Art in the united states

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The art in the United States broke away in the 20th century by the models of the Old World . The different cultural disciplines were expanded in new directions - with impressive and innovative results.

Music, film, theater, dance and architecture, as well as other forms of artistic expression, have been enriched and changed. The contemporary art and entertainment scene in the USA included the rejuvenation of music, new developments in modern dance, the use of original American themes in the theater, studio-independent film production in its full range and the globalization of the visual arts.

architecture

The Fallingwater house was built in the second half of the 1930s according to plans by Frank Lloyd Wright and is now a museum.
Ieoh Ming Pei's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1995 in Cleveland .

American architecture is unusually complex, both in terms of the different traditions that have influenced it and the diversity of architectural styles . When the first European settlers came to the country, the indigenous people had developed their own architectural structures, for example the pueblo , the hogan , the longhouse and the tipi .

In the 18th century , architecture was mostly pragmatic . Different styles developed, influenced by the traditions that the immigrants brought with them and regional conditions.

The 19th century saw an extraordinary rate of urbanization . Although there were no public building regulations , clearly demarcated city ​​quarters with elegant terraced houses , apartment buildings and rental apartments developed . In the middle of the 19th century, the romantic spirit showed itself in the revival of various architectural styles, for example the Neo-Greek style with symmetrical columns and the Neo-Gothic with pointed, crooked and asymmetrical shapes. The appearance of business districts changed with the invention of the skyscraper . Since the 1880s, architects and engineers in Chicago and New York experimented with new construction methods in order to reach ever greater heights. The skyscraper is America's most distinctive contribution to architecture. The world's first skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building , constructed in Chicago from 1884 to 1885. The most elegant of the early skyscrapers are from Louis Sullivan , America's first great modern architect and the teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright .

In the 1930s, European architects who emigrated to the United States prior to World War II influenced the development of a rigorous, functional approach that was considered anonymous and devoid of local traditions and that became known as the International Style . Among the most influential were Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius , both former directors of the famous German design school, the Bauhaus . The geometric buildings received both praise and criticism.

In the post-war period, the diversity of architecture became even clearer than before. The skyscrapers reached new heights and at the same time showed an extraordinary variety of colors and decorative motifs. The conversion of historical buildings became common practice. Today, a new generation of architects is taking the liberty of incorporating old and new elements into their buildings.

Visual arts

Albert Bierstadt : Lake Tahoe (1868)
Winslow Homer : Breezing Up (1870s)

Located on the National Mall in Washington, DC , the museums and monuments are home to an enormous collection of works of art and items that document the past and present of the American art scene and society. The National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden , the newest attraction on the National Mall, is a place to rest with shady trees, watercourses, and modern artwork.

The first known American school of painting, the Hudson River School , emerged in 1820. As with music and literature, the independent development of the American visual arts was delayed until the artists realized that the New World offered its own themes. The directness and simplicity of the Hudson River painters' point of view influenced later artists such as B. Winslow Homer , who captured the rural USA in his pictures. Middle-class city life found its painter in Thomas Eakins , an uncompromising realist whose unswerving sincerity undermined the nobility's preference for romantic sentimentalism . Soon controversial elements became the style of American artists. American painting and sculpture has been a single revolt against tradition since the early 20th century. “ To hell with the artistic values ”, announced Robert Henri . He was a leader in what is critically referred to as the “ ash-can ” (garbage can) school, named after depicting the repulsive aspects of city life, the Ashcan School .

In the years after World War II, a group of young New York artists formed the first truly American movement that would also have a major impact on foreign artists: Abstract Expressionism . Jackson Pollock , Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko were among the leading forces in the movement . The next generation of artists preferred a completely different form of abstraction: works from a mix of media. This generation included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns , who used photos, newspaper clippings and garbage objects for their compositions. Pop artists such as Andy Warhol , Larry Rivers and Roy Lichtenstein reproduced everyday objects and images from American pop culture such as Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans and comics with satirical accuracy . A kind of playful irony is arguably the United States' most significant contribution to world art in the 20th century, because new works are created primarily as a contribution to the ongoing discussion about the definition of art. see also: New York School , Lyrical Abstraction , Black Paintings .

