An Annoying Exhibition

Met Director Thomas Campbell touts The Civil War and American Art as a “once-in-a-lifetime exhibition [that] proposes significant new readings of some of this country’s most iconic paintings.” It is, however, a reading I’ve seen before – among other places in the MIA’s American Sublime show. Then I wasn’t convinced; this time I was simply annoyed. The works selected for the exhibition are all intended to show “how American artists responded to the Civil War and its aftermath” (all italics mine). Let’s look at some key examples.
Martin Johnson Heade’s Approaching Thunder Storm was completed in 1859, two years before the war began, and it copies an even earlier almost identical work. How is it a response to the war – or, to be more liberal, to the issues that provoked the war? The evidence cited in the label is that Lincoln used the phrase “the storm coming” in 1860, a year later, when referring to slavery. The catalogue cites the painting’s ownership by an abolitionist preacher who “may have had his newly acquired painting in mind when he delivered a sermon in 1861 referring to “storms which sweep the political horizon.” There’s no mention of anything Heade said or wrote; no discussion of how this composition fits into his overall oeuvre.
Now let’s look at the painting itself. Yes, there is a black cloud approaching, but it is far from ominous, and it generates the puniest lightning bolt in art history. A figure in the foreground sits calmly on the shore, accompanied by an equally unconcerned dog. The catalogue author admits this “strangely passive figure” is a problem for her interpretation. She claims, however, that the men in a rowboat and sailboat are racing for safety when, to my eye, they are calmly oblivious to the approaching storm. Moreover, the dark cloud abruptly ends one-third of the way across the sky. From a meteorological point of view, “Summer Squall” would seem the more appropriate title. Maybe Heade thought the Civil War to come in a few years would just be a passing disturbance. Or maybe he was just painting an approaching storm.
Heade is represented by just one painting. Frederic Church, by contrast, is a mainstay with four grand canvases plus the signature image, Our Banner in the Sky. The latter is a clear response to the war, but whether it arose out of personal conviction or a marketing opportunity is open to question. The picture is small, sketchy and on paper. It has none of the finish Church normally achieved. And Church, we know, was above all a marketer. He changed the name of Icebergs, also in the show, to The North when war broke out 12 days before his painting was unveiled – then changed the name again when it was shown, and sold, in England, where Confederate sympathies were strong. The painting itself clearly was not a response to the war. Church traveled to Labrador in 1859, undoubtedly searching for exotic subject matter – see, e.g., Heart of the Andes upstairs at the Met. He spent the next year developing the monumental Icebergs, and its display at war’s outbreak was surely a coincidence.
Also in the show is Cotopaxi, which the label even says is “not specifically about the Civil War,” even as it makes a connection to abolitionist speeches that use “volcano” as a figure of speech. There is no mention that Church happened to be in Ecuador when Cotopaxi erupted – giving him an exotic subject that he had to know would astound his American audience. (Church’s large works, remember, were meant for display to the paying public.) Church’s Aurora Borealis is presented as a “bleak prophecy of doom,” although it dates from 1865, the war’s end, and there is no mention of the dogsled team that is traversing the ice toward the ice-bound vessel.
There is a Homer Dodge Martin landscape called The Iron Mine which has no obvious connection to the war; but the label and catalogue explain that iron from this mountain was used to make guns, that the open mineshafts look like bullet holes, and that the barren hillside resembles a battlefield from a Civil War photograph. Carrying rank speculation one step further, the catalogue notes the “further irony” that the army often tested its weapons by firing into the cliffs at Storm King that recall this scene.
There is a totally typical Bierstadt view of Yosemite Valley – far from any Civil War action – which merits inclusion in the exhibit because it is unusually devoid of animals and humans and “therefore…held out promise of a place of renewal and healing, where Americans can slough off the trauma of war and strife.” Presumably it would not represent this “New Eden” if there had been any deer grazing there. There is no mention that Bierstadt painted similar scenes throughout his career, nor any reconciliation between his 1865 painting of a “place of healing” with Church’s 1865 painting described as a “bleak prophecy of doom.”
