When analyzed extensivley works of art can be used to reflect different time periods of history. Some works of art that represent the image of the American West in different periods of time are: Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm, commonly referred to as The Oxbow (Painting, 1836), John Gast’s American Progress (Painting, 1872), and Dorothea Lange’s The Road West, New Mexico (Photograph, 1938). Each of these images capture the progress of the settlers journey westward in different periods, and their shifting views of the West as dangerous, tameable and tame. A major idea that is depicted in these pieces of art, is the idea of the West and how settlers approached it. In the painting The Oxbow, Cole depicts the west side of the painting as the left side. He shows an overgrown forest, with sharp rigid trees, and a dark gray looming cloud. While on the right side he shows a peaceful valley with a blue sky and lots of light, and cultivated land. This relates to the article “The Mythology of Hope and Change” by Ira Chernus, because Chernus describes the …show more content…
This idea can be depicted through the painting American Progress by Gast, that shows men traveling west while at the same time chasing animals and Native Americans away. It also shows a large women in the center of the image floating in a white gown, holding a school book and setting down telegraph cables. Due to this, she could be interpreted as an angel leading men westward, bringing intelligence and technology. This shifts the idea of the west from a dangerous wilderness to a place where new beginnings and societies lie. Much like Chernus describes it as. Ira Chernus described that many settlers were inspired to travel west to start new lives, and escape old ones (2). So this shows that these settlers decided to conquer the west by
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
In the early nineteenth century, most Northerners and Southerners agreed entirely that Americans should settle Western territories, and that it was God’s plan, or their “manifest destiny.” Northerners and Southerners who moved west were in search of a better life and personal economic gain; were they had failed before in the east, they believed they would do better in the west. The Panic of 1837 was a motivation to head
The beauty of nature as depicted in landscape art and poetry were responsible for leading people out West and expanding what we now call America. The artwork and poetry told a story of what life looked like back then and the hardships many people encountered thereafter. Art became a median to express how people worshiped God and chose to follow the path they were always destined for. It became a way to document and record history in the New World for others to view, appreciate, and
With his passion for painting, his admiration of landscapes and influence as a teacher, Thomas Cole was a proficient Romanticism artist. Undoubtedly because of his extensive traveling and studying various landscapes, Cole is one of the most well known landscape artist in America. Cole painted many landscape paintings, one of these being The Oxbow. Established by Cole the Hudson River School of Romantic Landscapes was created to teach students about painting landscapes. As American nature became realized to be beautiful and divine more and more artists commenced painting the eminent nature that God created for them.
While the US may have prided themselves in the fact that we didn’t practice imperialism or colonialism, and we weren’t an Empire country, the actions conquering land in our own country may seem to rebuff that claim. In the 19th century, the West was a synonym for the frontier, or edge of current settlement. Early on this was anything west of just about Mississippi, but beyond that is where the Indian tribes had been pushed to live, and promised land in Oklahoma after policies like Indian removal, and events like the Trail of Tears. Indian’s brief feeling of security and this promise were shattered when American’s believed it was their god given right, their Manifest Destiny, to conquer the West; they began to settle the land, and relatively quickly. And with this move, cam...
Grant Wood’s American Gothic is one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. The painting brought Wood almost instant fame after being exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It is probably the most reproduced and parodied works of art, and has become a staple within American pop-culture. The portrait of what appears to be a couple, standing solemnly in front of their mid-western home seems to be a simplistic representation of rural America. As simple as it sounds, when looking deeper into this image, it reveals something much more complex.
The word progress has several different meanings. These definitions played a vital role in American thought. From the initial immigrants to the first government, progress was always on the American mind. Wars were fought on the grounds on progress. The first United States president represented progress. Everything America stands for is based on the progression of its people.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
At first glance, John Taylor and Howling Wolf’s visual representations of the treaty signing at Medicine Creek Lodge appear very different from one another. It is more than apparent that the two artists have very different interpretations of the same event. This paper will visually analyze both works of art by comparing and contrasting the compositional balance, medium, and use of color, as well as how the artists narrated their views using different visual elements.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. N.p., 2014. Print.
The term, progress, is synonymous with phrases that denote moving forward, growth, and advancement. It seems unorthodox then that Ronald Wright asserts the world has fallen into a progress trap, a paradox to how progress is typically portrayed as it contradicts the conventional way life is viewed: as being a natural progression from the outdated and tried towards the new and improved. Wright posits that it is the world’s relentless creation of innovative methods that ironically contributes to the progress trap rather than to progress itself, the intended objective. Wright’s coinage of the term “progress trap” refers to the phenomenon of innovations that create new complications that are typically left without resolve which exacerbate current conditions; unwittingly then, matters would have been much better if the innovation had never been implemented. In his book, “A Short History of Progress,” he alludes to history by citing examples of past civilizations that collapsed after prospering, and ones that had longevity because they avoided the perilous progress trap. Wright recommends that societies of today should use indispensable resources, such as history, to learn and apply the reasons as to why certain societies succeeded, while also avoiding falling into the pitfalls of those that failed, the ones that experienced the progress trap. This can easily be interrelated with Godrej’s concept of “the overheated engine of human progress,” since humans for centuries have been risking environmental degradation for progress through ceaseless industrialization and manufacturing. This exchange is doomed to prevent improved progress and will lead to society’s inevitable decline since it is unquestionable that in the unforeseeable future, cl...
The myth of the frontier applies to the romanticism of the west frontier where the unsettled land and the unlimited resources nurture immigrants into individuals with pioneering spirits. Similarly, the optimistic vision of the myth of progress on the tech frontier raises the deification of technology development. As Frederick Jackson Turner suggested in "Frontier Thesis" that the West was a "purifying and liberating force" that transformed Americans into innovative individuals with restless energy, the worship of enterprising spirits fueled the myth of progress on the tech frontier where people fantasized about infinite advantages of technology advancement with a belief that progress is always favorable (Colombo 215).