American acropolis: George Grey Barnard's "Monument to Democracy", 1918--1938.

Title

Identifier

AAI3334678

identifier

3334678

Creator

Hack, Brian Edward.

Contributor

Adviser: Sally Webster

Date

2008

Language

English

Publisher

City University of New York.

Subject

Art History

Abstract

Following the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the American sculptor George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) began planning The Monument to Democracy, the largest and most symbolically complex memorial thus far designed in the United States. It was to have graced the highest point in Manhattan, a promontory on Washington Heights overlooking the Hudson River on land currently occupied by Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters Museum. Barnard's vision was to transform the bluff into a marble plaza filled with awe-inspiring architecture, colossal sculpture and symbolic gardens that incorporated sound, light and the visual arts into what he called "an Intellectual Coney Island." Initially promoted as a memorial to the fallen soldiers of World War I, the Monument to Democracy actually was conceived by Barnard as the first work of a new peaceful, creative age; it also would serve as the culmination of Symbolist-inspired ideas he had envisioned since the 1890s. After the initial groundswell of support dissipated in the early 1920s, Barnard, entirely self-funded, continued to promote his monument until his death in 1938.;Divided into six chapters, this dissertation explores the saga of this monument and the numerous efforts to see it come to fruition. To understand the foundations of the monument's often strange iconography, however, Chapter One and Chapter Two will examine George Grey Barnard's earliest works in terms of their connections to, and adaptation of, European Symbolism. Barnard, like Lorado Taft and a number of other American sculptors, attended the Ecole des beaux-arts during the rise of Symbolism in the 1880s. While the curriculum at the Ecole remained tethered to classical ideals and to academic interpretations of the human form, the Symbolist aesthetic---borne from works such as Joris-Karl Huysman's A Rebours (Against Nature, 1884)---would permeate the remainder of the nineteenth century. Chapter One considers his early works Brotherly Love and The Two Natures in this context; Chapter Two examines what is perhaps his most important legacy, the Life of Humanity, his two monumental groups for the Pennsylvania State Capitol.;Chapters Three through Six directly address the Monument to Democracy. In Chapter Three the possible inspirations for this monument will be discussed, as well as the history of Barnard's conception and its promotion from 1918 to 1926. After finding it difficult to secure a firm commitment from the City of New York, and after the sale of the land on which he hoped to place it, Barnard spent the remainder of his life working on a full-size plaster version of two sections of the memorial, the Rainbow Arch and The Tree of Life. Chapter Four examines the Rainbow Arch and its component parts, while Chapter Five looks at two related works for the monument, The Builder and Christ the Carpenter. Finally Chapter Six discusses two exhibitions of the arch that Barnard held in 1933 and 1936 and the subsequent efforts to see the arch realized following Barnard's death.;In addition this dissertation will address the Monument to Democracy in terms of contemporary interest in eugenics, physical culture and human betterment, and how these Progressive Era ideas help to forge our understanding of Barnard's uniquely American interpretation of Symbolism. Using primary sources, original drawings and photographs, and correspondence to contextualize Barnard's Monument to Democracy within the framework of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American sculpture, this dissertation employs a largely social historical approach; Barnard's unique character necessitates, however, occasional emphasis on his biography as it relates in specific ways to elements within his work. His rejection of traditional academic subjects and techniques sharply contrasts the majority of his compatriots, who rarely strayed from the boundaries of their Parisian training. The present work attempts to not only illuminate a forgotten work of one of the nation's most original sculptors, but also strives to foster a better understanding of the often-ignored generation of American sculptors who studied in Paris during the 1880s.

Type

dissertation

Source

PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx

degree

Ph.D.

Item