American contemporary artists do not want to commit themselves to schools, styles or a single medium. American art is no longer determined simply by geography, origin, or point of view. The globalization of markets, the ease of worldwide communication and the nomadic wandering of artists from country to country have instead contributed to an art landscape without fixed national identities.

It is no longer possible to describe modern American art as a series of formal developments, or a sequential series of art styles. Instead, art offers a way to filter the varied and contradicting information that is bombarding us from everywhere. Modern art makes use of every discipline, every art tradition and method of presentation and is just as complex, provocative and intellectually challenging as the world in which it is created.

music

Classical music

The history of the arts in the US is characterized by two strong sources of inspiration and the resulting tension: European sophistication and native originality. Up until the end of the 19th century, there was no classical music in the US in the true sense of the word, i.e. symphony , opera , chamber music , sonatas, etc. In 1895, the composer Antonín Dvořák asked his American colleagues to use local sources as inspiration and material use. As an example of what is feasible, he offered his symphony “From the New World”, which is inspired by sacred music and Indian rhythms.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American composers began to create a remarkable variety of distinctively American classical music. They were inspired, among other things, by the immigrants' desire for assimilation , political isolationism , the exciting rhythms of jazz and a “can-do” attitude. Composers such as George Gershwin and Aaron Copland combined New World melodies and rhythms with European forms of music. Characteristics of the composition in the greater part of the 20th century, and especially for the period after the Second World War, are the joy of experimentation and the constant search for new systems of how music can be written, for new forms and new styles. Charles Ives (1874–1954) is considered by many to be the "first" genuinely American composer.

William Henry Fry's performance of "Leonora" in 1845 was the first known performance of an opera by an American composer. Much of the early American operas drew on classical European content, but by the end of the 19th century composers increasingly turned to American themes . Today the opera - old as well as new - is thriving, but since the productions are very cost-intensive, the opera houses are dependent on financing from companies and private patrons .

Extremely new and experimental styles have set in since Charles Ives . Some composers, such as Edgar Varèse , completely rejected traditional melodies and harmony, while others, such as John Cage , experimented with electronic music and natural sounds. Harry Partch built his own set of instruments and experimented with new moods in his multimedia music influenced by Asian cultures, and Henry Cowell was one of the most important theoreticians of the musical avant-garde in addition to his compositional experiments . Both Varese and Cage, as well as the representatives of minimal music , exerted a great influence on contemporary composers, not only in the field of classical music but also with regard to other genres. Some orchestra conductors manage to keep the traditional audience happy while at the same time introducing them to new styles of music. Instead of playing new pieces separately, they put them on the program alongside more traditional pieces.

Blues and jazz

Blues is an originally American type of music. It emerged from a mixture of European and African musical traditions. The slaves were often forbidden to make music. However, some slaves learned European instruments. They transferred their traditional way of making music to European songs. They were also allowed to sing in church. They often used religious and other metaphors to report on their extreme suffering and longing for freedom. Most of the blues were sung in the south . It did not spread north until the 1930s and 1940s when many blacks migrated from the south to the industrialized north. In the 1920s, the blues was increasingly used by jazz instrumentalists.

The Jazz is considered the first genuinely American musical form. It has its roots in New Orleans Jazz of the early 20th century. At that time it consisted of a mixture of ragtime , slave songs and brass music. A characteristic of jazz was its variation possibilities, because when performing live, the musicians almost never played a song twice, but improvised with changes to the melody and text. Jazz remained the pre-eminent direction of modern American music from the 1920s through the 1940s. In the 1930s and 1940s the most popular form of jazz was the " Big Band Swing ", named after the large ensembles led by Glenn Miller , Benny Goodman and William "Count" Basie .

In the late 1940s, audiences began to get excited about a new, more intellectual form of instrumental jazz, bebop . The era of rhythm & blues lasted from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Rhythm & Blues was a combination of jazz and other musical styles with lyrical content, acoustic gestures and the format of the blues. The fusion of rhythm & blues and country music in the mid-1950s gave rise to rock and roll . In the mid-1960s, rhythm & blues changed to soul . In the 1970s, many jazz musicians experimented with electronic musical instruments and achieved fusion , a mixture of rock and jazz.

Another musical style strongly influenced by Afro-American tradition became popular in the 1960s: a mixture of rhythm & blues and gospel became known as soul .