The most egregious instance of baseless thesis-mongering is the juxtaposition of two similar views by John Frederick Kensett of Paradise Rocks, Newport, one from 1859, pre-war, and the other substantially post-war, 1868. The scene is the same, but the lighting is different, and the label tells us that the earlier work is a sunrise, while the later appears to be late afternoon, as the area previously in shadow is now in light. Nothing else in the label, however, comports with what is observable on the canvas. The label author sees the chill of fall or early winter in the 1868 work, citing the “muted palette,” overcast sky and distant birds, which “hint at the passing of paradise.” By contrast, she sees the “light green grass” of spring in the 1859 painting. Let’s put aside for a moment the question of why a painting of spring and sunrise could be a response to the onset of the Civil War, or why the “chill of winter” is an appropriate response four years after the war’s conclusion. Let’s just look at the works themselves. To my eye, the grass is exactly the same color in both paintings; there is no seasonal difference. The “muted palette” is exactly the same palette Kensett employed in 98% of his paintings (including one from 1870 in our collection) – the grey rocks are a Kensett trademark, having nothing to do with the Civil War, before or after. And as for the “distant birds,” they are just as present in the 1858 sky, although in that work they are slightly more distant. If anything, when compared to each other, the 1868 painting is far more placid and represents, if you must look for a metaphor, a “country at peace,” not the “passing of paradise.” But if you are familiar with Kensett’s work, you know that he is just about America’s most matter-of-fact landscape artist. That is part of his great appeal –not the “message” to be found in “significant new readings” of his work.
The quiet cornerstone of the exhibition – and the final artist I will discuss – is Winslow Homer, who witnessed the Civil War firsthand and created the only truly fine paintings to emerge from the conflict. Homer, however, was there first and foremost as a reporter: Harper’s Weekly had assigned him to create images from the war for reproduction in their publication, and that is what most of the paintings here represent: scenes undoubtedly taken from life of soldiers sitting in front of their tents, etc. Even in the instances where we know Homer’s own editorial opinion, he keeps it from his art. He is quoted as saying that the task of the sharpshooter is akin to murder, but his painting of that individual in a tree is factual and neutral, devoid of any praise or condemnation.
Thus, it deserves skepticism when the labels make grand philosophical readings of Homer’s compositions. The most interesting painting in the exhibition is Homer’s Prisoners from the Front, of 1866. It shows a Union officer, Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow, confronting three Rebel prisoners standing in front of him. According to our omniscient author, the fact that Barlow is standing on the right, separated from the three prisoners on the left, implies “that sectional hatred…would continue long after the war ended.” Further, “Homer’s message is clear: until the damage to the land and the divide between Northern and Southern attitudes are repaired, the war will not really be over.” Or it could be that Homer, working on commission, was capturing the essence of a scene he had frequently witnessed, using examples from sketches he had made on the spot. By attributing to the work a “clear message,” the label not only misrepresents, in my view, what’s going on, it oversimplifies one of the most interesting and complex pictures in the show.
Why do I say “commission”? This is purely my speculation, based partly on the fact that the Union officer is named but mainly on the fact that his face is so clearly delineated. Homer, in general, does not draw faces. Part of the universal, timeless appeal of his works comes from his leaving his faces shrouded or turned away, allowing the viewer to supply the relevant emotion himself. This is very much in evidence in Homer’s six other Civil War paintings in the exhibition, from Home, Sweet Home in 1863 through Trooper Meditating Beside A Grave in 1865. In the latter, for example, all we are really shown is the trooper’s mustache; we are left to imagine the remaining facial features on our own. Barlow, in comparison, is given a complete portrait, making this less a metaphor or message painting, than a report of a specific incident in the war. He is, despite the situation, given no more expression than a studio portrait would convey. What is his attitude toward the prisoners? If Homer gives us a clue, I can’t find it.
More interesting, by far, are the three prisoners. They are not quite the “three ages of man,” but almost. On the far left is a confused youth, not sure how he should behave or what is happening next. On the right is a confident officer, also young, projecting bravado, whether false or real, not humbled by his situation. And in the middle is an older man in rags, with holes in his shoes, seemingly with an unconcerned, “seen-it-all” attitude. The prisoners all look expectantly at Barlow, but he barely sees them, if at all. As human types, Homer is more interested in the prisoners. Lumping them together as a collective symbol of “Southern attitudes,” as the label does, distorts the sensitive, sympathetic picture that Homer has created. (Coincidentally, as I searched the Internet for Barlow’s full name and rank, the first “analysis” of this painting I came to described the scene in a directly opposite way to the Met label: “Homer seemed to emphasize the sense of unity and spirit of a nation acknowledging a new direction.” So much for “Homer’s message is clear.”)
I have no doubt that the Civil War had an impact on the art of its era, and that different artists responded in different ways. That point, however, will have to demonstrated by another exhibition, one that takes account of what is on the canvas more than what is in the organizer’s head.