MY FAVORITE ARTISTS: INTERPRETIVE CRITIQUE NO. 1

These are a few of my favorite artists (as the old standard song kind of goes).  Why?  Because they not only create art of the highest technical standard, but also spark a primal emotional and intellectual response in us by symbolically evoking the issues of their time.  

In this blog, we will look at our first “favorite artist.”

Winslow Homer (1836-1910):

Homer was a multi-faceted genius whose art touched on varied topics we still contemplate today, like environmentalism, women’s place in society, Reconstruction-era racial politics, anti-modernism (T.J. Jackson Lear’s term) and transcendentalism.  

Homer’s lumbering scenes, some of which were engraved for mass distribution, remind us of the devastating effect human intervention can have on the environment.  For instance, in Lumbering in Winter (1871), a lean young lumberjack is in mid-swing during his ax attack on a huge tree, indifferently contributing to the massive deforestation of the large wooded area in which he works.  I can literally feel the visceral pain of the tree as I look at its violated trunk.  A crystallization of Manifest Destiny at its very worst.

Homer and his art have an extremely complex relationship to women in the late 19th century.  From his substantial solitary women on the ocean’s edge, to his female couples under the moonlight, to the lone fisher girl at Prout’s Neck, to sea mist standing in for a woman.  What to make of all this?  Scholars have different interpretations, but I choose to view Homer’s depictions of women as liberating, but isolating.  Almost as if he is saying a woman who chooses independence also chooses ostracization.  His representations of women over time move from capable, heavy, alone to becoming obliterated by, or perhaps a part of, the transcendental sea foam of Prout’s Neck itself. 

The Gale (1883-1893) by Winslow Homer

Source: https://worcester.emuseum.com/objects/28572/the-gale

The Gale (1883-1893) depicts a lone woman holding her own in a storm by the edge of the sea.  Remember that tall spray of mist on the left, her doppelganger, for later.  The Fisher Girl (1894) portrays a young woman looking into the distance in a gray-out of storm clouds and sea spray.  Her fishing net is part of her dress, one and the same, linking her inextricably to the ocean and its bounty.  She is unafraid, but also in flux - perhaps what lies ahead is best unknown. 

West Point, Prout’s Neck (1900) by Winslow Homer

Source: https://www.artchive.com/artwork/west-point-prouts-neck-maine-winslow-homer-1900/

Finally, in West Point, Prout’s Neck (1900), the woman has become the sea itself, with a tall wisp of spray, reminiscent of a curvy female body and a head with long, trailing hair, takes the place of the physical woman.  The ambiguous rosy sky in the background (sunset or sunrise?) keeps us guessing.  An end or beginning? Death or a new life?  Like Homer’s women, Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, Adams’ Esther, Chopin’s heroine in The Awakening and Perkins Gilman’s woman tearing at the yellow wallpaper, are timeless, yet in the moment, desperately seeking an outlet: the deep recesses of a cave with primordial life forms (a new beginning), staring at the polar star, getting lost in the tumult of Niagara Falls, or drowning in an ocean with the most elemental organisms.  Or maybe as simple as becoming part of one’s environment, like Dewing’s solitary women in domestic settings, holding a book, but not reading, looking longingly into the distance, hoping or succumbing?

Dressing for the Carnival (1877) by Winslow Homer

Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11116

In Dressing for the Carnival (1877), a group of presumably formerly enslaved Blacks is preparing for Jonkonnu, parts of which were blended into American 4th of July activities.  After the 13th Constitutional Amendment abolishing enslavement, the United States struggled through the Reconstruction era, which ended the year this work was painted.  Navigating themes of newly-won freedom and an uncertain future, the subjects are depicted with an individualism and humanity lacking in many other representations of Blacks in the late 19th century.  A far cry from blatantly racist prints showing Blacks with huge lips, unnaturally black skin and oversized feet eating watermelon popularized in periodicals like Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine, Homer’s painting shows a momentous moment in the lives of people making a decision, both on a small scale and large scale, and in the process, self-determining their direction no matter the cost. 

And, of course, we cannot forget the infamous Croquet Scene (1866), in which three women in dresses that seem like hovercraft surround (dominate) a squatting man, who sports a large mustache just like Homer’s (perhaps a self-portrait).  Slashes of red in the indistinct background foliage create a disturbing sense of foreboding.  I cannot help but be reminded of blood.  David Lubin or Bryan Jay Wolf would probably suggest a kind of Freudian, psycho-sexual drama playing out before our eyes.

So there you have it.  An intensive interpretive critique of my favorite artist number one.  Stay tuned for my favorite artist number two, Thomas Eakins.  We’ll take a look at his oeuvre, from the Arcadia reliefs to the “psychological portraits.”