23rd Annual American Art Conference- Multiple Modernities in American Art

In this conference, Initiatives in Art and Culture will challenge the prevailing cognitive approach to art history in which different expressions of the modern—that relating to the present or recent times—even those inarguably contemporaneous, succeed one another in a more-or-less linear fashion. Rather, we propose an alternative approach, one founded on the frequent coexistence of multiple expressions of the modern.

For example, in the first half of the 19th century, John Quidor and William Page blaze new paths, while Thomas Cole and others pursue a radical approach to depicting nature.  While it is Cole’s approach that has come to dominate our understanding of what constituted the modern of this period, that other artists and their approaches have been consigned to the periphery of consideration does not mean that they were not modern in their time. Rather, the problem or the challenge is ours: to recognize that multiple expressions of the modern can exist simultaneously.

This challenge persists in the latter half of the 19th century when Tonalism develops along two paths while Winslow Homer continues to be modern in his expressions of unbridled naturalism. In the early 20th century, the early abstraction of such artists as John Marin and Max Weber contrasts with the lyric modernism of Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove. Following the multiple modernities of the century’s second quarter, Abstract Expressionism, America's first true international style, emerges in the 1950s while Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper continue to powerfully influence American art. Throughout each period, the approach founded on the frequent coexistence of multiple expressions of the modern reshapes our understanding of the history of American art.

Picture Caption: Grant Wood, Parson Weems’ Fable, 1939, Oil on canvas. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas t1970.43