THE CONSERVATIVE REALISTS' IMAGE OF AMERICA IN THE 1920S: MODERNISM, TRADITIONALISM AND NATIONALISM.

摘要

This interpretive study focuses attention on the culture of the 1920s and on eight representative realists: Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, Paul Manship and Gutzon Borglum. Their multifaceted image of America was apparently shaped--as it was for so many other Americans--by the thought and spirit of modernism, traditionalism and nationalism. These three dominant tendencies of the twenties also variously affected the development of a massive art boom and the formation of a conservative, realistic art that drew its inspiration and themes from the American experience, both in the past and in the present.;The study consists of a series of intensive, relatively independent essays. Separate chapters are devoted to the thought and culture (delineated in the lengthy introduction, ("Crisis in Values") as well as to the art of the twenties (discussed in Chapter II, "The Art Boom and the Problem of a National Identity") and to each artist and one or two key words of art, which are considered within a framework that recognizes their biographical, aesthetic and cultural context. They are listed and organized as follows: Chapter III, Hopper's Eleven A.M. (1926) and Automat (1927); Chapter IV, Burchfield's Winter, East Liverpool (1927); Chapter V, Shahn's The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931-32); Chapter VI, Benton's Boom Town (1928); Chapter VII, Wood's American Gothic (1930); Chapter VIII, Curry's Tornado Over Kansas (1929); Chapter IX, Manship's Indian Hunter with Dog (1925-26) and Bust of John D. Rockefeller (1918); Chapter X, Borglum's Mount Rushmore National Memorial (1927-41).;Doubtless the selection of at least half of these artists must seem unusual for a study of 1920s art. Hopper, Burchfield, Benton and Curry all matured as realists sometime during the last half of this decade, but the other four artists achieved their respective reputations before or after the twenties. The names of Shahn and Wood are irrevocably linked to the thirties, while Manship has strong associations with the teens, and Borglum evolved his characteristic style around 1908. Yet regardless of what decade they have traditionally been assigned, Shahn, Wood, Manship and Borglum have been included because of certain extremely important works of art which either were created in the 1920s or were based, to a considerable extent, on significant events, ideas and values of the period.