[Pre-order Michael Finch’s upcoming book, ‘A Time to Stand: The Dire Hour to Defend American Beauty’: HERE.]
What must Thomas Cole have seen when, in 1825, he first gazed upon the Hudson River Valley for the first time and later as he ventured into the Adirondacks? The natural beauty is stunning, just begging to be put on canvas. Or Albert Bierstadt, upon leaving his native northern Germany and crossing the American continent, to gaze upon the Rockies and all the way to the great Sierras of California? Or Walt Whitman, who in traveling across this great land, found his heart bursting with the beauty of America and so brilliantly put it to verse?
To the first explorers, settlers, farmers, artists who arrived from Europe, America was a blank canvas begging to be put to story and verse, to be painted and built upon a style that was uniquely American. And that they did.
America was all ambition, the promised land, it was the Garden of Eden remade, the City on a Hill, biblical, almost literally, or seen that way by the early arrivals and into the 19th Century. America was truly formed in the 1800’s, from birth, to tumult and war, to the Golden Age of American growth and destiny. America became itself as the 19th Century closed. All the promise, the dreams, the unrealized potential, the stunning growth of our great country is an astonishing story unlike any other nation or people in world history.
How this was portrayed, written, painted, designed and put to verse and song is an untold story that begs to be told. And given the attacks that American culture faces today, it desperately needs to be told.
America excelled in the areas of art, architecture, literature and poetry in a way that is at least the equal of the Europe that we came from. Just to cover one of these areas (art) gives us a glimpse of this incredible beauty that is vital to our history and of the American story.
Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt are just two of the world-renowned artists that painted America in the 19th Century. They, along with Frederic Edwin Church, Asher Brown Durand, Asher Brown and so many others majestically put to canvas the beauty of the American landscape and at their very best are at least the rival of the great English landscape artists John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. But how many of today’s students even know these names?
Cole, one of the founders of what became known as the Hudson River School movement, saw as his mission, to create an “American” landscape vision and literary voice that was based on the exploration of nature – the natural world defined as a resource for spiritual renewal and as an expression of cultural and national identity.
By the mid-1800’s, the collected art of the American landscape emerged with another movement – in terms of the charting the developing culture of the United States. America and its people were at work searching for a national identity; a part of this movement and intellectual thought was set in the belief that what defined Americans was their relationship with the land. The success in doing so is an incredibly beautiful artistic development and was instrumental in the creation of that American identity.
James Jackson Jarves, an astute critic, stated in 1864:
“The thoroughly American branch of painting, based upon the facts and tastes of the country and people, is the landscape. It surpasses all others in popular favor, and may be said to have reached the dignity of a distinct school.”
As the British historian Paul Johnson wrote in his “A History of the American People”:
“That the United States, lifted up by extraordinary wealth and native talent, became a great cultural nation in the second half of the 19th century is a fact which the world, and even Americans themselves, have been slow to grasp. This lack of recognition has been particularly notable in the field of art.”
Johnson goes onto to describe in greater detail on the American landscape painting which he claims was “the like of which the world has never seen.” In the fields of art, literature, architecture and poetry, America rose to great heights – even if the world and Americans then, and especially now, have either ignored or forgotten this greatness.
The critics are many. Indeed, it was none other the libertarian Charles Murray who in his book “Human Accomplishment” on American art wrote:
“In the arts, a large dose of American humility is in order. Much as we may love Twain, Whitman, Whistler, and Copland, they are easily lost in the ocean of the European oeuvre. What we are pleased to call Western Civilization has been in fact European civilization until the last half century.”
I have great respect for Murray, but he completely misses the mark here. To not even mention Cole, Bierstadt and the Hudson River School or the great architects of the American Renaissance period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a vital omission. The Golden Age of American Culture is not just a spin-off of European civilization, but thoroughly and distinctively American, to its core. And we should celebrate that.
This argument is critical and leads to an even deeper issue that has caused such devastation to our national culture. The Left has been at war with American culture and our shared history for decades. The 1619 Project, the demonization of the American Founding and the portrayal of America as a systemically racist country and people is part of that war. They use many bludgeons to caricature their enemy, two of the leading epitaphs to silence those they are opposed to are the terms racist and fascist. They are deadly effective.
We have seen this with the immediate attacks on President Trump with the calling of his Executive Order on “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful” or his attempts to celebrate American history to be an authoritarian impulse and his love for “fascist” architecture. Further, just look at the latest hysteria over Trump’s comments about the Smithsonian Institution.
Trump criticized how the Smithsonian has presented American history in a Truth Social Post recently, accusing the institute of pushing a “woke” agenda that fixates on the so-called darker parts of America’s past.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” he said.
Trump added,
“We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”
We can be very thankful that we have a president who stands so strong in the defense of American values and ideals, and of our incredible history and culture. This is a battle that we must win if we are to preserve our great Republic. It is time to fight back, teach our children about the true greatness of this American experiment and finally, to once again be proud of these incredible past 250 years.
Michael Finch is the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of his upcoming book, A Time to Stand: The Dire Hour to Defend American Beauty.