Rock, Country and Folk

At the beginning of the 1950s, jazz lost its appeal for the general public. A new form of modern music emerged from rhythm & blues: rock and roll - songs with strong beats and provocative lyrics. In order to bring the new music closer to the conservative audience, white musicians began to play rhythm & blues songs with a less strong beat and a little more reserved lyrics. At the beginning of his career, Elvis Presley also copied black singers. One of his first big hits, "Hound Dog", came from blues singer Big Mama Thornton . Soon, however, Presley was singing his own pieces, given to him by a new generation of rock and roll songwriters.

Urban folk music emerged in the 1950s and 1960s . It was based on the folk and country tradition, which was based on ballads from Scotland, England and Ireland and was also pressed on record in the 1920s and 1930s. A young generation took up this tradition. Often times the current political and social situation was questioned in the songs, like Bob Dylan or Joan Baez, for example . Above all, the denial of civil rights for black Americans and American involvement in the Vietnam War were accused in such protest songs. The divide between rock enthusiasts and folk purists became apparent when Dylan was booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival for playing an electric guitar. However, Dylan was not deterred and there was a mixture of rock and folk.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, traditional country elements were reintroduced into rock music by young musicians . In contrast to the blues, which is no longer popular in the social classes from which it originates, the original form of country music, especially bluegrass , is still popular today as a kind of " folk music ", especially in the southern United States. Modern country music developed in the 1920s with the beginning of commercial music marketing, roughly at the same time as the increasing migration of the rural population to the cities. It developed into a popular, also internationally popular style of music, which is still very much connected to the aesthetics and values ​​in the American southern states.

Music today

Due to its complexity and diversity, it is hardly possible to give a simple description of the contemporary music scene. There are now hundreds of styles of music. New styles such as folk , salsa , new wave , funk , reggae , heavy metal , punk , rap , hip-hop , acid jazz and world music have emerged.

From disco , a popular in the 1970s style of dance music with repetitive rhythms that on soul and funk based, developed Rap , Hip-Hop and House . Rap was established by African-American and Latin American artists in New York City in the mid-1970s. Rap and hip hop had a lasting impact on the music scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Originating in the slums of the big cities, rap replaces sung melodies with rhythmically powerful and mostly rhymed spoken chants, which are accompanied by a haunting beat. Hip-hop uses many of the same traits, but is driven more by dance than the text message. Both styles have Afro-African roots but were quickly picked up by white performers and can be found everywhere these days.

In the 1990s, various "alternative" or " independent " styles of music such as grunge emerged . Techno , a music style that also became popular in the 1990s, combines computer-generated, disco-like rhythms with digital patterns.

In contemporary popular music, the individual styles are very intermingled. In the age of the mass media , especially radio , television , CD and the Internet , the different styles of music can be easily distributed and reproduced. On the one hand, globalization leads to a homogenization of a mass culture, for example via the music television channel MTV , but there is also a multitude of diversified new trends arising from the clash of various musical influences. Musicians around the world are increasingly orienting themselves towards other musical styles, but are also picking up on their local traditions again to set themselves apart from the crowd. A new genre, " World Music " emerged. The term refers to ethnic musical styles that are adapted to popular Western listening habits, for example by mixing them with common Western musical styles.

dance

American theater dance has always been inspired by a mix of native and imported elements. During the 18th and 19th centuries, dance took place predominantly in private and communal settings, rarely in the theater or on stage. However, dance played a role in public celebrations, entertainment, and drama. Early theatrical entertainment also included folk dances. Historians traditionally date the emergence of American dance to the late 19th century, when local institutions and artists established themselves.

Up until the 20th century, dancers could only work professionally on the popular stage - in music halls, as part of antics and in variety. Varietes showed tap and point dances, comic and moral dance sketches, adagio teams, ballroom dances, skirt dancing, artistic or interpretive dance and special performances in different ethnic styles. And although the first ballet in the United States was performed in 1735 by the British dance teacher Henry Holt, few permanent establishments were able to perform ballet until the 20th century. Ballet remained a high-level complement to other forms of entertainment or opera .

