A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 112)

tourist attraction as well as an artistic and Bohemian enclave, the South’s version of Greenwich Village in New York and the Left Bank in Paris, home to artists, writers, musicians, and performing artists (it also had a burgeoning preservation movement dedicated to protecting its historic structures). The years from 1900 to 1945 were years of transition and advancement in Louisiana’s art world. Traditional styles persisted as modern influences brought change in a time when Louisiana was evolving from a rural to an urban culture.2 Modern technology, reflected in the growing number of the state’s automobiles, then airplanes, changed the nature and pace of travel, as well as the types of tourism seen in the state. It became easier for artists and cultural leaders, along with cultural influences, to cross the state as highways, bridges, and airports improved during the 1930s, especially under the Huey Long administration. River traffic and port activity increased as trade and commercial activities with Latin and South America became increasingly important to the Louisiana economy. Air travel expanded rail, highway, and river access, and New Orleans was recognized as the nation’s gateway to South America. Due to its location on the Mississippi River and proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans has been a major American port city and a center for immigration. Spanish and French 112 LOUISIANA: THE NEW CENTURY WILLIAM WOODWARD (b. 1859, Seekonk, Massachusetts – d. 1939, New Orleans, Louisiana) Jackson Square, 1909 Oil on canvas; 36 x 46 in. Louisiana State Museum colonists left lasting marks upon the art, culture, architecture, and cuisine of the state, as did the early Native-American residents of the region. Noting the French, Spanish, and AngloAmerican influence evident in its colonial years, historian Ned Sublette has written that by 1803, the year of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans “was an urban cross roads of languages, both spoken and musical, with a complex Afro-Louisianan culture already in existence. By the time Louisiana became the eighteenth state in 1812, most of the elements that make New Orleans so visibly, and audibly, different from the rest of the country were already in place.”3 After the Civil War, free blacks migrated across the South, often discovering a more open racial environment in New Orleans than elsewhere in the South. As the nineteenth century advanced, Haitian, Cuban, Irish, Italian, Croatian, and German immigrants became part of the culture of the city and the state, and in the new century immigrants from the Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin and South America (and later Vietnam) added to the cultural complexity of Louisiana.  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=530 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=530

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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