Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture
Patricia Johnston. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2006
One of the challenges facing art education today is the ever growing push towards the incorporation of a visual studies curriculum in K-12 classrooms. Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture explores the separation of art mediums as well as their historical roles as a vehicle for social change. Through an array of essays by various authors, Seeing High & Low attempts to examine visual culture as it relates to American art genres. Advocates for a Visual Culture Art Education curriculum could use this collaborative project as further evidence that art, in its truest form, can be used to represent a plethora of cultural philosophies, iconic imagery, and contemporary ideals.
In her introduction, Art History Professor Patricia Johnston argues that the separation of art into contexts of “high” and “low” have historically been used by art museums, art schools, and art historians to reinforce the dominant positions of elitism and modernism. These contexts divide society by class, race, sex, and religion. Seeing High & Low reviews the instabilities of these ideologies by focusing on famous works of art, their historical importance, and their implications on popular genre conventions. The authors systematically accomplish their goals by illustrating how popular culture influences art movements as well as its ability to confront historical and contemporary political tensions.
The fifteen contributing authors are a combined group of university professors, art historians, and creative directors. Their analytical approaches are used to construct correlations between art genres and social values. Most notable, and used in this review, are essays by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Jeffrey Belnap, Melissa Dabakis, and Katharine Martinez. Each author evaluates the imagery used in various mediums to addresses social and cultural issues. Their conclusions substantiate art’s ability to cultivate dialogue, create representation, and promote self awareness. These arguments are equivalent with the aspirations of VCAE advocates. This review will briefly examine the essays of the above mentioned authors.
Lee Blaszczyk persuasively examines the reciprocal relationship that occurs between art and commercialism in “The Color of Modernism: Georgia O’Keeffe, Cheney Brothers, and the Relationship between Art and Industry in the 1920’s”. Blaszczyk argues that in 1926 the colorful and feminine work of Georgia O’Keeffe’s was successfully used by the Cheney brothers to invigorate their failing silk profits. Not only did this strategy set the Cheney brothers apart from their competitors, it also raised public awareness and recognition of O’Keeffe as a female artist; an accomplishment that would set the trend for art and commercial industry in the years to come. In this essay, Blaszczyk’s research analyzes art's ability to move fluidly from the context of fine art to popular culture.
Similar to Blaszczyk, Jeffrey Belnap examines the tradition of Mexican muralists in his essay, “Caricaturing the Gringo Tourist: Diego Rivera’s Folkloric and Touristic Mexico and Miguel Covarrubias’s Sunday Afternoon in Xochimilco”. Most notably, Belnap points out the subtle ways in which muralists called attention to the effects of U.S. capitalism on Mexican culture. Belnap critically reviews lesser known works by Rivera and Covarrubias to call attention to the differences between the viewer and those being viewed. The murals explore the nature of resistance towards the U.S. and Mexico’s ruling class as well as politicize social inequalities experienced in Mexico and abroad. Belnap’s essay reinforces the link between representation and culture in art as well as its ability to educate others globally.
In “Ain’t I A Woman? Anne Witney, Edmonia Lewis, and the Iconography of Emancipation,” Melissa Dabakis examines the plight of female artists who would not conform to Western aesthetics in the 19th century. This essay discusses the negation of sculpture that fell outside of the canon of high art. Unprecedented in the art world, Whitney and Lewis attempted to create images that redefined their race as well as question the institution of slavery. Dabakis concludes that the lack of representation hindered the success and acceptance of sculpture that did not reinforce Western stereotypical images. Just as VCAE calls attention to the need for varied forms of otherness and representation in art education, so does Dabakis.
Katharine Martinez contributes “At Home with Mona Lisa: Consumers and Commercial Visual Culture, 1880-1920”. Martinez contends that for most people at the end of the 19th century, visual culture was still a relatively new experience, despite the widening availability of lithographs and chromolithographs that had begun earlier in the century.[1] She critically examines the desire of upper class patrons to “enlighten” and “educate” the lower masses with fine art in hopes that it would improve their impoverished lives. The same argument continues today regarding the introduction of visual culture in art education.
In conclusion, Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture is a collection of essays that examine the effects of popular culture on fine art. These essays provide convincing theories because they cover various art genres and are written as an exploration of representation and identity. I believe Johnston has successfully incorporated different voices, viewpoints, and art authorities into a compilation that reflects the changing trends surrounding the current state of art education. The lines between high and low art have blurred into a combination of popular culture in Postmodernism. This book is evidence that there is no longer one concise voice on what should and should not be considered art. It encourages educators to engage their students with their culture, historical legacies, and the world around them in a way that only art can do in the 21st century.
Reviewed by Angela Singletary, Art Graduate Student, University of Florida.
[1] Martinez, Katharine. “At Home With Mona Lisa: Consumers and Commercial Culture, 1880-1920,” 160-176.
