NAR #12: Art in the Time of War

issue 12 // spring ‘14

northwesternartreview.org / issue 12 / spring 14 / art in the time of war / northwestern university

NAR NORTHWESTERN/ART/REVIEW

ART in the time of WAR

NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW| 1

» NORTHWESTERN / ART / REVIEW

EDITORIAL TEAM AILEEN MCGRAW PRESIDENT AILEENMCGRAW2015@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

KATHRYN WATTS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF (JOURNAL) KATHRYNWATTS2016@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

SAMANTHA GUFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF (WEB) SAMANTHAGUFF2015@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

JOO HEE KIM DIRECTOR OF EVENTS JOOKIM2015@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

OLIVIA LIM JUNIOR DIRECTOR OF EVENTS CHRISTIE WOOD DIRECTOR OF PUBLICITY CHRISTINEWOOD2015@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

ALYSE SLAUGHTER JUNIOR DIRECTOR OF PUBLICITY NICHOLAS GIANCOLA DIRECTOR OF FINANCE NICHOLASGIANCOLA2016@U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU

LINDSAY CHARLES, SENIOR EDITOR KYLIE RICHARDS, SENIOR EDITOR YUN LEE KATE SLOSBURG

WEB TEAM SAMMY ROSENTHAL, SENIOR EDITOR AKSHAT THIRANI, WEBMASTER NICK GIANCOLA ARIANNE MILHEM CLAIRE KISSINGE KALLI KOUKOUNAS

DESIGN TEAM ROSALIE CHAN, JUNIOR DIRECTOR ANDRÉS GIER STEPHANIE ROSNER ILLANA HERZIG PETER YOO CHASE BREWSTER

STREET TEAM SOPHIE LEE NIKITA KULKARNI SELENA PARNON

» NAR

is a student-run organization founded by Northwestern University undergraduates in 2007 that fosters and promotes art historical discourse within the academic community. NAR provides a forum for students who devote their time to the creation, examination and discussion of the visual arts.

Twice a year NAR publishes one of the most prominent undergraduate scholarly art journals in the country. NAR selects journal content from a collection of exceptional nationwide submissions. In addition to providing college students with the invaluable opportunity to publish their work, NAR coordinates art-related programming both on Northwestern’s campus and in the Chicago area. NAR also sponsors career panels with local professionals working in the art world, curates student exhibitions, and runs an annual on-campus art auction.

NAR’s mission is to inspire awareness and appreciation for art within Northwestern’s student body and the greater Chicago community and to provide a space in which students inspired and excited by the arts can share their passion with one another.

If you are interested in submitting an art historical research paper or art-related essay, please contact our editor-in-chief Kathryn Watts at kathrynwatts2016@u.northwestern.edu. If you are an undergraduate at any institution of higher education and are interested in contributing in other ways, please contact our president Aileen McGraw at aileenmcgraw2015@u.northwestern.edu.

Northwestern Art Review is a non-commercial journal published by students at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. All images in this issue are copyright their respective owners and are contributed by our authors. Reproduction of images or written content without the permission of Northwestern Art Review is prohibited.

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FROM THE EDITOR »

S

eventy years ago this month, thousands of Allied troops fought their way to the shores of Normandy, marking the beginning of what would prove to be a very long end to the Second World War. The remaining visual documentation of D-day exists in the eleven surviving photographs of Robert Capa, the great war photographer who joined the first wave of G.I.s as they waded ashore the morning of June 6th, 1944. These eleven photographs comprise only a heart-breakingly small fraction of what Capa actually shot, however. Over one hundred frames shot at Omaha Beach were destroyed in development.

What remains is a tragically limited visual account of an infamous day--a day whose breadth, scope, and tragedy could not be captured and preserved in eleven frames.

Thus, it is appropriate that the twelfth issue of Northwestern Art Review should focus on just this: art in the time of war. When war obliterates whole towns or marginalizes entire ethnicities of people, it is incredibly difficult not to focus on all that has been lost. But war does not always have to be remembered by what is destroyed; rather, it is only from what remains that we can begin to make sense of the violence, ideological conflict, and political turmoil.

Over time warfare has become an umbrella term for many nuanced subcategories of conflict that pose problems for intellectual and artistic communities alike. War is not always fought as overtly as it was when Robert Capa landed in Normandy in 1944. The following three essays explore this complexity as expressed in the visual arts: Cristina Doi focuses on the American race wars of the twentieth century, Ashley Shan explores the psychological ramifications of a modernizing and Westernizing Japan, and Alexander Beer tackles the issue of government patronage in the Civil War era.

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On behalf of the entire staff of NAR, I would like to thank the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Provost for their continued support. I would also like to express sincere gratitude to the Northwestern University Departments of Art History and Art Theory and Practice. The staff at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern has also shown enthusiastic and unending support for NAR, for which I am truly thankful.

Furthermore, I owe an enormous “thank you” to NAR’s president Aileen McGraw, whose boundless energy, dedication, and support have been an incomparable encouragement to the entire editorial board throughout this process. Thank you, also, to my rockstar team of editors: Kylie, Lindsay, Kate, and Yun. I am so grateful for their time, insight, and vision.

I would also like to thank the entire design team who created beautiful marketing materials to solicit submissions from students and Andrés for an incredible cover image for this issue.

Finally, thank you to all of the students who submitted their work to NAR’s editorial staff. I was so impressed by the urgency and clarity with which you each wrote, and I am elated and proud that the future of art history is in our hands.

