Step1: Students will utilize the internet, textbooks and their list of select American artists in order to begin their research. Students should be thinking about, “What is Art,” and “What is an Artist?” and choose their artist.
Step 2: Students will take the knowledge that they gained from their research and begin the project. The student should be able to demonstrate to the class who their artist is in their own unique fashion. Perhaps you can make a piece of art influenced by your artist, maybe you want to compare/contrast that artist with someone from today, write a song, make a comic on them, impersonate them in front of the class – what?!
Famous American Artists
Thomas Eakins
Winslow Homer
John Sargent
James Whistler
Georgia O’ Keefe
Charles Alston
John Biggers
Sam Gilliam
Palmer Hayden
Augusta Savage
George Bellows
Charles Demuth
Edward Hopper
Norma Rockwell
Jackson Pollock
Francis Bacon
Jasper Johns
Roy Lichtenstein
Andy Warhol
Peter Blake
Joshua Johnston (1765-1830), John James Audubon (1785-1851), Otto Reinhold Jacobi (1812-1901), Patrick Reason (1817-1856), William H. Simpson (1818-1872), and Robert Scott Duncanson (1821-1872) represent some of the names of the early trailblazers who were the unusual combination of black, American, and artist. Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) was a well-known landscape and genre painter from Providence, Rhode Island. Although he was the first Black American artist to win a national art prize, a first-place at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, he was denied admission into the hall to accept the award because of his race. Specializing in making bird’s-eye views of California and Nevada towns, Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) was the first recognized Black American artist in the American West. Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), known for religious and genre paintings, was the first black artist to earn an international reputation. Mary Edmonia Lewis (1845-1911), the first important black sculptor in America, created works, which explored her feelings of alienation. In 1899, the sculptor, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968) went to Paris where white students refused to share lodgings with her. Palmer Cole Hayden (1890-1973) was criticized for painting grotesque often-humorous depictions of blacks with elongated, caricature-type featuresó a disappointment to those who expected idealization or racial loyalty, rather than parody. Showing the boxing victory of Joe Louis over Max Schmeling. Robert Riggs (1896-1970) created his famous painting The Brown Bomber, and thus earned election in 1946 to the National Academy of Design. Allan Randall Freelon (1895-1960), an Impressionist landscape painter, a major figure in the Philadelphia art scene, and member of the Civil Rights Movement, who worked diligently as a public speaker on the issue of judgment for skill rather than skin color. Alvin Carl Hollingsworth (1928-2000), comic-strip illustrator for Catman and Crime Comics, was also a social activist. Highly visible as a touring, demonstrating artist for NBC in a series titled "Youíre Part of Art," Hollingsworth addressed Civil Rights, womenís struggles, and the role of Black Americans who lived in New York.
Between 1916 and 1940, the Harlem Renaissance fostered a celebration of black culture by both blacks and whites. Although the movement began in New York, it sparked an international trend, which fermented the reversal of prejudice experienced by black artists in America, instilled a sense of racial pride among artists, musicians, and writers, and planted seeds for the Civil Rights Movement. Black American artists were sanctioned to look to their unique racial experience as the source of artistic inspiration. Many of the Harlem Renaissance artists exhibited with the Harmon Foundation whose personnel organized the first Black American exhibitions in 1928. One of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance was Aaron Douglas (1898-1979), painter in geometric design. Influenced by jazz music and folk traditions, Douglas created many illustrations of black subjects, cultivated wealthy patrons to support the movement, and worked as an activist. In 1931, Augusta Christine Savage (1892-1962), the creator of busts of prominent African Americans, opened the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts where she taught sculpture. Savage worked to assure that black artists were equally represented in the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration, and in 1937, Savage became the first director of the Harlem Community Art Centeró an endeavor that caused her to neglect her sculpture, but one that was a great import because she insisted only blacks should be employed at the center. One of Savageís students was narrative painter Jacob Armstead Lawrence (1917-2000), perhaps the most highly regarded of the Black American artists of the mid to late 20th century and one of the primary subjects of writings by David Clyde Driskell (b. 1931), artist, historian, curator, and protégé of James A. Porter (1905-1970), the father of African American art history. Lawrence was fortunate to grow up in New York where he benefited from the positive elements injected into Harlem culture by artists such as Charles Henry Alston (1907-1977), William Henry Johnson (1901-1970), Aaron Douglas and Augusta Christine Savage.
