Word: nineteenth
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...simple realism of nineteenth century American art made paintings understandable to the contemporary public. Ironically, Americans trained on the values of the European tradition and born in the midst of Abstract Expressionism feel removed from this severe realism today. We look at the simple style of the last century critically, admiring the honesty, yet realizing that it wanders far from the quality of Europe. Viewers need to look at labels for the artist's name...
...country scene on their wall than a stark unacceptable abstract work. Satisfying, but unimaginative representations of American life are bought every day from dimly lit galleries all over the country. And painters like Andrew Wveth continue to see the world with knife-like clarity in a modernizing of the nineteenth century American method. Though many realist painters exist and taste for nineteenth century art prevails over much of the country, today's realism of the traditional sort seems to have run itself out by not recognizing the inevitability of abstract...
...exhibition itself reinforces this feeling of distance from the twentieth century by having so many pieces of actual furniture and whole rooms where you can stick your head over the rail into nineteenth century atmosphere. The material presence of the decoration-the glass, the silk, the gold knick-knacks-settles the paintings in history...
...best paintings hang at the end of the exhibition in the last work of the nineteenth century when artists like Eakins, Whistler. Homer and Sargent work with full new techniques of realism. In one haunting canvas by Eakins, surgeons in business suits cut into a man's leg. Scarcely visible in the dark background, a hall of students observe the operation. The quiet bloody hands makes it difficult to stare at this intense description. Sargent has an equally striking work of four girls arranged on a wide space of a dark room. The smallest sits, paused in playing with...
Quite soon after these painters, some American artists reckoned with European art and brought a revolution. Nineteenth century America was too young to worry about more than the facts that could be put on the canvas. Transformation of all parts of American life had to occur before art could break from copying. Once American tradition established itself, visions of an art that would achieve the mastery of Europe twirled in the eyes of Americans. The best recent art in this country goes beyond the cubism of Europe and its abstract inventions...