Resource Library 2000-2004 articles and essays with the topic "American Military and Wartime Art"
(above: Norman Rockwell, U.S. Army Teaches a Trade (G.I. Telegrapher), 1919, oil on canvas, 19 x 29 inches, Norman Rockwell Museum, NRM.1977.03. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Our articles and essays honoring the American experience through its art:
Go to Picturing
Change: The Impact of Ledger Drawings on Native American Art (11/24/04),
an exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College,
that reveals the impact of ledger drawings on transformations in Native
American pictorial arts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
The works in this exhibition illustrate how Native American artists adopted
and adapted Western materials, methods, and conventions to their own artistic
traditions, inventing new art forms that comment upon and document cultural
transitions brought on by Western education and cultural domination.
Go to George Bellows: The Tragedies of War (8/9/03),
a Harvard University Art Museums exhibition
featuring 32 objects including drawings, etchings, lithographs, and one
painting. In the early 20th century, George Bellows
(1882-1925) emerged as one of the best-known American artists of the period.
In 1918 he responded to reports of German atrocities in Belgium by creating,
in just six weeks, a series of 14 lithographs entitled War (The Tragedies
of the War in Belgium) that chronicled the horrific acts of the invaders.
The same year, Bellows painted five large-scale oils based on images in
the lithographs. One of the paintings, The Germans Arrive, is the
focal point of the exhibition. Bellows followed Goya's lead in his Third
of May and Manet's in his Execution of Maximilian in employing
the usually heroic genre of history painting to protest horrifying demonstrations
of inhumanity. The artist's prints and paintings received high acclaim upon
their debut but have been seldom exhibited over the last half-century. In
fact, this exhibition is only the third time that The Germans Arrive
has been on public view.
Go to One Nation: Patriots and Pirates Portrayed by N.C. and James Wyeth;
by Lauren Raye Smith (10/4/01)
Go to Winslow Homer: The Civil War Years and Winslow Homer: The Gloucester
Years (12/4/00)
Go to Selections From The Air Force Art Collection - Keeping The Peace
(10/16/00), a Sangre de
Christo Arts & Conference Center exhibit depicting heroism and valor
during war and recognition of those who served. Acts of bravery and valor
are showcased in the paintings. The works are part of the United States
Air Force Art Collection, an extensive anthology of aviation housed in the
Pentagon.
Go to Eye of The Storm: The Civil War Drawings of Robert Knox Sneden (10/2/00), a traveling exhibition organized
by the Virginia Historical Society of Richmond, Virginia, is based on the
illustrated 5,000-page Civil War memoir of Private Sneden. Nearly 100 detailed
watercolors, maps, and drawings depicting Sneden's experience as a soldier
in the Army of the Potomac, a Union map-maker, and prisoner of war in some
of the worst Confederate prisons-including Andersonville will be on display
through December 31, 2000. The exhibition opening coincides with the release
of an edited version of Sneden's diaries, Eye of the Storm: A Civil War
Odyssey, which is edited by Dr. Charles F. Bryan, Jr., director of the
Virginia Historical Society, and Dr. Nelson D. Lankford, assistant director
for publications and education at the Virginia Historical Society. The book
is published by The Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster.
Go to One
Nation: Patriots and Pirates Portrayed by N.C. Wyeth and James Wyeth (8/12/00), a Farnsworth Art Museum exhibition that could be described as
a socio-political reflection of the past century bringing together approximately
80 drawings and paintings that challenge viewers to find their own definitions
of "patriot" and "pirate," primarily in the political
arena.
Go to For Love of Country (4/18/00), a Heckscher Museum of Art exhibit that features work by artists
Mort Kunstler, Newell Convers Wyeth, Alonzo Chappel, among others, and selections
from the holdings of Long Island collectors Steven A. Klar and Herschel
and Fern Cohen. Included in the Heckscher's military-themed
exhibition is an installation of several hundred miniatures from the collection
of the prominent real estate developer, Steven A. Klar. These lead soldiers,
produced from the late-19th century through the 1950s in France and England,
encompass a wide range of historic periods, and are particularly rich in
Napoleonic subjects. Also on view from Klar's personal collection are several
war-related paintings. Print collectors Herschel and Fern Cohen, whose Depression
era works were the subject of a Heckscher exhibition last year, have also
contributed several compelling examples of war in art to "For Love
of Country."
Go to From the Front: World War II Watercolors by
Peter Sanfilippo (4/18/00)
Go to Paul
Revere: Artisan and Patriot (4/3/00), a Worcester Art Museum exhibit
of one of the world's largest collections of silver objects crafted by Revolutionary
War hero Paul Revere (1734 - 1818), with exceptional works of silver, engravings,
and early American furniture from the Worcester Art Museum's newly expanded
collection, as well as Revere prints from both the Museum's and the American
Antiquarian Society's collections. The exhibition also includes John Singleton
Copley 's famous portrait of Revere, in which the artisan holds a teapot
that he has crafted. The Museum's 115-piece silver collection includes a
recent gift of 56 pieces of Paul Revere silver from The Paul Revere Life
Insurance Company, a subsidiary of UnumProvident Corporation. Composed of
many of Revere's later silver works, this gift greatly strengthens the Museum's
excellent examples of his earlier style. In addition, the gift includes
prints made by Revere, as well as a selection of early American furniture.
Go to Robert Capa: Photographs (4/2/00), a Worcester Art Museum exhibit. Capa exposed approximately 70,000
negatives in his lifetime and was called one of the great poets of the camera.
While previous exhibitions have explored Capa's importance as a war photographer,
this retrospective shows the remarkable range of his work. Drawn from hundreds
of previously unseen images, including a set of vintage prints from the
collection of his brother, Cornell Capa, this exhibition shows Robert Capa
to be one of the great photographers of the 20th century.
Go to New Frontiers #4: elin o'Hara slavick
(3/3/00), a Mint Museum of Art exhibition in the
New Frontier series dedicated to emerging contemporary artists in the South.
"New Frontiers #4: elin o'Hara slavick" presents the most politically
engaged work in the series to date. An Associate Professor of Art at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, slavick's multimedia installation
includes photography, drawings, and conceptual work that explore on various
levels the interconnectedness of the American military and American tourist
presence throughout the world. The artist presents a conceptual investigation
into the similarities between the soldier's and the tourist's eye. slavick
explores how operations of power, privilege and destruction characterize
the manner in which the soldier looks down the barrel of a gun and how a
tourist looks through the view finder of his camera.
Return to Wartime and
Military Art
Return to Topics in American
Representational Art
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