{"id":11379,"date":"2019-04-20T09:15:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T13:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=11379"},"modified":"2019-04-20T09:18:31","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T13:18:31","slug":"natures-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/04\/20\/natures-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Nature’s Nation’: Digging Into American Art For A More Honest History Of Our Relationship To The Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen,\u201d the American ornithologist and artist John James Audubon warned about the Carolina parrot in 1831.<\/p>\n

The bird with its distinctive yellow head, red face and green body was once found around rivers and swamps and in old growth forests from Nebraska to Wisconsin to southern New York to the Gulf of Mexico. But the last known wild Carolina parrot was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida, in 1904. And the last of the parrots in captivity died at the Cincinnati Zoo\u2014in the same cage in which the last passenger pigeon had gone extinct in 1914\u2014on Feb. 21, 1918.<\/p>\n

\"Prints<\/a>
Prints of the Carolina parrot by (clockwise from left) Walton Ford, Mark Catesby and John James Audubon in \u201cNature’s Nation: American Art and Environment\u201d at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This story of devastating loss is suggested by three prints of the parrot hanging in one of the early rooms of \u201cNature’s Nation: American Art and Environment\u201d<\/a> at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum through May 5. Mark Catesby\u2019s 1743 hand-colored etching \u201cThe Parrot of Carolina\u201d is a na\u00efve portrait of the bird in profile. Audubon\u2019s 1827 engraving \u201cCarolina Parrot\u201d shows seven sharply observed parrots jostling each other in a tree when the birds still remained abundant. Walton Ford\u2019s 2005 etching, aquatint and drypoint \u201cDying Words\u201d borrows the composition of Benjamin West\u2019s 1770 painting of a mortally wounded British general to create an allegory of the parrot\u2019s final days.<\/p>\n

\u201cNature\u2019s Nation\u201d builds a revisionist history of the United States\u2019 relationship to the land via more than 100 artworks by a lineup including Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Riis, Hughie Lee-Smith, Ana Mendieta, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ansel Adams, Georgia O\u2019Keeffe, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Isamu Noguchi, N.C. Wyeth, Dorothea Lange, Theaster Gates and Robert Rauschenberg.<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/a>
Thomas Cole, “A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (C rawford Notch),” 1839. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The curators from the Princeton University Art Museum offer footnotes and rebuttals to heroic paintings of majestic mountains, fruited plains and American dreams. In the backstories of beautiful landscapes, they uncover rapacious mining, forest clearing, land grabs, extinctions, colonialism, slavery, wars, racism, sordid tenements, polluting factories and endless corruption.<\/p>\n

The scope of the counter narrative the Princeton curators attempt is breathtaking\u2014and inspiring.<\/p>\n

In Edward Savages\u2019s 1796 oil painting of president George Washington and his family, they point out a black man named William Lee that Washington enslaved.<\/p>\n

\"Winslow<\/a>
Winslow Homer, “A Huntsman and Dogs,” 1891. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

About Winslow Homer\u2019s 1891 oil painting \u201cA Huntsman and Dogs\u201d they note, \u201cIn Adirondack Park, the large public forest preserve in New York, unethical hunting practices ran rampant during the 1890s. Wasteful, unsportsmanlike destruction of wildlife resulted. Homer critiques such commercial hunters \u2026 The stumps in the foreground reference the clear-cutting that stripped the background landscape of its trees and highlight the various forms of environmental transformation of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside abstract artist Morris Lewis\u2019s 1954 acrylic painting \u201cIntrigue,\u201d they note: \u201cThough turpentine helped to create this ethereal abstraction, regular exposure to its toxic fumes likely played a role in Louis\u2019s death from lung cancer at middle age.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the American dirty laundry that many of us know about, but that our elite cultural institutions are traditionally too polite to even whisper.<\/p>\n

\"Mateo<\/a>
Mateo Romero, “In and Around These Mountains,” 1999. Oil, paper, canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The curators\u2019 strategy has proved controversial, prompting critiques that the curators have gone too far, are too didactic, have assumed too much, that they\u2019ve twisted the art in service to their curatorial polemic, that they\u2019ll turn off the very folks they\u2019re trying to enlighten. The curators\u2019 methods can get painfully earnest. And sometimes they seem to stretch too far to reach a point. All of which certainly does turn some folks off.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cNature's<\/a>
\u201cNature’s Nation: American Art and Environment\u201d at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is sad and painful to have so many beautiful artworks revealed as ugly history. But too often our elite cultural institutions go along to get along. They\u2019re financially complicit with 1 percenters who hoard our world\u2019s resources and often care so little about what or who they break along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cNature’s Nation\u201d is a necessary corrective. And it\u2019s thrilling to see the truth so bluntly told.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"\u201cNature's<\/a>
\u201cNature’s Nation: American Art and Environment\u201d at Salem\u2019s Peabody Essex Museum. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Robert<\/a>
Robert Rauschenberg, “Earth Day,” 1970. Color lithograph with collage. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"David<\/a>
David Gilmour Blythe, “Prospecting\/Bullcreek City,” ca. 1861\u201363. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Georgia<\/a>
Georgia O\u2019Keeffe, “The Lawrence Tree,” 1929. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"George<\/a>
George Wesley Bellows, “Cliff Dwellers,” 1913. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Alexandre<\/a>
Alexandre Hogue, “Crucified Land”, 1939. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen,\u201d the American ornithologist and artist John James Audubon warned about the Carolina parrot in 1831. The bird with its distinctive yellow head, red face and green body was once found around rivers and swamps and in old growth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[47,46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11379"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11405,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379\/revisions\/11405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}