The beginnings of painting in New England
The American intellectual climate has long been unfavourable to painting. Until the end of the 18th century, it was limited to portraiture, and it was not until the first half of the 19th century that landscape appeared, in the form of romantic scenes or vast panoramas.
.It wasin 1870 that Boston acquired a museum of fine arts, the Museum of Fine Arts
(MFA), which quickly became a national reference. In 1899, Charles Hawthorne (1972-1920) also founded a colony of artists in Provincetown, MA, the Cape Cod School of Art, thus inviting other artists to join him.In 1916, six art schools opened their doors, attracting painters from across the country. Hawthorne is also the founder of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), which is still in operation today. Some time earlier, in 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner opened an eclectic museum in Boston and welcomed the works of local artists, helping to recognize and disseminate them. These include works by John Noble (1974-1934) and Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) - which today has a museum dedicated to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Norman Rockwell Museum. The Cape Cod School thus came to the forefront for several decades.
At the same time, while American painting was dominated by realistic tendencies and social concerns, a new national realist school with a more documentary dimension was being created. The best known painter belonging to this school was George Bellows (1882-1925). The latter painted a captivating vision of American society at a pivotal time, in the midst of the transition to modernity.
In 1948, the descendants of wealthy patron William Farnsworth opened the Farnsworth Art Museum near Boston, in Rockland, Maine. The museum brings together works by painters who have represented Maine and New England in general. We can see paintings by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910), but also by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) or Bellows. Winslow Homer, a realist painter famous for his marines, is also in the spotlight in Maine, at Prout's Neck, near Portland: his former studio, the Winslow Homer Studio, has been open to the public since 2013.Towards an American modernism
In the 1920s, a school called American Scene brought together certain artists, including Grant Wood (1891-1942) and Edward Hopper, whose common desire was to rediscover a familiar and provincial reality specific to their country, in reaction to expressionist currents conveyed by artists from Central Europe.
Precisionism made its appearance in the early 1920s. This movement had some characteristics of cubism and futurism and generally had as its themes the urbanization and industrialization of the American landscape. It was led by artists such as Charles Demuth (1883-1935), with his fascination with grain silos, Elsie Driggs (1898-1992), whose painting of Pittsburgh with its threatening steel mill is remembered, Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), who depicted the Ford factories in Criss-Crossed Conveyors, and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), with her unforgettable interpretations of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In 1929, the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH, was founded - an entire gallery there was reserved for New Hampshire painters. In 1936, the Boston Museum of Modern Art - a sister institution to the MoMA in New York - opened its doors. Averitable place of innovation, this museum built a great reputation by spotting the emerging artists of the time and became independent in 1948, when it was renamed the Institute of Contemporary Art
(ICA). During the Second World War, America welcomed many foreign artists driven out by Nazism (including Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, Fernand Léger, Salvador Dalí and Marc Chagall): this is how the country became the international home of the arts. The Western avant-garde was very well received, surrealism was given a new lease of life, and many followers of the European trend. Nevertheless, tired of the weight of European influence and its scale, some American painters were quick to react. An artistic revival thus occurred around abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Willem De Kooning (1904-1997), Mark Tobey (1890-1976) and Franz Kline (1910-1962), who founded the New York School, giving the city a central role in art. Massachusetts-born Frank Stella (1936) and the Minimalists followed suit.From Pop Art to Contemporary Art, a teeming period
In the 1960s, the New York school renewed itself by resurrecting Dadaism: the neo-dada movement engendered painting with a social dimension, inspired by the materials of everyday life, with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Jasper Johns (1930) or Louise Nevelson (1899-1988).
It was on the basis of neo-dada that pop art developed in the United States at the end of the 1950s, taking over the codes of contemporary popular culture, from advertising to comic books. Within this movement are the key figures Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). The latter put American art at the centre of international attention and contributed to the development of the local contemporary scene. New and subversive forms such as installation, performance, happening
and video art were soon born, with Claes Oldenburg (1929) and Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) as leading figures. Since then, this creative energy has continued to vibrate in New York and to irrigate the scene in New England, where Massachusetts MoCA was founded in 1985 to exhibit artworks in unusual formats that would not be shown in conventional art institutions. With its diverse programming, this art centre remains today, along with the ICA in Boston, an ideal place to discover artists from the local and national scene.The photographic adventure in New England
Photography has been established in New England since the first developments of the technique. The daguerreotype, invented in 1839 by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre, spread rapidly in the United States, and it was in the spring of 1840, at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, that one of the first American demonstrations took place. In the 1950s, dozens of studios sprang up in the city, with Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) as leading figures. The first images produced were mainly utilitarian and dedicated to the elite, among whom portraiture was very much in vogue. It was only later that a truly artistic photography developed, with pioneers such as the pictorialist F. Holland Day (1864-1933).
To discover pictures of the region, visit the various museum houses of Historic New England, an association dedicated to the preservation of the local historical heritage. Their photographic collections are vast, with more than 500,000 images dating from the 19th century to the present day. They represent countless facets of life in the region: urban scenes, rural landscapes, life at sea or family gatherings. For more contemporary photography, there are various specialized galleries in Boston, such as the Panopticon Gallery or the Robert Klein Gallery.From sculpture to street art: enjoying art in the open air
In addition to its greenery, mountains and rivers, the New England landscape is also home to many works of art to be discovered in the great outdoors. Indeed, there are many parks with public collections that allow you to cultivate while walking, when the works are not directly painted on the facades of buildings!
One of the leading institutions in this field is the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, which houses some 60 modern and contemporary works of art on a site of over 35 hectares. In a more classical style, the Chesterwood Museum in Stockbridge houses the works of Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), a famous American sculptor from New Hampshire. It also features the work of emerging artists in temporary exhibitions. In Ridgefield, Connecticut, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art also has a garden dedicated to contemporary sculpture, with works mostly created specifically for the site. Finally, for gardening enthusiasts or for a family outing, don't miss Portsmouth's Green Animals Topiary Gardens, a garden with incredible plant sculptures that rival those of Edward with Silver Hands!
In terms of street art, the streets of Boston are home to many nuggets. Don't miss the Graffiti Alley in the heart of Central Square, one of the favorite places for graffiti artists in the area. With a bit of luck, you might be able to admire them at work!
