The Newark Museum exhibit of “Angels
& Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art” is the first to examine
nineteenth-century depictions of girls in paintings, sculpture, prints and
photographs. The exhibition analyzes the ways that artists vigorously
participated in the artistic and social construction of girlhood while also
revealing the hopes and fears that adults had for their children. While the
sentimental portrayal of girls as angelic, passive and domestic was the
pervasive characterization, this project also identifies and investigates
compelling and transgressive female images including tomboys, working children
and adolescents.
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| Aimmi Phillips, Boy in Red ca.1832 |
In
the 19th century, parents often dressed young children in similar clothing,
regardless of gender, such as putting boys in gowns. In the Ammi Phillips, 1832
ca painting “Boy in Red” the child is wearing a dress and has a short cropped
hairstyle. Only if you look closely can you tell the sex: Many years later it
becomes a theme that continues to resonate every time a little boy dressed in a
yellow jumper gets mistaken for a little girl. Although we now use color often
to determine which is the boy and the girl, this idea of childhood androgyny is
still evident today.
Ammi Phillips
(April 24, 1788 – July 11, 1865), a self-taught New England portrait painter,
is regarded as one of the most important folk artists of his era. Ammi Phillips was known as a
"limner". This was the name given to the best-known folk painters of
19th-century America who were nonacademic portrait painters, often itinerant,
who usually worked in oils. The work from his 1812-1819 period is generally
regarded as his first important creative period. Phillips was living and working in Dutchess County, New
York, when he painted Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog, one of four
strikingly similar portraits of children he produced. In each painting, the
child wears a brilliant red dress over crisply pleated white pantaloons, with
red or black slippered feet peeping past the sawtooth hems. Their arms cross
their bodies in a diagonal parallel arrangement, and they sit with a
sweet-faced dog lying by their feet. Three of the portraits depict young girls,
each wearing two, three, or four strands of coral beads. Phillips is known to
have used similarities of dress and other visual devices to indicate family
relationships, The child's delicate neck and bared shoulders, accentuated by
the four strands of coral beads, the double row of pleats on the pantaloons,
and the lace trim on the sleeves, are indications of the extra care that
Phillips lavished on the portrait of this unidentified child.
In
Phillips's mature style, one may discern the simplification of geometric forms
sometimes verging on abstraction, in addition to the sophisticated use of a
limited color palette. The artist's black on black technique is particularly
distinctive. Yet, each element of a Phillips portrait is readily identifiable,
and the sitter’s personality is evident. This unique combination of abstraction
and realism sets Phillips apart from his contemporaries.
The
modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time
that the term avant-garde, with which the movement was labeled until the word
"modernism" prevailed, was used for the arts .Artists,
like others were deeply affected by the devastating events of the early 20th
century. Some responded with energy and
optimism and others with bleak despair.
Changes in the art world also influenced artistic developments. The challenges of Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism, and the various renegade and alternative exhibitions
diminished the academies’ authority, thought they remained a presence. Early 20th century avant-garde
artists were in the forefront of aggressively challenging traditional and often
cherished notions about art and its relations to society. As the old social order collapsed and new
ones ( such as communism and corporate capitalism) took their places, one of
the self-imposed tasks school after school of avant-garde artists embraced was
the search for new definitions and uses for art in a radically changed world. In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities
and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art,
architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life
were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of
an emerging fully industrialized world.
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| Henri Matisse, Laurette in a Green Robe (Black Background), 1916 |
The
great French modernist Henri Matisse (1869-1954), in the early 20th century he
led the brief blitz of the Fauves The term "fauve" is French for "wild
beast," coined by art critic Louis Vauxcelles in reaction to the work of
Henri Matisse and other artists of what became known as the Fauvist Movement in
France. He gave them this name because of the bright colors, unfettered brush
strokes and simple subject matter of the artwork, which made it appear wild and
free, animal like in its nature. Those of
fiery colors and blunt textures, paintings expressed emotion with wild often
dissornant colors without regard to subjects’ natural color, but otherwise
abstained from the signal movements of modern art. His palette is rarely less
than original. He has a habit of painting dark colors over bright ones to
create a subtle under glow and his frequent emphasis on blank canvas as a
source of light and texture. Always he sought an implicitly modern directness
and rawness that created a brave new intimacy among artist, object and viewer.
Similar to
Aimmi Phillips technique and style Henri Matisse's artwork contained common
subject matter, such as human faces and figures, but instead of using the skin
tones and realistic colors, which were true to life, he used vivid uncommon
colors to suggest feelings and notions of what the face was like. Both used
color as the foundation for expressive, decorative and monumental paintings.
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