What is an American? Today, as the 20th century -- the so-called "American Century" -- recedes in memory, the question can seem immodest or even grandiose. If we don't know now, after decades wielding almost unimaginable superpower status around the globe, will we ever?I recently posted "Watson and the Shark." See, "American Stories."
Still, there's another way to look at it. The question arises anew because of the conflicted place in which the United States finds itself today.
With the national nervous breakdown unleashed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- trauma Americans have collectively been unable to resolve -- our identity remains a shambles. The uncertainty had been building for at least 30 years. In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib and AIG, once-settled matters of morality now appear unrecognizable.
A new exhibition of American paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art seems prompted by this deep unease. The show turns to history -- to the era when the question of what an American might be was still brand new and very much up for grabs.
"American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915" centers on 19th century art. Lots of first-rate paintings keep company with dreadful Victorian morality plays. George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Charles Willson Peale and Rembrandt Peale (father and son) and others stand out.
Mostly it regards the evolution of genre paintings, which show men and women at work and leisure, engaged in public and private life. A few portraits also make an appearance. They include Copley's classic 1768 depiction of Paul Revere, silversmith and Revolutionary War hero, in shirtsleeves. His chin is contemplatively held in his right hand, a handsomely crafted silver teapot cradled in his left.
The teapot of course nods toward the critical role of tea in the New World's economy. A year before, Britain's Parliament fiddled with the tea tax; results were devastating for colonists. (Witness Revere's grim, shadowed face.) The subsequent Boston Tea Party was an insurrection against a corporate stranglehold on trade, held by the British East India Company working with George III. Copley's brilliant image fuses head and hand as tools for thought, labor and moral action. The portrait describes a person, but it places him in the context of an epic story.
The painting -- as sleek and elegantly crafted as Revere's light-reflective silver -- puts artists in that developing story too. Copley is as much an agent of thought, labor and action as Revere is, and his work speaks to the present as much as to history.
The painting occupies pride of place as the first picture encountered in the show. Across from it is Copley's monumental -- and morally ambiguous -- "Watson and the Shark," showing a notorious British businessman who, in his youth, fell overboard from a merchant marine ship and was nearly eaten by an enormous shark. With the theatrical flourish of Grand Manner style, Copley painted this thrashing melodrama of heroic rescue in London.
The show runs through May, so look forward to my own mini-review here sometime in the next few weeks. See, LACMA, "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915.
IMAGE CREDIT: "Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley, c.1768–70," via Wikimedia Commons.
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