KATHRYN WATTS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW

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IN THIS ISSUE »

LEFTIST PORTRAYALS OF SCOTTSBORO:

THE NAACP’S AN ART COMMENTARY ON LYNCHING

BY CRISTINA DOI, PAGE 7

CAPTURING UNCERTAINTY: YOSHITOSHI AND EIMEI NIJŪHASSHŪKU

BY ASHLEY SHAN, PAGE 11

FREEDOM TRIUMPHANT IN WAR AND PEACE:

THOMAS CRAWFORD AND THE STATUE OF FREEDOM

BY ALEXANDER BEER, PAGE 15

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LEFTIST PORTRAYALS OF SCOTTSBORO: THE NAACP’S AN ART COMMENTARY ON LYNCHING

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With the support of the Communist Party and leftist artists, the Scottsboro Trials connected the fervent issues of southern racism and working class oppression and consequently emerged as an international cause célèbre. In March 1931 nine innocent, poor black youths, later known as the Scottsboro Boys, were convicted and placed on death row for raping two white women in Alabama.1 Their trials highlighted the perverse criminalization of sexual relations between black men and white women within the Depression-era American south.

Two impassioned organizations in the antilynching movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Communist-affiliated International Labor Defense (ILD) battled to represent the nine men. By the summer of 1931, the ILD had gained the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. The Communist Party took it upon themselves to disrupt a racist narrative that “made the spectacle of lynching seem natural,” and further identified southern racial violence as a symptom of

BY CRISTINA DOI

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY EVANSTON, IL

1 James R. Acker, Scottsboro and Its Legacy: The Cases That Challenged American Legal and Social Justice. (Westport: Praeger, 2008): 3.

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the economic oppression of the working class. For the Communist Party, Scottsboro crystallized racial and class struggles into one event and provided an opportunity to recruit African Americans and northern liberals to the Communist cause.2 The Communist Party’s investment in the Scottsboro Trials led to a flurry of visual activism in the form of print media created by leftist and John Reed Club (JRC) artists.

The works related to Scottsboro visualized race and class oppression, paving the way for rival anti-lynching exhibits curated by the NAACP and the JRC to open just months apart in New York in 1935. The shows by the NAACP and the JRC were titled An Art Commentary on Lynching and Struggle for Negro Rights respectively.3 While the NAACP was not Communist-affiliated, the fact that it created a leftist political exhibition on par with that of the affiliated JRC illustrates the degree to which leftist politics became enveloped within political activism during the 1930s.

Both anti-lynching shows illustrated the sheer abundance of leftist contributions to the 2 James A. Miller, Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009): 10.

3 Dora Apel, Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob (London: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 4.

Figure 1. Prentiss Taylor, Christ in Alabama, lithograph, 1932 (10 7/8 x 13 7/8 in.) Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University.

Scottsboro Campaign and African American civil rights. However, the NAACP and the JRC fundamentally disagreed on the forms of artistic expression that best demonstrated their mutual discontent with the inequality of African Americans. According to the JRC, the NAACP’s exhibition did not deliver the confrontational and cartoonlike print work that they believed more strongly disseminated the anti-lynching message to the masses. In retrospect, however, the JRC was too blinded by their own ideals to understand the subtle complexities of the rival show. The NAACP’s An Art Commentary on Lynching was, in fact, equally successful and radical, and it included a selection of works that both disentangled and simplified the complex constellation of nuances and social concepts related to Scottsboro and the justice system as a whole.

The JRC criticisms of the NAACP exhibition were largely untrue and characteristic of their bias in favor of the hard-hitting, cartoonlike illustrations of African Americans, injustice, and the working

class. Organized by NAACP secretary Walter White in accordance with the consideration of the Costigan-Wagner Anti-lynching Bill4 in Congress, the NAACP exhibition aimed to promote the bill and increase viewership of anti-lynching imagery. An Art Commentary on Lynching opened at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in New York in February of 1935 to dismal reviews by the JRC.5 The JRC commented that the NAACP exhibit “completely ignored the Scottsboro case, the most outrageous crime against Negroes of our time” and “[evaded] the whole question of the oppression of the Negro people.”6 The New Masses art critic Stephen Alexander wrote that the general impression of the NAACP exhibition is “pleading for reform… or polite appeal to the good impulses of our ‘better people.” Critics made a several notable exceptions, though, praising the inclusion of George Biddle’s Our girls don’t sleep with niggers.7 After the NAACP exhibition closed in March, the JRC retaliated by creating Struggle for Negro Rights, which opened at the ACA Gallery that same month.8 In comparing the two exhibitions, Alexander praised the JRC show for its absence of “praying pictures” and instead the abundance of “fighting pictures.”9 Perhaps the JRC remained too ingrained in their existing beliefs in the “correct” form of radical art and therefore mistook the thematic representations in the NAACP show for quiet politeness. However, there is no doubt that the works included in the NAACP show were “fighting,” as well.

An Art Commentary on Lynching highlighted an intrinsic understanding of the Scottsboro Trials in relation to the broader theme of injustice, yet in a more indirect way. The show similarly captures the spectrum of leftist artists: a mélange of adamant fighters and quiet observers. In challenging Scottsboro’s racist narrative, some artists in the NAACP show emphasized the martyrdom of the victims and sought an emotional appeal. This 4 The Costigan-Wagner Bill proposed federal trials for any law enforcement officers who failed to exercise their responsibilities during a lynching incident. In 1935 attempts were made to persuade Roosevelt to support the bill, however he refused to speak in favor of it. Roosevelt feared that if he spoke out, he would lose white southern voters and therefore the next election.

5 Erin Cohn, Art Fronts: Visual Culture and Race Politics in the MidTwentieth-Century United States. Diss. (University of Pennsylvania, 2010): 63.

