My question concerns this painting. Looked at with an eye not pre-loaded with a notion that the default race for human status is “white,” it looks kinda horrendous, especially the section that depicts Native Americans fleeing before the relentless advance of the European-descended settlers.
My question is, is this a painting by a man who approves of that which he is depicting?
Or (as is my fondest desire) is it an act of resistance, an attempt to pull back the curtain separating the safe-at-the-gallery/museum/art-show viewer from their personal complicity in such a horror?
The pessimist in me sees it as the former. He keeps remembering when he learned that L. Frank Baum had literally called for the extermination of all Native Americans in North America.
But the Wizard seemed to be such a nice old man. How could he have been dreamed up by a monster? Please make it possible for me to believe in the vision of John Gast.
I’m not certain. The Native Americans and the bison could be seen as fleeing from Columbia, but then, the covered wagon and the fur-trappers could also be seen the same way.
I think it’s meant as merely chronological: The bison and the natives were there first, and after then came the trappers and the people in covered wagons, and then after them were stagecoaches and farmers, and then after them were trains.
I’d defer to art historians, but the title of the piece and all the symbolism therein seems pretty clearly to point toward the… inevitability of American Progress.
Look at the sun and the light on the right hand side of the painting from whence progress is marching. America is bringing light and progress to the dark and wild places.
We can certainly look at the painting and see the inherent negatives built into the work, but if you’re asking about authorial intent? It seems clear that this is not a work meant to pillory American westward expansion, but rather to invoke pride.
The largest and most angelic element of the picture is a giant goddess, carrying a school book. She seems very confident and optimistic.
If the painting was meant to be taken as depicting tragedy, I’d expect her to be tearful or at least carry some icon that signals something like peace or mercy.
As it is, the most favorable interpretation that I think we can give is that he’s suggesting that the natives should be educated and converted away from savagery. That is, as opposed to driving them on a death march over a cliff or otherwise massacring them. So…better but still questionable.
My point exactly. Also that it was meant to appeal to the prurient male gaze under the guise of something ostensibly high-minded, like the “Biblical” nude shows popular in those days.
I’d put it as symbolic of a few thousand years of artists collectively uniting on the desire for people’s clothes to fall off. Or, at least, for their patrons to have that desire.
There was a time before the Internet, after all. Imagine living in a time where you need to hire a group of sculptors for a few years, to carve your kink into stone, and then you have to get as much mileage out of that as you can until you can afford a second work.
In general, I’d say that there’s a lot to learn from art that’s isn’t necessarily intentional on the part of the creators.
As far as I can tell from a brief online search, Gast held no political beliefs that were radical for his era. And it was an era when most white Americans saw the white settlement of the west as a good thing and the Native Americans who lived in those areas as an obstacle in the path of that good thing.
I think it’s also worth noting that Gast was a commercial artist. He painted American Progress on commission.
There’s a long history of eroticizing nationalism and war. France, with their Marianne, is the most honest about it: “Yes, we want our national personification to be a hottie.”
The Wizard was the manipulator behind an demagogic cult of personality of a fabricated “Great Man” leader who then rewarded the vanquishing heroes with ersatz treasures (“a lot of bran-new brains” for the Scarecrow, a sawdust-stuffed heart for the Woodsman, and a ‘Potion of Courage’ for the Lion), and rules over a kingdom of the ‘lesser’ Munchkin race, sending a child to assassinate a competing autocrat. He’s a fucking tyrant.
The Natives in the foreground are directly in Columbia’s path and can be seen staring up at her with fear and away from the covered wagon, while the white settlers are just casually walking and plowing a cultivated field, while the stagecoach literally advances under her skirts. Also note that the right (eastern) side of the picture is in light with the sun on the horizon with a developed city, maritime trade, and trains advancing to the west, while the left (western) side of the picture is dark and cloud-covered, almost literally being pushed by the advancing Columbia. You can, of course, give the benefit of the doubt that this is just all “merely chronological” but I think any contextual analysis of this shows clear intent of justifying the “Manifest Destiny” of the white colonists advancing over Native American lands and developing them as a divine right and duty, especially given the sentiment and developments of the post-Civil War Westward Expansionist era.
I see no indication of any kind of irony in the picture, and certainly not criticism of westward expansion or subjugation, expropriation, and forced emigration of the indigenous peoples.
Yeah, the change in light is pretty clear in meaning. I take back my ambiguity: At the very least, it means “this change is happening, and it’s a good thing”.
So I guess it’s “horrendous.” And as a beneficiary of such horror that was visited upon the ancestors of my fellow human beings, I feel appalled by suggestions that calling for any attempt, no matter how small, to atone for my own ancestors’ actions constitutes seditious activity.
And the bear; which is also snarling back at the armed invaders coming after them in a similar fashion to the Native Americans. (I’m not sure what the creature with a striped tail between the bear and the humans is. Maybe it’s one of their dogs? There’s another one there which is definitely a dog.)
I think the humans are being seen as equivalent to the bear and bison: unwanted large animals being driven off.
