A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 78)

and politics—was insulated from external influences, and, like a great ship in a tropical ocean, very slow to alter course. Some European influences, however, did resonate in the state, in no small part because of Louisiana’s French and Spanish heritage, especially the former. Others, such as the influence of the American Hudson River School and later the Barbizon School of landscape painting filtered their way South as well as directly from Europe. Then, too, again because of the vestiges of Louisiana’s colonial past and identity, a substantial number of artists received their training in Europe and then migrated to Louisiana. It must be acknowledged, too, that there were bright spots of progressive expression such as the influence of the Woodward brothers and the Newcomb School on the arts and even the one bright moment of the 1884 Cotton Exposition to put New Orleans on the world map. But none of this could overcome the larger forces that relegated the principal role of art in Louisiana in the post-Civil War decades to the comforting roles of commemoration and consolation. Like the great plantation houses along the River Road and bayous, the elegance and grace of many paintings presented a 78 CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE NEW CENTURY MEYER STRAUS (b. 1831, Bavaria, Germany – d. 1905, San Francisco, California) Louisiana Swamp, 1875 Oil on board; 9 x 12 in. Neal Auction Company benign face that masked the system of pernicious exploitation that sustained them. As Louisiana descended into a level of domestic violence inconceivable prior to the Civil War: lynching, beatings, riots, systematic convict-leasing, and grinding tenant farming, not to mention Jim Crow laws that in many respects demeaned and dehumanized the black population worse than slavery itself, the art of the period literally painted a veneer over the underlying violence, injustice, and collective guilt. Despite the advent and increasing proliferation of photography, portraiture continued to be the principal genre of painting that received patronage from the affluent classes and it served to comfort its patrons by virtue of enshrining their visages in the cultural canon, knowing that only the privileged could afford them. Particularly emblematic of this trend were the portraits of  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1366 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1366

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

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