture is a case m pomt It is interesting only for its sly propaganda showing the Indians, rather than the new settlers, slaughtering the herds (and with spears yet i) Incidentally, if the epic works went downhill, the sketches did not Among them is a very lovely study of a paddleboat with yellow wheel covers listing in the lead-colored waters of an Alaskan bay Bierstadt would have suffered from technical comparison with some of his peers, but he might have profited in other ways from being revived m group Pragmatic as he obviously was, his canvases, like theirs, are now and then tinged with a mystical quality that does not always come through m a one-man show The mid-century was a watershed of thought, what with God beginning His slow death at the hands of Darwin, and the element of mysticism to be found m the Romantic landscapists makes an instructive, if oblique, report on the intellectual currents of the time Also at the Whitney (through October 23) is an extraordmary photographic documentation of Executive Order 9066, Roosevelt's decision to intern 110,000 West-Coast Japanese-Americans during World War II To many at the time this probably seemed no more significant than the smashing of German pianos and the beating up of dachshunds during World War I In early 1942 California, Oregon and Washington were declared strategic areas and the "enemy aliens" were given six days to prepare themselves for incarceration in hastily built camps located m the most desolate parts of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, etc Since the Japanese immigrants and their descendants had not wasted their time in the Promised Land, the booty they left to be expropriated by the rest of the citizenry was substantial As concentration camps go, the American version did not compare with the European prototype, but the underlying principle was the same In the catalogue's short history of the "Yellow Peril" in the U S , Donald Pike and Roger Olmsted go back to the Gold Rush, when the Chinese first appeared Their success and that of other "conspicuous foreigners seemed an infringement upon the fruits of Manifest Destiny" This quasi-religious doctrine now sounds as bizarre as a Cargo Cult, yet it sustained the white settlers in the long haul, besides serving to blur the distinctions between rugged pioneering and unbridled greed By the tune the Japanese arrived m the '80s, selective xenophobia had laid its eggs, and they hatched locust-hke at regular intervals in the form of racist leglegislation After World War I, "it became apparent that California's anti-Orientalism was rather generally accepted in the nation as a whole " The military, meanwhile, had taken an interest in events on the Asian mainland, but they didn't get then-chance to act until Pearl Harbor The spectacle of unacceptable peoples being humiliated cannot support any more description In this version, however, the victims are meticulously dressed, as they would be for any tnp, and the lovely Call forma light bathing their dignified presences softens the message somewhat Presented by Maisie and Richard Conrat, the exhibition consists of more than 100 pictures, many by Dorothea Lange and all magnificent It was designed for the strictly moral purpose of mducmg self-examination and securing a redefinition of patriotism to mean "dedication to making one's country a wiser and more just nation " This sentiment is fine, but a significant segment of the population has come to feel that the national passion for self-examination borders on self-flagellation, with overtones of expiation through pain Instead of endless investigations and mea culpas that accomplish nothing, it might be more realistic to consider the possibility that we are not exempt from the continuum of human horror The Japanese internment (made all the more outrageous by the fact that 25,000 Japanese-Americans fought for the U S m the War against totalitarianism while their families were being locked up) was not a sin that can simply be obliterated by confession, a ton of money and some legislation Nor is there any point in looking at these photographs without realizing that the dark side of humanity operates continuously between individuals and groups-right up to the relations between the most powerful nation-states In other words, what the Whitney exhibit seems to suggest is the desirability of a more Calvinistic outlook toward human affairs...