6 Ibid, 65.

7 Stephen Alexander, “Art,” The New Masses, (19 March 1935): 29.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

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Figure 2. Prentiss Taylor, Scottsboro Lmtd., from the Portfolio Scottsboro,

Figure 3. George Biddle, Our girls don’t sleep with niggers. Alabama code, lithograph,

lithograph, 1932 (33 x 27.2 cm), Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art,

1933, (34.1 x 24.3 cm) Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern

Northwestern University.

University.

approach is especially evident in the works by Prentiss Taylor, including Christ in Alabama and Scottsboro Lmtd. Meanwhile, George Biddle magnified the stigma of sexual interactions between black men and southern white women to illuminate the perverse racism in American culture. These works allude to the complex relationship between Scottsboro and the white-dominated capitalist system.

It is clear in studying these images that the exhibition demonstrated the way the NAACP did, in fact, understand the larger connections between legal injustices and racial and working class oppression. Prentiss Taylor and George Biddle confront issues of southern racism informed by the Scottsboro Trials in drastically different ways: Taylor employed semi-modernist, geometric forms to depict the victim as martyr, while Biddle created a grotesque, sexualized caricature to illustrate the perpetrators.

Exhibited in the NAACP show, Prentiss Taylor’s Christ in Alabama (figure 1) depicts a black Jesus crucified on a white cross while 10 |SPRING 2014

an African American woman mourns beside him.10 While the man’s musculature and composition is certainly informed by western body ideals, the overall composition remains highly geometric. The cross is formed by two intersecting rectangles that extend beyond the frame. Meanwhile, the male figure is similarly sculptural, as both his legs remain firmly held together in one mass. His hands are not nailed to the cross as in a traditional Crucifixion, and instead they are positioned upwards as if pleading to the skies. The modernist language and absence of gore in this Crucifixion scene add an uplifting tone while the blackness of Christ and the woman beside him contrast against the whiteness of the cross, referencing the fervor of the black church.

Such religious iconography in reference to lynching victims remained a prominent subject in the Scottsboro campaign because it emphasized an emotional appeal; in his work Taylor transforms the familiar mangled, hanging lynch victim image into a redemptive 10

Cohn, 67.

crucifixion.11 Because the theme of lynching was intrinsically connected to Scottsboro, the nine boys are simultaneously represented by the image of one black Christ. Meanwhile, the stark white cotton flowers, created out of geometrical lines and circular buds, locate the scene in the south. Circular rays of light ripple towards Jesus as he looks away from the viewer, his features unrecognizable, a martyr of the Scottsboro Boys and lynching victims as a whole. The religious iconography in Taylor’s Christ in Alabama was perhaps a more predictable, yet nevertheless emotional, leftist response to the trials.

Prentiss Taylor created other depictions of the Scottsboro Boys, including Scottsboro Lmtd. (figure 2), which was not in the NAACP show. However, in this other work, Taylor similarly employs blocked, rectangular forms to illustrate the boys’ stiff bodies overlapping one another in an imposing, sculptural mass atop a wooden train car platform. The viewer looks up at the boys, some of which hang their heads or look into the distance. Vertical electricity lines reach from the top of the boys’ heads towards the sky, symbolizing gallows or prison bars. Each geometric, mask-like face contains rectangular cheekbones and sunken eyes, emphasizing the anonymity of each individual. Similar to Christ in Alabama, the rays of light emanate from the group, envisioning the boys as martyrs. Taylor’s modernist language in Scottsboro Lmtd. defines the group as a unified mass, void of distinctions, and thus similar to the revolutionary proletariat.

While the JRC attacked the seeming passivity and religious iconography as depicted

by Taylor, the works actually reflect the varying degrees of leftist beliefs at the time. Taylor’s prints served as accompanying illustrations for Langston Hughes’s pamphlet of poems, Scottsboro Boys, critiquing the American justice system. Hughes, an African American and radical leftist, called for revolutionary action: in the poem “Scottsboro,” he lists the Scottsboro Boys among the “fighters for the free,” including Lenin and Nat Turner.12 The call for action in the poem is a far cry from the argued passivity in Taylor’s lithograph, thus reflecting the spectrum of leftist activism within the community. Upon receiving the image from Taylor, Hughes noted that the 11 Julie B. Armstrong, Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011): 109.

12 Langston Hughes. Scottsboro Limited, Four Poems and a Play in Verse, (New York: Golden Stair Press, 1932).

figures’ faces were “so helplessly resigned, as though all the strength were quite gone,” however he did not ask Taylor to alter it.13 Perhaps Hughes focused too intently on the faces rather than viewing the group as a whole. While Taylor and Hughes shared leftist views, Taylor was more critical of the Communist Party and overall less radical in his beliefs. Taylor responded: “I feel the quality of despair more strongly…more than I feel the aggressive hope.” The artist’s anguish explains his motive to promote the boys’ innocence in a semi-predictable manner.

While the JRC exhibition promoted outward condemnation of perpetrators, Taylor’s distanced modernism emphasized the state of the victims.

Prentiss Taylor’s illustration included in the NAACP show also highlights the contributions of Langston Hughes, one of the few leftist African American artists.

Most successful black artists practiced their skill within the structure of the New Negro Movement, which focused on creating African American art that stressed primitive and ancestral African roots. Alain Locke, a leader of the Movement, firmly believed that the responsibility of black artists, writers, and musicians, was to “rehabilitate the race in the world esteem from the loss of prestige, which resulted from slavery.”14 He continued to argue that African Americans would earn respect by distinguishing themselves from white American artists by promoting their rich cultural and historic foundations.15 However, the radical Hughes, in a letter to Prentiss Taylor, characterized the New Negro Movement as “largely over [the] heads, and out of the reach, of the masses of the Negro people,” especially because many “intellectual” Negro books were too expensive for blacks to buy. In addition he explained that the working class found the New Negro books “displeasing” and dry because they did not include “jazz, poetry, or low-down novels… since they usually know such things all too well in life.”16 While African American artists were included in the NAACP show, they were overwhelmingly absent in the orbit of leftist artists present in the Scottsboro Campaign.

