Andrew Wyeth was a staunch conservationist and by all indications would be called a liberal, especially when he produced paintings of his mistress, Helga.
Jamie painting the official portrait of John F. Kennedy and was a Democrat.
Edward Hopper was a shy, retiring Republican. He was associated with the Ash Can school but broke away to paint his most famous images of Americana. I really doubt he was vocal about Roosevelt or the WPA and can't find anything in my reference books or in a Google search.
Today, Hopper's stark depictions of lonliness is hardly trying to sell "the good old days" which would appeal to the Conservative mindset. Rockwell is more their cup-of-tea, a cloying and incidental illustrator of Americana.
Vivien, I very much like his earlier "abstract expressionist" works, and I just couldn't relate to his "cartoons." But lately I am learning to appreciate them. There is a profound human sensitivity in much of it. For example, I'm deeply touched by his "Couple in Bed." He is lying in bed with his beautiful wife, Musa, after her stroke. I'm sensitive to its emotional subtlties because of my experience with my dying wife. If my wife had not died in a similar manner, I would probably be less vulnerable to the painting's message. His earlier work was focused on aesthetic valuess; his later work, not at all. I recently purchased "The Night Studio," a memoir of the life of Philip Guston by his daughter. I'm now motivated to read it.
Rear Window, I recently read some materials on the period in question, and it totally supports your claim, and discredits my impressions, which is all they were. Thanks.
Guston always reminded me of Paul Klee. His reds, especially, are sumptuous and seductive. The paintings in the San Francisco Museum:
http://collections.sfmoma.org/THA295*1
By all means, "sumptuous." Red was clearly Guston's best color, especially in his later phase. I see, especially, a similarity in their willingness to do cartoonish images. But, while I appreciate Guston, I worship Klee.
In my opinion there are Republicans and then Republicans. I have known a couple of artist GOPs but they were very moderate. Liberal and some what open minded. Not even remotely interested in tax cuts!
In think like most of us here at A2k, the artists are just, well not made to fit in or under any party label.
true - I hate labels and ticking boxes
That's quite true that artists would generally belie pidgeonholing even if it's a pretty easy guess that the majority are more liberal. I do think it's off topic in saying one knows Republican artists. This is "Great" Republican Artists which I would take as historiclaly great. So far, we've only come up with Edward Hopper, arguably not the best example. Whether Norman Rockwell was or was not, I'm sure there are Democrats who also appreciate his Americana.
Hate to do it to you'all, but what about Thomas Kincaid?
One of your best threads Kicky, really made me think about creativity and political persuasion.
Lightwizard wrote:Rockwell is more their cup-of-tea, a cloying and incidental illustrator of Americana.
Lightwizard wrote:Whether Norman Rockwell was or was not [ a Republican], I'm sure there are Democrats who also appreciate his Americana.
I don't know anything about the matter, but this is what I found with a Google search:
link
Quote:In his later years Rockwell became more political. His painting Southern Justice (1964) records the murder of the civil rights activists, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. Whereas The Problem We All Live With (1965) dealt with segregated education in the United States.
Quote:Rockwell would have loved being recognised as a serious artist. But he might have been uncomfortable with any suggestion that he was an unquestioning flag-waver, cheering George Bush to the next stage in the war against terrorism. He was not blind to America's flaws, even though his art might dream of the way things should be. In the 1960s he was shocked by the violence of the South towards civil rights campaigners. His picture Southern Justice records the murder of activists in Mississippi. It's very different from the cute image of a white boy served by a black waiter on a train that he had painted in 1946. Rockwell claimed that when he worked for the Post its editor "told me never to show coloured people except as servants".
After he parted company with the magazine in 1963, Rockwell became more openly political, and the politics were not what people might have expected; indeed one of the many American artists who chronicled the breakup of Norman Rockwell's idyllic mid-century America was Norman Rockwell. Rockwell's 1960s pictures are images of tension and conflict. The Problem We All Live With (1963) has a little girl walking to a newly desegregated school with an escort of four US marshals. It adopts her scale, dwarfed by the huge legs of the marshals. On the wall behind is vile racist graffiti and the blood-red remains of a thrown tomato. Rockwell was accused by angry letter writers of "vicious lying propaganda... for the crime of racial integration".
Thanks, I didn't know that, Nimh.
Oh, no, you could have gone all day without again bringing up the name of the Great Deceiver TK. I suppose that would make him a Republican.
Thanks, nihm for the lookup. I do enjoy some of Rockwell's later paintings in his effort to be taken as a serious artist. There is no mistaking his technical craftsmanship and when he addressed sociological subjects he was definitely on the right track. It belies my writing him off as cloying and sentimental.
Incidentally, another artist who followed this path is John Singer Sargent who gave up painting what many art critics of the time considered superficial portrature. His later more serious work, especially a line of soldiers in WWI who had just been struck with mustard gas is heart wrenchingly intense.
Sorry, that post was not in order at all. I forget what the shudder was about, think it was kinkade
On Sargent, what you are describing was a painting I saw by sheer luck at the Manet Velasquez exhibit in NY last year, back tomorrow on that. It was a painting after an anonymous other painter's work.... and both of them were outstanding. (I might have liked Anonymous's more...)
Nag me if I don't come back with an identification.
The painting is very large, 7' x 20' (!), and I wasn't aware it has ever left the National War Museum in London:
Ah, I was talking about another painting, and see on rereading that of course you knew which painting you were talking about. I didn't get a chance yet to look through the Manet Velasquez show book to see what I am remembering.
The one of the gassed soldiers is indeed very moving.
Dearest osso, I would wait any number of days to find out which painting YOU were talking about.