In the early 20th century, touring European dancers first introduced American audiences to classical ballet on a broad basis. The 1930s were a time of experimentation. American ballet has been heavily influenced by the creative and aesthetic influences of internationally recognized choreographers George Balanchine , Anthony Tudor and Jerome Robbins . All three were associated with one of the two leading ballet companies in the United States, the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, and known as the New York City Ballet since 1948, and the American Ballet Theater, founded in 1940. Today the American ballet scene is a mixture of revived classics and new works.

Early 20th century created a new, uniquely American art form - the Modern dance ( modern dance ). It encompasses a variety of dancers, choreographers, and dance styles. The connecting element consists of a certain approach and attitude rather than a uniform style. Modern dance, as a holistic medium of expression, allows the artist to project his own view of the world and express it through his own physical presence and form. Isadora Duncan was one of the first representatives of this genre , who substituted unstructured movements for the positions of classical ballet. Martha Graham's New York-based dance company is probably the best-known exponent of modern dance. Later choreographers looked for new forms of expression. With Merce Cunningham it was the weaving of improvisations and random movements into the performances. Alvin Ailey integrated elements of African dance and black music. Choreographers like Mark Morris and Liz Lerman defied the convention that dancers had to be young and slim. In their opinion - and this is also reflected in their recruiting practices and their performances - graceful, exciting movements are not restricted to a certain age or a certain body stature.

But perhaps it is the west coast of the United States, with its particular influence on the Pacific fringes, where modern dance has currently found its most original development. Patrick Makuakane , who works in San Francisco and Los Angeles , has added a new facet to the world of the Hawaiian dance hula with his unique company Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu. The Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, also based in San Francisco, creates a unique American mix of traditional Chinese stage sets, international pop and innovative post-modern dance. Robert Moses is the youngest and most innovative exponent of the Afro-American tradition. His company, Robert Moses' Kin, mixes jazz, blues, rap lyric and the language of the street with casual movements and a strict postmodern syntax in new works, which together show a section of Afro-American life, convey a universal message of dance and, perhaps above all, are an immersive theatrical experience.

theatre

The beginning of American theater is traditionally dated with the arrival of Lewis Hallam's English Troupe in Williamsburg in 1752. After the War of Independence , the theater arts slowly expanded. Theaters were built in Charleston with the first theater building (Dock Street Theater), Philadelphia , Newport , New York, and Boston . The largest theater in the United States to date, the Stanley Theater opened on March 24, 1928 in Jersey City .

Theaters were widespread in the early 19th century and the two decades before and after the turn of the century can be described as the golden years of theater. In the second half of the 19th century, theaters offered a more diverse range and at the same time specialized. The audience could choose between classical theater, ballet, variety, farce and opera. Variete developed in the second half of the 19th century. Since the early 1940s, the very popular genre of minstrel shows emerged, in which black-made actors parodied African American stereotypes. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, the variety, with its mix of music, comedy, new numbers and satire, attracted a large number of viewers.

The development of film changed the theater scene and by the early 1920s the theater had lost its mass audience. Even if Hollywood withdrew its mass audience from the theater, this development also enabled theaters to show their strengths. The beginning of the 20th century saw a turn towards serious drama and innovative stage art. During the Great Depression , a previously unseen social and political awareness was shown on stage. The oppression of workers and immigrants was publicly denounced (compare Great Depression ). In the 1960s and 1970s, off- and off-off Broadway groups made political comments (e.g. MacBird, 1967).

The musical stage of the 20th century is the country's most successful theater export. Theater has been accompanied by music since colonial times, but native works did not emerge until the 1780s. The Black Crook , the first American musical, was performed in 1866 . Singing, dancing and entertainment were transplanted onto an existing folk piece. Towards the end of the 19th century, the American music scene encompassed a large number of genres: operettas, thematic musicals, and revues that had their roots in the " minstrel shows". After the First World War, a golden age began for Broadway. Although dance had always been a part of the musical , it wasn't until the 1930s that it became more closely associated with the story being told. Dance has been an integral part of the story since the production of West Side Story in 1957. Performers now have to sing, dance and act - a threefold talent is essential for most shows. Rock 'n' Roll, however, has ousted Broadway as a trendsetter for American pop music.

Today American theater can be divided into three categories. For one thing, Broadway productions continue and many of the 50 or so new plays per season are first performed in New York City's theater district. Over the years, the New York theater scene has broken new ground, known as "Off-Broadway" and "Off-Off-Broadway". These shows take place on small stages but can keep up with the best Broadway performances for professional skills. On the other hand, many good regional theaters produce the best new productions. They are supported by corporations, foundations, and the government, and for some critics, regional theaters are the greatest hope for American theater. Third, universities support theater programs.