13 Prentiss Taylor to Langston Hughes on 23 April 1932, “Frame 1062,” Prentiss Taylor Papers, 1885-1991 (Archives of American Art).

14 Alain Locke, “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” The New Negro (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1925).

15 Ibid.

16 Langston Hughes to Prentiss Taylor on October 13, 1931, “Frame 714” in Prentiss Taylor Papers, 1885-1991 (Archives of American Art).

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As a result, Langston Hughes’ viewpoint on the New Negro movement is important in our broader understanding of the NAACP and JRC shows, and the African American response to Scottsboro.

In contrast to the sorrow articulated

by Taylor’s lithographs is George Biddle’s Our girls don’t sleep with niggers (figure 3). The caricature illustrates a disheveled white man in suit and tie gripping a disproportionately small white woman within an intimate space.

The perverse nature of the work is evident in the man’s monstrous figuration: his peering eyes, crooked nose, and large extremities.

While this man is not of the upper class, he still possesses a privilege, which is that he is not black. With a smirk he holds up his pointer finger, as if telling the viewer the mocking phrase provided: “our girls don’t sleep with niggers.”

Biddle employed extreme figuration in the woman’s coquettish nature: her curvy legs and ample bosom are hardly contained within her skimpy dress. While Taylor referenced sexuality by depicting the accused, Biddle directly illustrates this bodily experience in the man’s grip on the woman’s breast, which holds her in place and shields her from the viewer. While the woman’s gaze remains complacent, she is nevertheless equally complicit in this sexual drama: as a white woman, she holds power over the black man simply because she has the ability to accuse him of sexual crimes. Therefore, it is likely that in this image Biddle makes reference to Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, the white women who accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape. It was also speculated that Bates and Price were prostitutes, just as the woman in Biddle’s print appears to be. In addition, Biddle calls into question the politics of rape, thereby suggesting that the promiscuous girl certainly could have seduced the black man herself, even though doctors found no evidence of sexual intercourse between the women and any of the Scottsboro Boys.17 Biddle recognizes the working class desperation as a whole, present on both sides of the courtroom: Price and Bates were similarly homeless and impoverished. Biddle impugned the moral character of the white woman depicted, suggesting that she has also been manipulated and used, both politically and sexually, by the white men of the South.

17

Ibid.

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Biddle’s caricature is thus an amplified evocation of the racist perversion of the Scottsboro Trials and the constellation of social issues surrounding it; as Biddle himself states, the work is a satire of the “bigoted, retrogressive, and sadistic individual and mentality of the South…that makes such a racial attitude possible.”18 While Biddle’s work certainly created a statement within the NAACP show, it was not immediately accepted. Upon sharing the lithograph, the curator of the NAACP show Walter White asked Biddle “if [Biddle’s work] is definitely enough connected with the subject of lynching to be intelligible to a great number of people of mixed knowledge about the Scottsboro case.”19 Walter suggested Biddle create another work that would be more “connected with the American folkway of lynching,” but the artist did not comply.20 While the connection between Biddle’s lithograph and the “legal lynching” of the Scottsboro Boys seems obvious, the work and its title loudly addresses a well-known racial stigma and perverse sexuality. Perhaps Biddle’s imagery was overtly aggressive for the NAACP show, especially when hung beside a work such as Prentiss Taylor’s.

Because New Masses critic Stephen Alexander exempted Biddle’s work from his otherwise scathing review of the NAACP show, perhaps Biddle’s print more prominently fit within the context of the JRC show. While Biddle hailed from a haut bourgeois Philadelphia family and remained emphatic that he was not a Communist, the JRC nevertheless welcomed him as a left-moving intellectual that “needed to be wooed.”21 One could say that Taylor’s image is a more predictable, uplifting leftist response in its familiar inclusion of the Black Christ while Biddle’s is exceedingly complex because it personifies the corrupt system and the ingrained sexual codes of the South.

Similarly, the alternate visual languages— one semi-modernist and the other more traditional and exaggerated — lends itself to a conclusion that one image takes the moral high road, and the other the low.

An Art Commentary on Lynching placed Scottsboro and the sexual stigmas between black men and white women within the

larger, retrogressive white-dominated capitalist system. The two works speak to the various artistic responses to the anti-lynching movement. While neither the NAACP show nor the JRC exhibition succeeded in passing any anti-lynching legislation, both nevertheless fostered social awareness and shed new light on left wing representations of the victims and social codes of the south. Biddle’s work, in the same room as Taylor’s Christ in Alabama, would initiate a startling contrast.

The viewers, presumably the liberal elite in downtown New York, would surely conjure their own notions of Scottsboro within the larger framework of social injustice, and race, gender, and class politics. In addition, the presence of Langston Hughes through Prentiss Taylor’s illustrations and the work by African American artists in the NAACP show also question the African American artists’ response to Scottsboro, or lack thereof. Thus, An Art Commentary on Lynching provided viewers the fuel to develop and connect their own radical associations with lynching and Scottsboro with the overarching politics of the period.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002): 60.

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CAPTURING UNCERTAINTY: YOSHITOSHI AND EIMEI NIJŪHASSHŪKU

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Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke (figure 1), the twelfth print in Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s 1868 ukiyo-e series c(Twenty-Eight Famous Murders with Verse), is a quintessential example of the artist’s effort to reflect, confront, and transform the uncertainty and desperation of his time.