The Moderns
Elizabeth Catlett (b.1915) advanced a new era of multicultural expressionism in her work. Her series of paintings called "I Am a Negro Woman." is based on her experiences in Harlem as an educator. Romare Howard Bearden (1914-1988), working in a modernist style, expressed with paint and collage the complexities of living as a minority member of American society, yet his tone was affectionate and celebratory, replete with themes of a happy childhood and a contented daily life. Another artist accused of denigrating her own race with images in poor taste is Betye Saar (b.1926); for example, her "Aunt Jemima" series focused on the stereotypical domestic role of black women. Among Black American artists, one of the most successful in the market place, but perhaps one of the least successful in his personal life is Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).
Female Artists:
Sarah Peale (1800-1885), a leading portrait, figure and still-life painter of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and St. Louis is considered to be America's first truly professional female artist.
Four women on this list were centenarians “plus”: Theresa Bernstein (1890-2002) had the longest-career of any American woman artist. Others especially long lived were: Grandma Moses (1860-1961); Helen Turner (1858-1958; and Martha Walter (1875-1976).
One female artist for whom gender bias was a significant issue is Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908), one of the most famous women sculptors of the 19th century. She dedicated herself to this medium at a time when the physical demands of the process meant it was considered a male domain. Hosmer's father supported her education aggressively, and in the mid 19th-century, she managed to establish a studio in Rome, Italy where she became a part of a circle of intellectuals that included novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert and Elizabeth Browning.
Catherine Critcher (1868-1964) was also a pioneer in what was very much a man's world---Taos, New Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s.
Sixteen women in this group are documented as having studied in Paris before 1900, which means they too ventured into a primarily male environment. Among this group are Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942), Jennie Brownscombe (1850-1936), Elizabeth Nourse (1859-1938), Janet Scudder(1869-1940) and Bessie Vonnoh (1872-1955). In the 1880s, women were not admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or the painting ateliers, and they had to find private teachers in academies such as Colarossi's and Julian's.Elizabeth Nourse, one of Duran's students at the Academy Julian, was from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Among this group is Violet Oakley (1874-1961), one of the first preeminent women mural painters. At the Pennsylvania Capitol Building, she created some of the largest murals in existence, and this accomplishment was at a time when crawling around on high scaffolding was not considered feminine.
Lucia Mathews (1870-1955), who with her husband Arthur Mathews, was a leader of the West Coast Arts and Crafts Movement. They designed and executed handcrafted furniture and other decorations. She painted murals on decorative screens, which was a more socially accepted activity for a woman than the murals of Violet Oakley.
The life of Edmonia Lewis (1845-1911) incorporated issues of feminism and racism. She was one of the first black-women sculptors to earn national recognition, and she is also credited as the first black artist to express themes of social prejudices against her race.
The other black woman on this list is Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891-1978), who was associated with the Washington DC Color Field Painters of the 1970s, and was a generation later than Edmonia Lewis. Thomas became the first black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The success of the show took the art world by surprise.
In the early 20th century, Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) began as an art teacher, a traditional role for women artists of that era. She was lifted out of that world, however, when she was discovered and promoted by Alfred Steiglitz, her future husband and sponsor of most of the prominent early New York modernists
A generation later in New York, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-), a Color Field painter, was specially touted, and some say created in reputation, by New York Times critic Clement Greenberg who bought her paintings and brought her continually to the attention of the public with his extensive writing.
Civil War Art:
During the Civil War there were more than 10,000 terrible armed conflicts between the North and South and many prints and paintings depict particular battles. During the War, however, few artists actually drew battle scenes. Many sketched scenes of camp and quiet moments in the soldiers' army life, as few artists were close enough to see the sheer terror that soldiers experienced in battle.