There was a time when new American plays typically premiered on Broadway. For several years now, however, there has been a healthy give and take between commercial theaters and their non-commercial counterparts, also often called resident or regional theaters, in promoting new American plays. Some new pieces start in the commercial sector and flow into the non-commercial regional theaters, others go the opposite way. These two branches of the American theater industry, which are always on the lookout for new products, are now enriching each other to the same extent.

In fact, the old prejudice of commercial producers who, as entrepreneurs, are only looking for the lowest common denominator in entertainment, is no longer entirely true. Nowadays, many commercial producers are also theater enthusiasts looking for new and progressive work. And they are ready to support risky plays that pique their interest. The musicals may still rule Broadway, but it's also spawning some great new American plays.

Movie

"Moving Images" may not be an American invention, but they are the outstanding American contribution to global entertainment. At the beginning of the 20th century, when this medium was still very new, many immigrants found employment in the American film industry . They were able to make their fortune in a brand new business: showing short films in shop theaters, the Nickelodeons , named after their entrance fee, a nickel (5 cents). After just a few years, many ambitious men like Samuel Goldwyn , Carl Laemmle , Adolph Zukor , Louis B. Mayer and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel and Jack) turned to the production side of this business. Very soon they became the heads of a completely new type of company: the film studios . The most important studios were in Hollywood , a district of Los Angeles in California . There, in Los Angeles, the "Electric Theater" opened in 1902, the first cinema in the United States.

During Hollywood's so-called Golden Era of the 1930s and 1940s, the studios produced about 400 films a year, which were watched by 90 million Americans every week. Film production was big business and the film industry made its money from what was known as the studio system . The big film studios had thousands of employees on their payroll and owned hundreds of their own movie theaters across the country - movie theaters showing their films and constantly demanding supplies. It is remarkable how much high quality entertainment was created in such a tightly organized process. One reason for this could be that because of the large number of films produced, not everyone had to be a big hit.

The studio system had to bow to two influences in the late 1940s: (1) an antitrust measure by the US government that separated film production from film showing, and (2) the birth of television . The number of movies made fell dramatically, although the average budget skyrocketed because Hollywood wanted to offer audiences something they couldn't see on TV. Hollywood continues to rely on hit movies. Because of the gigantic expenses for actors' fees, studio management and agents, films today are either huge box-office hits or complete flops, depending on how much the immense expenses coincide with the taste of the audience.

American film production experienced an amazing renaissance from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. In hardly any other time have American directors influenced the experiences and values ​​of their viewers with their films so much. Part of the reason for this renaissance was that, with the emergence of a counterculture, major Hollywood studios were unsure which films would be profitable or what young viewers, who grew up in the 1960s, wanted to see. Much of this cinematic inventiveness seemed to be disappearing in the 1980s.

Although the films of the last 15 years have mainly been financed by Hollywood, they are extremely "off-beat", that is, weird, and testify to the versatility of American film art. An important reason for this eclecticism is the influence of financially strong, partially independent studios such as Sony Pictures Classics and DreamWorks , which specialize in the production and distribution of avant-garde films . And no studio is influential and successful in promoting innovative American as well as foreign films like Miramax from Harvey Weinstein .

So while American films are undoubtedly commercial, the desire to make a profit does not in itself contradict the desire to make an original and provocative film. Indeed, some of the most memorable American films of the past 40 years, from The Godfather to The Hours , have been both commercially successful and artistically demanding.

Promotion of the arts

There is no central department of education in the United States that dictates national cultural policy. This fact reflects the belief that there are important areas of social life where government should play little or no role. The two national foundations for the arts and humanities - National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) - support individual artists and scientists as well as institutions that are active in the arts and humanities with grants. While the NEA's budget, which amounted to $ 115 million in 2003, is relatively modest compared to the cultural funding of other countries, private donations have always made up the majority of cultural funding. These private donations were estimated to be approximately $ 12.1 billion in 2002. During its 40th anniversary, the NEA has used its funds to encourage private donations to give all Americans access to the arts and humanities.

literature