The scene shows a man torturing and killing a woman. On the left side of the picture is the female victim, half naked and upside down, with blood dripping down from her body. The shape of her face is representative of traditional Japanese beauties, but her large, almond shaped eyes and naturalistically depicted nose are reminiscent of facial features typically associated with western artistic portrayals of women (Wattles, 1996). The victim’s face conveys horror: her downward falling hair, open mouth, and upward looking eyes establish a deadly, static atmosphere. Blood covers her body and falls to the ground, but the viewer cannot easily see where it comes from—without the blood it appears that her body is intact; there is no wound, not even a blemish, visible on her body. On the right side of the composition is the male murderer, the intensity of whom creates a stark contrast with his lifeless victim. His eyes, wide open, and his teeth, tightly clenched together, form a fierce facial expression. He holds a sword, covered in blood, with his left hand pointing toward the woman’s breasts. His right hand

BY ASHLEY SHAN VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY NASHVILLE, TN

14 |SPRING 2014

tightly grasps the corner of his robe. The two figures are placed in a spaceless room, with the murderer’s haori (Japanese half-coat) falling to the ground. The bottom of the picture is painted green and is likely to be tatami (traditional Japanese floor covering), suggesting a strangely intimate setting for the murder.

The defenseless, dying female body creates a fascinating and intriguing tension between beauty and violence. On the one hand, the gruesome brutality—the pathology of the victim’s face, the anxiety caused by the incredible amount of blood and the unfound wound, and the disturbing anticipation of further attack from the murderer suggested by his suspending sword and harsh face—results in an immediately horrifying viewing experience. On the other hand, the woman’s body has a strange aesthetic attraction and an erotic beauty that intrigues the viewer. Her form is bound by a visually intricate pattern, demonstrating the woman’s corpulence. Her face, although frozen and lifeless, does not lose its beauty. According to the script that accompanies the picture, the print tells the story of Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke killing a kitchen maid who seduced his master and harmed his reputation. While the story is about honor, loyalty, and conquest, the painting negotiates the dichotomies of beauty and power, rebellion and coercion: despite the cruelty of the murderer and his intention to destroy this beauty, he cannot eradicate the

Figure 1. Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke in Eimei nijūhasshūku (1868).

Figure 2. Gaosuke Gombei in Eimei nijūhasshūku (1868).

sexual, aesthetic attraction of his victim, the origin of his master’s damaged reputation.

The sense of uncertainty and anxiety that this depiction of brutality instills in its viewer is, in fact, a persistent theme of Yoshitoshi’s ukiyo-e prints. In his depiction of contemporary events, historical narratives, legendary tales and noh and kabuki characters, he captured Japan’s reaction to its changing national identity in its transition from tradition to modernity of the nineteenth century—confusion, frustration, uncertainty, and nostalgia. His ukiyo-e prints are not only reflections of the angst of his time, but they also inspire an ongoing conversation and probing of the dynamics of this anxiety. The print described above, Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke, and the series it belongs to, Eimei nijūhasshūku, were inspired by the most destructive events of the transition—the Boshin War1.

The rest of this essay will look at the larger historical forces that tormented and inspired Yoshitoshi and his effort to capture the upheaval and discord of his era through his artistic pursuit by examining and contextual-

izing Eimei nijūhasshūku. The following discussion will begin with an analytical description of the historical background that influenced Yoshitoshi’s life and work, followed by an assessment of other prints in Eimei nijūhasshūku, and conclude with a discussion of how these themes relate to other artistic trends of Japan while distinguishing Yoshitoshi as a pivotal figure his nation’s ideological transition from Tokugawa to Meiji.

Uncertainty and Anxiety of the Nineteenth Century

During the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, when Yoshitoshi created Eimei nijūhasshūku, Japan suffered from political, social, and economic crises that came with the nation’s tremendous ideological and political change. The country was caught in between military threat and cultural influence from the West, political angst, broken-down social order, and economic decline. On the one hand, the long taken-for-granted isolationism was defeated by the Americans’ spirit of Manifest Destiny and the renewed NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW| 15

Figure 3. Inga Kozō Rokunosuke in Eimei nijūhasshūku (1868).

European vigor in eastward expansion (Lehmann, 1982: 135-136). The entrance of the Perry’s “Black Ships” to Tokyo Bay in 1853 initiated the country’s contact with the rest of the world, and the later Harris Treaty of 1868 further confirmed Western penetration of Japan by opening eight additional ports.

The increasing exposure and interaction between the Japanese and Westerners inevitably led to conflicts, most notably the Namamugi Incident2 and the ensuing Bombardment of Kagoshima3.

Meanwhile, interactions with these Westerners shook the ideological bases of Tokugawa Japan. Thus, exposure to modern military equipment and Euro-American “barbarians”4 challenged Japanese intelligentsia. On the one hand, intellectual inquiry into the Japanese past led to “a reappraisal of the tenno’s (the emperor) position within the body politic, which ultimately led to the development of loyalism - that is, loyalty to the imperial throne and the idea of restoring the tenno to his rightful place” (132). Simultaneously, however, the sakoku policy (Seclusion 16 |SPRING 2014

Figure 4. Yurugi Sogen in Eimei nijūhasshūku (1868).

