Film and Modern American Art : The Dialogue Between Cinema and Painting

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, movie going became an established feature of everyday life across America. Movies constituted an enormous visual data bank and changed the way artist and public alike interpreted images. This book explores modern painting as a response to, and an appropriation of, the aesthetic possibilities pried open by cinema from its invention until the outbreak of World War II, when both the art world and the film industry changed substantially. Artists were watching movies, filmmakers studied fine arts; the membrane between media was porous, allowing for fluid exchange. Each chapter focuses on a suite of films and paintings, broken down into facets and then reassembled to elucidate the distinctive art–film nexus at successive historic moments. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 12 Visual Literacy 14 Notes 19 PART I: Two American Artists and Silent Cinema 20 Chapter 1: Lust for Looking: John Sloan’s Moving Picture Eye 22 New York City Life 23 Art from Life – Movie Pictures 25 Conventions of Silent Cinema 28 Critical Reaction 32 The Spirit of Saint-Gaudens’ Diana 34 How the Nickelodeon-era Movies Tell a Story, ca. 1908 37 Sloan’s Movies, Five Cents 39 The Engaged Spectator 40 Thinking in Pictures 40 Sloan’s Signature Style ca. 1908 and its Relation to Moving Pictures 42 John Sloan and “Mr. Griffith”: A Parallel Reading 44 The Proto-Cinematic Environment of Henri’s Studio 45 Critiquing the Social Aspect of Film 46 Epilogue 48 Notes 49 Chapter 2: Transforming Moving Pictures into Art: Everett Shinn, Artist on the Set 52 Art Direction 52 Polly of the Circus, 1917 57 Mural to Stage to Screen 61 The Audience and Bodily Engagement with Early Cinema 63 Rex Ingram, Conflating Movie Set and Art Studio 68 The Bright Shawl, 1923 68 Reception 73 Janice Meredith, 1924 74 William Randolph Hearst: America’s First Multimedia Mogul 76 Legacy 78 Notes 78 PART II: New Woman, New Negro 82 Chapter 3: Leading Ladies: Dance, Reform, Liberation 84 Introduction 84 Loie Fuller 86 Dancing Women: Harriet Frishmuth, Desha Delteil and the Bubble Dance 88 Reforming Women 91 Working Women 92 American Art, ca. 1916 97 Bathing Beauties 106 Women in the 1920s: Flappers and Lesbians 107 Josephine Baker: Harlem on the Champs-Élysées! 111 Notes 112 Chapter 4: Seeing in Black and White: Resistance, Rhythm, Renaissance 116 Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Goes to the Movies 116 Resisting Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) 118 Documenting African Americans in Non-Racist and Non-Stereotyped Roles 120 Oscar Micheaux 121 Norman Films 127 Serving Home and Country 128 Spanish American War 129 Madame E. Touissant Welcome and Harlem’s Hellfighters 131 Making Music: Jazz and Blues 133 Creating a Distinct Visual Language for Self-Expression 138 Notes 141 Timeline 144 1893 144 1894 144 1895 144 1896 144 1897 144 1898 145 1900 145 1901 145 1903 145 1905 145 1907 145 1908 146 1909 146 1910 146 1911 147 1912 147 1913 147 1914 147 1915 147 1916 148 1917 148 1918 149 1919 149 1920 149 1921 149 1922 149 1923 150 1924 151 1925 151 1926 151 1927 151 1928 152 1929 152 1930 152 1934 152 Select Bibliography 153 List of Figures 155 Index 158