Artists of the USA

by Nina Gavrilova TPL1-06-01

Intro

Support of art: the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Private spending on arts: $12,1 billion The 20th century - artists in the United States have broken free

from Old World antecedents, taking the various cultural disciplines in new directions with impressive, innovative results.

Music, film, theater, dance, architecture and other artistic expressions have been enhanced and transformed.

What is the root of all the ongoing creative ferment?

„The reason that America has had this diversely distinguished history of art, this unprecedented breadth of achievement - ranging from movies to abstract expressionism to jazz to modern literature - is because America

was and is a society that recognizes the individual freedom of its citizens“Dana Gioia, american poet

Architecture Dance Film Literature Music Theater Visual arts

Architecture

18th century architecture was designed along the rule of reason and practical planning.

The 19th century witnessed an extraordinary rate of urbanization: business districts were transformed by an architectural innovation: the skyscraper.

The International Style: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius

A new generation of architects now feels free to incorporate both old and new elements in their buildings.

Dance

Historians usually date American dance from the end of the 19th century, when indigenous institutions and artists of stature began emerging.

Until the 20th century, most dancers could work professionally only on the popular stage - music halls, burlesque, and vaudeville.

ballet in America was arranged in 1735 by Henry Holt, an English dancing master

The early 20th:new, and distinctively American, art form - modern dance.

Innovators - Isadora Duncan, Martha. Later choreographers: Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris and Liz Lerman

Film

The silent film era (1900-1920) exhibition of short films called nickelodeons

Golden Age of Hollywood (1920-40) the Warner Brothers, Samuel Goldwyn, Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer – new side of the business – movie studio – 400 movies a year!

New Hollywood (1940-80) American filmmaking underwent an extraordinary renaissance because of the new audience

Contemporary period (1980-nowadays)

Literature Until the end of 19th century sermons and religious

tracts provided the greatest part of the writing.

Then writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.

The Romantic movement reached America around the

year 1820.

Second half of the 19th century –characters of novels depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual, but show inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality. (Mark Twain, Jack London)

The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to nine Americans: Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Toni Morrison.

Music

Blues is a native American musical and verse form, since 1920s it become a musical form more widely used by jazz instrumentalists.

Jazz originated in New Orleans early in the 20th century (20-40), bringing together elements from ragtime, slave songs, and brass bands

The melding of rhythm & blues with country and western music in the mid-1950s gave birth to rock and roll.

A challenge to rock appeared in the form of folk music. Folk music was based largely on ballads brought over from Scotland, England, and Ireland

Nowadays: experimentation and a constant search for new systems of writing music, new forms and new styles.

Theater

American theater is traditionally dated from the arrival of Lewis Hallam's English troupe in Williamsburg in 1752.

Audience could choose between legitimate theater, ballet, vaudeville, burlesque, and opera.

The musical stage of the twentieth century proved to be the country's most popular theatrical export.

In 1866, the "The Black Crook" was produced and the American musical was born. Song, dance, and spectacle were grafted onto an existing melodrama.

Notable contemporary American playwrights include Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, and Wendy Wasserstein.

Visual Arts

National Mall in Washington, D.C. – enormous collection of art and a place of rest.

the Hudson River school, appeared in 1820 – America’s first well-known painting school (simplicity of vision)

After World War II, the first native American movement was formed: abstract expressionism (leaders - Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko ).

different form of abstraction: works of mixed media. Among them were Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who used photos, newsprint, and discarded objects in their compositions.

Today artists in America tend not to restrict themselves to schools, styles, or a single medium.

Free to draw from every discipline, every art tradition, and every mode of presentation, contemporary art turns out to be just as complex, provocative, and intellectually demanding as the world that has produced it.