Policy) was first replaced by a fervor for joi (“expel the barbarians”) and then with tobaku (“overthrow the bakufu”): “The Tokugawa bakufu had clearly failed in adequately protecting Japan against the external threat; the Tokugawa bakufu had to go” (141-150). The chaotic ideological environment was confounded by shifting power relations between local han (feudal domains owned by warriors) and the shogun, soon turning to direct military confrontations. Thus, bakumatsu Japan also suffered from domestic rebellions. From the Kinmon Incident5 to the Chōshū expeditions6, the decade saw the decline of Tokugawa and the rise of imperial and local power, culminating with the Boshin War and signaling the arrival of a new era and a new order of society.

Political instability, economic decline, intellectual chaos, and ubiquitous death and violence constituted the world in which Yoshitoshi was raised, trained, and inspired.

The artist’s early life reflected themes that characterized the increasing social mobility of the late Edo period. Eroding social boundar-

ies allowed the promotion of the lower class: Yoshitoshi’s grandfather, a wealthy merchant, purchased samurai status in the Tsukioka clan (Segi, 1985: 34). However, the failures of samurai hereditary status and the group’s declining privileged position were themes of Yoshitoshi’s life (Moore, 1969). Though technically born a samurai, Yoshitoshi was trained as a woodblock print designer, and during his life he enjoyed neither the material wealth nor the high social status commonly associated with the culture. The artist’s Dickinsonian childhood, financial conditions, and first-hand experience with violence and death led to the artist’s severe mental disorder that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Yet Yoshitoshi’s work is more than a reflection of the ideological and political transitions of nineteenth-century Japan. His mastery of traditional Japanese arts and culture and his inquiries into the turmoil of his contemporary world distinguished him as an active participant in his own history, questioning and redefining the nation’s ethos and envisioning its role in the new world. On the one hand, he turned to traditions to mirror contemporary confusions and anxieties, drawing his inspiration from ancient Japanese masters, traditional Japanese woodblock prints, historical narratives, and theatrical dramas. On the other hand, unlike most of his contemporaries who shied away from the current turbulence and stuck to conventional subjects, Yoshitoshi “confronted the dark side of the turmoil;” the prints he designed of the civil war have a peculiar intensity that “reflect an ambivalent fascination for and revulsion against the violence tearing at society” (Ing, 1992: 9). During the Battle of Ueno7, Yoshitoshi and his student, Kanaki Toshikage, with whom he completed Eimei nijūhasshūku, rushed to the battlefield, saw the slaughter with their own eyes, and examined the dead bodies of their countrymen.

Thus, the battle became a watershed in his intellectual and artistic life, as it “was a graphic illustration of the end of the old order, and its impact reverberated through Yoshitoshi’s work” (12).

Themes in Eimei nijūhasshūku As stated before Eimei nijūhasshūku is a quintessential example of how Yoshitoshi depicted the turmoil and confronted the cruelty of reality. A closer examination of the series reveals the variation and detail that

Yoshitoshi employed to capture the subtleties of this turbulence and anxiety. The majority of the Eimei nijūhasshūku prints are straightforward depictions of killing. These scenes are characterized by his extensive use of red pigment and his juxtaposition of the weak, subordinate victim and his or her murderer.

One of the most disturbing prints is Naosuke Gombei (figure 2), in which Gombei steps on a monk and rips off his face. The artist’s intentional positioning of the two characters and vivid detailing of the monk’s face allows the viewer to see the grotesque detachment of skin and face directly.

Ironically, this kind of straightforward demonstration of violence and death, despite the disturbing viewing experience it incurs, simultaneously admonishes and reassures the viewer: the extreme deformity of the victim suggests to the viewer that actions against traditional Japanese values will be punished.

On the other hand, in a time when death, brutality, and torture were pervasive and constituted daily reality, when there was no sense of security, when the future of the nation and the individual was unclear, when existing belief systems were breaking apart, and a new ethos and sense of community were yet to be constructed, the prints of Yoshitoshi provide a sense of stability and reassurance.

These prints speak to their audience; evil will be punished with cruelty, and our nation will persist and overcome its adversity. This hope is further manifested in the less violent prints in the series, such as Inga Kozō Rokunosuke (figure 3) and Yurugi Sogen (figure 4). In the former, Rokunosuke stands on top of a roof and wipes blood from a sword, looking peacefully and contently at the moon; in the Yurugi Sogen print, a recently severed and bloody head is placed on a go board, and Sogen, with a grim face, is about to put his sword back in its sheath.

In conclusion, Yoshitoshi’s Eimei nijūhasshūku vividly captured bakumatsu Japan’s shifting national ideology, preserving and transforming what had been essential to Japan as a nation in his explorations of modernity. Of course, despite the uniqueness of Yoshitoshi, his life and work cannot be isolated from the artistic and cultural trends of his time. The portrayal of unmitigated violence can be traced back to middle age Japan’s rokudō-e (paintings of the six realms of suffering) and hell scrolls. The popularity of these violent prints were led by theatric prefNORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW| 17

erence for sensationalism and were followed by other ukiyo-e masters (Segi, 1985: 38). Although Yoshitoshi inherited an evolving tradition of illustrating violence, his efforts to visually capture the tension between his modernity andhistorical Japanese values makes Yoshitoshi a true master of ukiyo-e art and an active catalyst and participant in its history.

Notes 1. Boshin War (1868-1869): A civil war in Japan fought between the Tokugawa Shogunate and those han seeking to return political power to the imperial court. The imperial side defeated the Tokugawa force, and the end of the war was connected to Meiji Restoration.

2. Namamugi Incident (Sept. 14, 1862): A conflict between discontented samurai and the British nationals in the village of Namamugi. The samurai killed a British merchant Charles Richardson, and the incident led to the Anglo-Satsuma War of 1863.

3. Bombardment of Kagoshima / Anglo-Satsuma War (1863): Britain’s response to Namamugi Incident. The British troops won the war with a minor advantage, and following the war started a close relationship between Satsuma and Britain.