Among the many highly recognized artists who have created works based on the Civil War are Conrad Wise Chapman (1842-1913), Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919), Winslow Homer(1836-1910), James Hope (1818-1892), Eastman Johnson ((1824-1906), Theodore Kaufmann (1814-1896) Thomas Nast (1840-1902), Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), and William Aiken Walker (1838-1921).
American Modernists:
American Modernists represented a wide range of personal vision. There were painters such as Alfred Maurer (1868-1932), and John Marin (1870-1953), both deeply influenced by the bold, expressive colors of Matisse and the Fauvists. Another was Max Weber (1881-1961), who was greatly influenced by Paul Cezanne. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) developed a collage-like style. Others, such as Arthur Dove (1880-1946) and Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) sought inspiration in the natural landscape. Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924) emphasized color and pattern.
Some artists raised concerns about the dehumanization of life in congested industrial cities. No one captures this loneliness more poignantly than Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Known as American Scene painters, many focused on rural tableaus, for example Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) who worked in the Midwest. Other American Scene painters dedicated themselves to urban life, for example Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952), who depicted middle class matrons shopping. Merely observing was not enough for Social Realist painters who wanted to use their work as an instrument of social change. Among these were Moses Soyer (1899-1974), Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and Philip Evergood (1901-1973).
Some of the many early American Modernists involved in this new era of experimentation were Robert F. Blum (1857-1903), Arthur Bowen Davies (1862-1928), Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Childe Hassam (1859-1935), John LaFarge (1870_1953), John Marin (1870-1953), Theodore Robinson (1852-1896), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965).
Highly conceptual early 20th century modernists, such as Polish American Max Weber (1881-1961), Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965), Stanton MacDonald-Wright (1890-1973), Alfred H. Maurer (1868-1932), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Italian American Joseph Stella (1877-1946), and Charles Demuth (1883-1935), laid a foundation for complete abstraction.
Another American Fauvist was Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) who depicted the countryside around Doylestown, Penn.,
Others American artists who created Surrealist works were Armenian American Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) and Man Ray.
A notable Cubist is New York artist Max Weber (1881-1961) who created the early Cubist 1913 masterpiece, ‘Woman in Tents’.
Another Cubist is Pennsylvania artist Charles Demuth (1883-1935) who in his 1919 painting Sail: In Two Movements used nature as a point of departure for his Cubist investigation of form and structure. Maine artist Marsden Hartley’s (1877-1943) ‘Provincetown’ of 1916-1917, is a distinctive painting which announces the profound impact of collage and other elements of Synthetic Cubism on Hartley’s evolving aesthetic. Morton Schamberg (1881-1918) and Joseph Stella created other Cubist imagery, which reveal the ‘new realities’ of the industrial landscape and the machine age. American artists discovered new and different directions for the development of Cubism, in many instances pushing beyond the parameters established by their European counterparts.
Latvian American Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Most famous of the Abstract Expressionists was Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). With the advent of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s, the United States, particularly New York City, became the world center for the creation of ‘progressive art’, and former critics began to accept the validity of American Modernism.
Considered as American Scene painters are Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Japanese American Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953), Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), Grant Wood (1892-1942), and Andrew Wyeth (1917- ). Rejecting European modernism and abstraction, American Scene Painters wanted to create a largely realistic style in the depiction of subjects and scenes related to American life.
A movement that began in Britain and the United States in the 1950s, Pop Art used the images and techniques of mass media, advertising, and popular culture, often in an ironic way. Works of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), and Swedish-American Claes Oldenburg (1929-) and James Rosenquist (1933-) exemplify this style.
Minimalist art frequently takes the form of ‘installations’ or sculpture, for example with Donald Judd (1928-1994), Dan Flavin (1933-1996), Carl Andre (1935-) and Sol LeWitt (1928-). However, there are also a number of minimalist painters, including Ellsworth Kelly (1923-) and Frank Stella (1936-).