Pohl, Frances K. Framing America: A Social History of American Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002

Bjelajac, David. American Art: A Cultural History. Upper Saddle (NJ): Prentice Hall, 2000.

In history’s dead and drought-dry fields the gleaners of meaning gather and weave their strands into deceptively palatable truths. Our understanding of time—perhaps itself a delusion of convenience—abets our innate penchant for narrative as we drape the objects of the world beneath a concealing curtain of words. History requires a faith more fervent than any religious ideology; to believe in the past may, in a sense, be both a defining characteristic and a fundamental sensory error of the human animal. To avoid the alternative—a faith in the perpetual now, the eternal moment defined not by time but by change—we create a sense of the past, a web of connections which places people, events and objects into fathomable contexts.
Paradoxically, contextualization both blinds and reveals; although examining artworks through political, social, philosophical, scientific, and art historical lenses offers comforting insights otherwise invisible, it is arguable (and has been argued) that there are meanings beyond the scope of contextual analysis. Not that meaning is purely a relative social construction; I would argue rather that the truly important meanings are often beyond the limits of immediate cognition or, at the very least, beyond the academic process of time/space contextualization.

We arrange the objects of the world into patterns of influence. Imagine a billion card tables—each piled high with past and present jigsaw puzzle pieces. From these tables we choose a select few pieces from which to construct stories, often force-fitting incongruous puzzle pieces into tidy narratives. Inevitably, puzzles could be assembled with pieces that fit perfectly, although the finished image would be undecipherable. Seldom would, and seldom do, the pieces and the resultant image match perfectly. Every so often pieces are exchanged to accommodate current sensibilities; these rejected objects and the ideas that accompany them then are thrown back onto the pile, orphaned from the narrative until a later moment when perhaps they will reappear as lost or overlooked or understudied but nevertheless crucial to the understanding of the present. If we could glimpse even momentarily the predicament that confronts us—the sheer volume of the puzzle pieces and the humbling awareness that the tenuous connections that connect them may be illusory at best—our self-assigned task of making sense of images would not be the smugly elite refuge it may appear to some outside the field.

As art historians, our mission is just this: to examine the objects made by those in a time and space (presumably) different from the present moment and to assign them possible meanings based on contextualization. These interpretations or narratives are then taught to others through texts and lectures—more often than not through that most honored of educational treatises, the survey textbook. It is through such texts that the need for grand-scheme, large picture narrative is most apparent: survey texts provide the outline; additional courses and texts fill in the corollaries. Needless to say, surveys are necessary simplifications—abridgements of events too numerous to comprehend. One would be hard-pressed, however, to consider an alternative that provides the scope and conciseness of a survey, as their practicality makes up for their deficiencies.

Assigning a survey text is assigning a belief in the narrative structure. While many in the postmodern mode of thought readily admit there are countless narratives—those of previously ignored groups in particular—it is less frequently admitted that our very notion of the narrative is perhaps not only inadequate but also erroneous. Some surveys attempt to atone by offering a thematic but chronological approach, realizing that neither is singularly adequate to understanding the meanings of a work of art. The purely thematic approach lacks chronology; the chronological, social contextualization. What is needed is an entirely new manner of viewing objects that is not stymied by the illusory constraints of context or chronology. Is such a vision possible? Is it advisable? Is it practical?

American Art instructors have no doubt wrestled with such issues when deciding which survey text is best for classroom instruction. Wayne Craven’s American Art: History and Culture has been a time-honored text, although some instructors may feel less than compelled to follow its rigid divisions by medium and period. Its strength is that its reliance on the facts allows for the application of a myriad of methodologies. In recent years several textbooks have emerged that offer more contextual approaches: Frances K. Pohl’s Framing America: A Social History of American Art and David Bjelajac’s American Art: A Cultural History.
Pohl’s survey—a mighty tome that will no doubt unravel the seams of bookbags and young spines nationwide—reveals both the soaring heights and dreary depths of postmodern thought. Far from a chronological run-through of canonical expectations, Framing America examines American art and artifacts through thematic divisions (such as Art and Conquest; Nature and Nation; and Work and Art) that explore art’s relation to the social attitudes of its historical moment. The result is an often-refreshing selection of artworks, such as Emanuel Leutze’s The Storming of the Teocalli by Cortez and His Troops (1848), Albert Weinert’s Haymarket Monument (1893), and José Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus (1930). Although this is a welcome attempt to expand the definition and cultural boundaries of American art to include Native American, African American, and Latin American artists, it could be argued that a wider vision of “Art of the Americas” is necessary to attain a more accurate portrayal and understanding.

As one might expect, much is made of the fact that American attitudes of the past are less than flattering (Framing America becomes an obvious double-entendre—whether or not America is unjustly framed in the textbook remains an issue of personal opinion). Images such as Harriet Cany Peale’s Her Mistress’s Clothes (1848) and an 1860 advertisement for baking powder that features an eager-to-please “mammy” seem included merely as reflections of racist attitudes. While it is refreshing to see such uncommon images in survey texts, one occasionally senses that the theme at hand takes precedence over the works themselves.
We find ourselves at an interesting junction: Connoisseurship, no longer a primary concern for the art historian (for better or worse), has given way to an unprecedented freedom: all images are worthy of examination regardless of aesthetic quality, provided they help us better contextualize and create meaning. In theory this seems a plausible starting point. Material and popular culture are, without question, important avenues of exploration. Is it more important for students to study a racist ad or a navy recruitment poster, however, than, say, even one work by Thomas Sully, William Rush, Alexander Jackson Davis, Sanford Gifford, Horatio Greenough, Erastus Dow Palmer, John Quincy Adams Ward, Clark Mills, Henry Kirke Brown, William Wetmore Story, Randolph Rogers, William Rimmer, H.H. Richardson, William Morris Hunt, Elihu Vedder, or Albert Pinkham Ryder (to name just a few of the unmentioned artists)?