4. Calling Westerners “barbarians”: In Japanese, Western countries and people are called 夷 (i), the direct translation of which is “barbarians”.

5. Kinmon Incident (1864): A failed rebellion against the Tokugawa Shogunate that took place at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. The majority of the rebelling side came from the Chōshū clan, the defeat of which lead to the First Chōshū expedition.

6. Chōshū expeditions (1864 and 1866): Two military expeditions led by the Tokugawa Shogunate aimed to attack the Chōshū clan. The First Chōshū expedition was meant to be a punishment for Chōshū’s participation in the Kinmon Incident and ended with the Shogunate’s nominal victory. The Second Chōshū expedition, however, ended with Chōshū’s defeat of the Tokugawa force and is viewed as a decisive victory of the imperial side.

7. Battle of Ueno (1868): A battle during the later period of the Boshin War, ended with the victory of the imperial force.

Citations Ing, Eric van den, Yoshitoshi Taiso, Robert Schaap, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Beauty & Violence: Japanese Prints

by Yoshitoshi, 1839-1892. Bergeyk, Netherlands: Society for Japanese Arts, 1992.

Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. The Roots of Modern Japan. London: Macmillan, 1982.

Moore, Ray A. “Samurai Discontent and Social Mobility in the Late Tokugawa Period.” Monumenta Nipponica 24, no. 1/2 (January 1, 1969): 79–91.

Taiso, Yoshitoshi, and Shin’ichi Segi. Yoshitoshi: The Splendid Decadent. Tokyo; New York; New York, N.Y.: Kodansha International ; Distributed in the U.S. by Kodansha International/USA, through Harper & Row Publishers, 1985.

Wattles, Miriam. “The 1909 Ryūtō and the Aesthetics of Affectivity.” Art Journal 55, no. 3 (October 1, 1996): 48–56.

Wilson, George M. “Plots and Motives in Japan’s Meiji Restoration.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 3 (July 1, 1983): 407–427.a

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FREEDOM TRIUMPHANT IN WAR AND PEACE: THOMAS CRAWFORD AND THE STATUE OF FREEDOM

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Since 1863, Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom has towered nearly three hundred feet above the Capitol building’s east front plaza.1 Despite its comfortable perch on one of the most iconic symbols of democracy in the modern world, the statue’s story reveals it to be a precarious object—its seemingly harmonious design was a compromise over dissention running much deeper than aesthetic taste.

Years before the first shots on Fort Sumter were fired, the disagreement over the statue’s design signaled a divide over an issue that would eventually tear the country in two: the future of slavery. The Statue of Freedom is a testament to the political implications of public art in the nation’s capitol and the active role of government patronage in shaping that art’s carefully crafted ideological content.

By 1850, only twenty years after its initial construction had been completed, the Capitol was unable to accommodate the country’s expanding number of legislators.

After a five-way tie in Congress’ design competition stalled extension plans, President Millard Fillmore selected Philadelphian Thomas U. Walter as Architect of the Capitol

BY ALEXANDER BEER NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY EVANSTON, IL

1 “Statue of Freedom.” Architect of the Capitol. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. <http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/freedom.cfm>.

Extension.2 Though it is not a part of the original 1850 plan, the current hallmark of Walter’s design is the cast-iron, double-shell dome. It was created as an afterthought when Walter realized a tall vertical element was needed to balance the Capitol’s morethan-doubled length. In his original sketch for the dome, Walter conceived the idea for a colossal statue of Liberty as its pinnacle, holding a pike with a pileus, or liberty cap, at the end.3 One of the strongest proponents for the Capitol’s extension at this time was Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis.4 On May 11, 1855 Montgomery Meigs (appointed by Secretary Davis as the project’s superintendent) commissioned Thomas Crawford to prepare a sketch for the Capitol’s crowning statue.5 “We have too many Washingtons, we have America in the pediment,” Meigs continued, “Victories and Liberties are rather pagan emblems, but a Liberty I fear is the best we can get. A statue of some kind it must be.”6 Meigs’ letter adds 2 “Dome Construction in 1858.” Architect of the Capitol. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. <http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/1858_peristyle.cfm>.

3 Fryd, Vivien Green. Art & Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815-1860. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Print. p. 90 4 Scott, Pamela. Temple of Liberty Building the Capitol for a New Nation.

New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

5 Burns, Roger. “The Embodiment of Freedom.” American History Illustrated 28.4 (1993) 6 Fryd, p. 90

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a new layer to the statue’s seemingly triumphant and idiosyncratic design. Instead of a proud declaration of American values, the statue, from the outset, appeared to be more a concession. By the time of his commission, Crawford had been established as one of America’s most gifted neoclassical sculptors.

In 1835 he became the first American sculptor to permanently settle in Rome where he studied under the internationally acclaimed Danish sculptor, Bertel Throvalsdon.7 The statue for the dome was also not Crawford’s first commission for the Capitol extension.

Two years earlier, Meigs contracted Crawford for the Senate pediment, Progress of Civilization.

In his letter, Meigs explained a problem the country faced in its understanding of art:

Statue of Freedom (1857–62)

Permit me to say that the sculpture sent here by our Artists is not altogether adapted to the taste of our people. We are not able to appreciate too refined and intricate allegorical representations and while the naked Washington of Greenbough is the theme of admiration, to the few scholars, it is unsparingly denounced by the less refined multitude.

Cannot sculpture be so designed as to please both?

In this would be the triumph of the Artist whose works should appeal not a class but to mankind.

