I attended the “Nineteenth Century
American Art” exhibit at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. As the name
suggests, the show featured landscape works by both prominent and lesser known American
artists of the 1800s. Because the show displayed 19th century art,
however, even the more popular artists, such as George Bingham, are not widely
known today. The majority of the works were oil on canvas paintings, though
there were also a few watercolors. Overall, the exhibit was interesting,
particularly as it was not what I expected it to be.
When I
hear the words “American art,” I usually think about the abstract art movements
of the early or mid-20th century. I picture works like American Gothic or those of Jackson
Pollock. The exhibit I attended, then, was surprising to me because the style
was vastly different from what I had imagined. I knew that the exhibit was
about 19th century art, but because I didn’t know of any real
examples, I substituted what I did know. Overall, the works were highly
realistic portrayals of American landscapes; the realism of many of the
paintings was surprising in and of itself. It was clear that the artists went
through years of training and practice to accurately include so much detail in
their work. Their expertise serves as a reminder that we tend to take photography
for granted in modern times. In the same sense, I felt that a lot of the works
were somewhat dull in their appeal. The ease of capturing real life with a
digital camera has almost caused us to expect some sort of personal innovation
in all artwork, which was not the case in the 19th century. Without
photography, people in that period would probably think such realistic
depictions of life were fascinating. I enjoyed the whole exhibit because
although I didn’t find the paintings hugely appealing, I was able to see how
art has changed not just in terms of an artist’s style, but also in terms of
what people want to see in artwork.
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