Primitivism and nationalism in the portraiture of Robert Henri.
Item
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Title
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Primitivism and nationalism in the portraiture of Robert Henri.
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Identifier
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AAI3063887
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identifier
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3063887
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Creator
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Stenz, Margaret A.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William H. Gerdts
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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Robert Henri is widely known as the influential leader of the Ashcan School, who vigorously asserted that art should reflect real life, not the rarified atmosphere of the upper classes. While his students and colleagues painted the "realities" of life in New York City, however, Henri became fascinated with indigenous and peasant cultures encountered during his travels. This lifelong interest resulted in a large series of portraits of ethnic types: gypsies, guitarreros, and toreadors of Spain; Asians, Native Americans, and Mexicanos of California and New Mexico; the rural poor of Holland and Ireland.;This dissertation argues that the portraits are more than just records of the world's human diversity. Rather, Henri chose his sitters not because they were 'paintable types', as many scholars have viewed them, but because they were representatives of premodern cultures which he admired for their authenticity, natural creativity, and communal societies. His primitivist philosophy paralleled contemporaneous movements in Europe and the United States which sought in indigenous peoples and traditional folk cultures a unique national identity and a corrective to the alienation and overcivilization endemic to modern society.;Chapter One introduces major sociohistorical issues that affected American attitudes circa 1910, including cultural primitivism, nationalism, race, and ethnic tourism, as well as contemporary concepts of realism and typing. Chapter Two discusses Henri's Spanish portraits in the context of American stereotypes of Iberia and the search for self-identity promoted by Spain's "Generation of '98" in the face of impending Europeanization and loss of empire. Chapter Three examines Henri's Dutch portraits in relation to American preconceptions of the Netherlands mediated through art and history, the tourist industry, and Dutch-American immigration. Chapter Four focuses on Henri's pictures of Irish peasants as embodiments of national identity projected by Irish cultural nationalists and the Yeats/Synge literary revival. Chapter Five looks at Henri's portraits of native Americans in the context of primitivist modernism in Santa Fe and at his portraits of Chinese and Mexican immigrants painted in California. The chapter also examines Henri's philosophy on national identity and race as expressed in his 1915 Craftsman article "My People."
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
