David and Art - What Counts as American Art?

Last week we mentioned the role of Theodore Roosevelt in the creation of the Commission on Fine Arts. His activism on behalf of the arts, and his belief of their centrality in what constitutes a flourishing life is admirable. But he can’t be considered as a friend of all the arts, of every style, of art as a general term. Modernism, for example, he thought was utter hogwash. He called artists like Picasso the lunatic fringe of the art world.

As for American painters like John Singer Sargent who went to Europe to broaden their understanding, Roosevelt had no patience. He thought American artists should stay in the United States and paint American subjects. Foreign elements had no place in real American art.

TR’s ideas about what counted as American art and what kind of art Americans should celebrate was starting to be seriously challenged from almost all quarters. The art world was getting a lot smaller and more interconnected. Shortly after Roosevelt died, the Detroit Institute for the Arts became the first public museum the United States to acquire a Van Gogh and a Matisse.

Ten years later the Detroit Museum Director Wilhelm Valentiner sought to commission the already famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera to create a series of fresco murals in the courtyard of the museum. It was 1932, the third year of the Great Depression, and the idea was to celebrate the industrial history of the city. Edsel Ford, the only child of Henry Ford and the company’s current president, was one of the museum’s big-shot backers. He agreed to fund the murals.

Rivera’s star was rising. He created his first grand artwork in the United States the year before in San Francisco. He then had a large retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that had made headlines, and so was in the news.

The Ford Motor company hoped the murals would be good publicity because it wanted to improve its image. Earlier that year, police and Ford security guards shot and killed several people taking part in a march of unemployed auto workers.

For his part, Diego Rivera made no secret of his political convictions and was an ardent Marxist who supported the working classes at every turn. Consequently, his art reflected the interests of workers over those of owners and bosses.

There may be some friction here. Stay tuned.

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