American Renaissance (art)

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American Renaissance decorative painting : Gilded ornaments on an olive-green background in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building , 1879 (now the Vice President's reception room)

In the history of American architecture and art , the period between about 1876 and 1917 is known as the American Renaissance . It is predominantly characterized by a renewed national self-confidence and the feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy , Roman law and Renaissance humanism .

background

The preoccupation of the American people with their national identity and nationalism at the time was expressed through modernity and technology as well as through academic classicism . People were convinced of new technologies, such as the cable construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York . Culturally, this epoch was mainly reflected in the Prairie Houses and the Beaux-Arts architecture and art, as well as in the City Beautiful movement and in the "establishment of the American Empire". Americans felt that their civilization had become very modern and at the same time mature. Politically and economically, this era coincides with the Gilded Age and neo-imperialism .

The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 , which fell into this era, had an impressive effect on Henry Brooks Adams , who was convinced that people in the future would continue to talk about Richard Morris Hunt , Henry Hobson Richardson , John La Farge , Augustus Saint-Gaudens , Daniel Burnham , Charles Follen McKim, and Stanford White would talk when contemporary politicians and millionaires are all but forgotten.

In the dome of the reading room of the new Library of Congress there are murals by Edwin Blashfield on the subject of the progress of civilization .

American Renaissance: 1876–1917 , shown at the Brooklyn Museum in 1979, rekindled general interest in the movement.

literature

  • Arthur Versluis: The esoteric origins of the American renaissance . Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York 2001, ISBN 0-19-513887-2 (English).
  • Brooklyn Museum : The American Renaissance . 1876-1917. Brooklyn Museum; Distributed by Pantheon Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-87273-075-1 (English).
  • Henry Hope Reed: The golden city . Doubleday, Garden City, New York 1959, OCLC 284183 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Guy Wilson: Architecture, landscape, and city planning. In: Brooklyn Museum : The American renaissance . 1876-1917. Brooklyn Museum; Distributed by Pantheon Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-87273-075-1 (English).
  2. ^ Wilson (1979), p. 15
  3. ^ Henry Adams: The Education of Henry Adams. Chapter XXII. Chicago (1893). In: Classic Reader. 2010, accessed on July 23, 2016 .