One could argue that Framing America strives to divert us from the narrative of these canonical figures by offering different pathways. It is a useful textbook in this regard, if one is interested in teaching social history without imposing a canon of well-known American artworks (Is it really important for students to be aware of Sargent’s Madame X or Allston’s Belshazzar’s Feast?). Paintings typically relegated to the kitsch category—early twentieth century paintings of Native Americans, for example—are given ample attention (Some of these paintings are quite interesting, although some well-known artists that helped create a mythic conception of the West and Native Americans, such as George de Forest Brush, are not included).
It must be said, however, that the works that are included are discussed in a clear and yet thorough manner—Pohl assembles current art historical interpretations on each work, diligently and admirably noting the ideas of particular scholars. This approach of giving credit where credit is due within the text itself is a welcome sight in a survey textbook, where traditionally the author assumes the mantle of all-encompassing authority.

One problem of a thematic approach, however, is that it tends to pigeonhole certain artists and artworks. Henry Ossawa Tanner, for instance, is offered not as an important proponent of Orientalism or as a realist in the Eakins tradition but as a “Precursor to the Harlem Renaissance” (no doubt true, but it is only one way of looking at Tanner’s work). An equally relevant art historical move would be to place Tanner in the tradition of Delacroix or, perhaps more accurately, the influential Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny. Similarly, Lilly Martin Spencer’s works are seen less as important genre paintings than as indications of the male dominated society that defines women as domestic toilers. The dilemma for postmodern textbook authors is how to both define and separate previously marginalized groups by the hardships they faced (racism, sexism) while inserting them into the ever-growing, ever-changing canon. [On a personal note, I have always believed that for students, the “canon” consists mainly of those works that are taught—these are the works that art history students will see as the core images they will then teach to others. The canon is perpetually created and then repeated. Perhaps this is the lesson of textbooks such as Framing America. In the end, though, the very idea of a canon exists only in our heads.]

There are some aspects of American art little explored in Framing America: Little is mentioned of neoclassical expatriate sculptors and sculpture, aside from the obligatory nod to Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave and the work of Harriet Hosmer (represented by two works) and Edmonia Lewis (represented by three works). Augustus Saint-Gaudens receives a single mention with The Shaw Memorial, included primarily for its status as a “monument to freedom.” Hosmer and Lewis are important for a number of reasons, but there needs to be a more even-handedness when deciding who to slight and who to champion.

For those who want to push the study of artworks beyond notions of gender, race, and colonization, Framing America may prove a frustrating account. But it is by no means an uninteresting one—on the contrary, Pohl provides a great many insights by raising these issues, and offers serious students of American Art a substantial art historical foundation, despite the obvious omission of several key artworks. For those works that are covered, Pohl has deftly relayed the contemporary thought on their potential meanings without asserting those meanings as truth. Pohl’s methodology suggests that interpretations are always in flux, offering both past and contemporary viewpoints.

Yet it is this diligence to modern interpretation that makes such texts difficult to use in the classroom if those particular issues are not shared interests of the professor. When every artwork under scrutiny is seen only as an emblem of colonialism and conquest, it is difficult to explore other issues and influences without creating a discrepancy between what is being taught and what is being read.
A more manageable effort is David Bjelajac’s American Art: A Cultural History. Smaller in size, American Art nevertheless covers critical social issues without compromising canonical figures and artworks. Bjelajac similarly divides the historical narrative into cultural themes—for example, The Invention and Mapping of America, Religious Rituals, National Identity, and Gilded Age Commerce—without circumscribing the social attitudes of the past around each artwork. Admittedly, very few of the artists mentioned above as having been omitted from Framing America are to be found in Bjelajac’s American Art. Although this may represent a changing notion of the canon, it is understandable that a relatively in-depth survey devoted to social history can only deal with a limited number of works.

Nevertheless, American Art: A Cultural History makes an admirable effort to blend social commentary with canonical artworks, while offering discussions of such uncommon choices as Jeremiah Pearson Hardy’s Catherine Wheeler Hardy and Her Daughter (1842) and Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s The Price of Blood (1868). Although less heavy-handed with his sense of social injustice, Bjelajac addresses a wide variety of postmodern concerns through inclusion of works such as Horatio Greenough’s much-maligned The Rescue (1837-53) and Edmonia Lewis’s Forever Free (1867). What is remarkable is that Bjelajac has both embraced and opened the canon by presenting traditionally examined artworks along with those by artists such as John Valentine Haidt, Margaret Foley and Elaine de Kooning.

An unusual but fascinating element of American Art is Bjelajac’s interest in Freemasonry, a theme that meanders throughout the text. With the prevalence of Masonic symbolism in American decorative arts (chairs, Masonic aprons, tankards and membership certificates), it is without question that freemasonry played a significant role in the development of American intellectual and artistic life (Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, De Witt Clinton, painter Ezra Ames, artist and author William Dunlap, architect Robert Mills, and sculptors Gutzon Borglum and Charles Keck were among the many artists and thinkers who were dedicated freemasons). Bjelajac gives Masonic influence the attention it deserves in an American art survey text without overstating its importance.

Both texts are welcome additions to the table, as the direction such texts are taking—social context over formal or aesthetic considerations—can only assist the pedagogical process. Ultimately there is no perfect textbook, and it is fortunate that few of us expect textbooks to present every artist and every artwork that will be shown and discussed in class. It remains our task to assemble the puzzle pieces of canonical American art, those tenuous filaments of meaning that conveniently dwell within.