In our history of the struggle between civilized man and the savage, between the cultivated and the wild nature, are certainly to be found themes worthy of the artists and capable of appealing to the feelings of all classes. 8 Meigs does more than assess the country’s inability to appreciate esoteric sculpture. His characterization of American history reveals a great vision for art in the Capitol. He wants everyone who looks at the Capitol’s art to understand America’s history of victory in its struggles. Therefore, the success of art in the Capitol would not be defined by abstruseness, 7 Chilvers, Ian. “Crawford, Thomas.” The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 18 Nov. 2011 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

8 Scott, p. 103

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but rather its ability to connect with all peoples.

Crawford concurred with Meigs and wrote, “I fully agree with you regarding the necessity of procuring a work intelligible to the entire population. The darkness of allegory must give place to common sense.”9 In other words, the Capitol’s art would embody the spirit of Jacksonian Democracy and the Second Party System—the Federalism of L’Enfant’s Washington, D.C. was a thing of the past.

In this vein Crawford drafted Freedom Triumphant in Peace and War. Utilizing a similar approach to Benjamin Henry Latrobe in his Tobacco Capitol of 1810, Crawford fused American elements with the neoclassical style “such as the mass of our people will easily understand.”10 Since the statue was meant to be an accessible object, crafting its message became a delicate task. Consequently, the discussion over the statue’s design became a stage on which a growing national tension, the future of slavery in the U.S., was played out.11 The debate over the statue’s design climaxed in 1856 when Crawford submitted his second draft, now entitled Armed Liberty.

In a letter to Davis, Crawford explained his vision for the statue: “She rests upon the shield of the country, the triumph of which is made apparent by the wreath held in the same hand which grasps the shield; in her right hand she holds the sheathed sword, to show the fight is over for the present, but ready for use whenever required.” Armed Liberty represented a significant ideological shift from Crawford’s previous draft, as seen by the change in title. In Freedom, Liberty stands on a simple, rectangular base decorated by wreaths, “indicative of the rewards Freedom is ready to bestow upon the distinction in the arts and sciences,” whereas Armed Liberty stands above a globe, representing, “her protection of the American world.”12 The “American world” symbolized the vision of America as an empire whose model form of government could inspire other nations. It also reflected the expansionist rhetoric of manifest destiny (Secretary Davis was a driving force behind the Gadsen Purchase of 1854).

While Davis was generally pleased with Crawford’s second effort, he found the

addition of the pileus cap, the article of a freed slave in ancient Rome, to be extremely problematic. He argued that “its history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved… and though it should have another emblematic meaning today, a recurrence to that origin may give to it in the future the same popular acceptance which it had in the past.”13 From this response, we gain access to Davis’ ideology: slaves are not born free. This helps explain Davis’ future role as president of the Confederacy and underscores the idea that public art created at this time was not immune to the dangerous racism inside the Capitol’s walls.

This conflict was not isolated.; in fact, it was identically replicated in Justice and History, the cornice Crawford was simultaneously drafting. In this case Meigs was the intermediary and explained that “Mr. Davis says…he does not like the cap of Liberty introduced into the composition.

American Liberty is original and not the liberty of the freed slave.”14 In both instances Crawford obeyed his employer and in the case of Armed Freedom, incorporated Davis’ suggestion that “armed Liberty wear a helmet [since] her conflict is over, her cause triumphant.”15 Davis’ objective to keep any references to slavery out of the Capitol’s art reveals that Davis believed the statue could fuel sectional divide.Davis won this particular battle over slavery. Crawford’s final product, standing almost twenty feet tall, and weighing approximately fifteen thousand pounds, is a conflation of allegories, combining features associated with Athena and Hercules.

Freedom’s connection to Athena is drawn from the traditional portrayal of the goddess, which includes a helmet, breastplate with an image of Medusa, and shield along her side. “Americanized” versions of each of these elements are seen in Freedom. In her left hand, she holds a shield, adorned with stars and thirteen stripes, as well as the laurel wreath of victory. In place of Medusa, the breastplate simply reads “U.S.A.” As per Davis’ suggestion, Crawford crowned Freedom with a star-encircled helmet, featuring an eagle’s head, feathers and talons, alluding

9 Russell F. Weigley Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Vol. 69/70, 1970, p. 289 10 Burns, Roger. “The Embodiment of Freedom.” American History Illustrated 28.4 (1993) 11 Vivien, p. 4 12 Ibid., p.193

13 Burns, Roger. “The Embodiment of Freedom.” American History Illustrated 28.4 (1993) 14 “Thomas Crawford, Statue of Freedom, 1855-63.” Picturing US History. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. <http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/item. php?item_id=185>.

15 Vivien, p. 193

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to the “costume of our Indian tribes.”16 The use of feathers was a nod to the tradition of personifying America, or the New World, as an Indian Queen (e.g. The Able Doctor, London Magazine, 1774)—not to the vanishing race Congress forcibly relocated in the preceding decades. Furthermore, the paws hanging from the helmet, as well as the fur trim on the toga, recall the traditional attributes of Hercules, the divine and courageous hunter—not the defeated and mourning savage in Progress of Civilization.17 The final design of the statue, characterized by the amalgam of allegories, suggests that Crawford abandoned the goal of creating an object capable of being understood by all peoples. Beyond the simple incorporation of American external details on classical forms, the statue hardly personifies the inclusive spirit of Meigs’ and Crawford’s early exchanges. Furthermore, the statue confounded many who believed Freedom to be an Indian Princess. Even Walter, Architect of the Capitol, said, “Mr. Crawford has made a success of it, except so far as it relates to the buzzard on the head. I would like to cut this excrescence off but have no authority.”18 The raising of the statue on December 2, 1863, the year of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Emancipation Proclamation, was a far more intelligible statement about America to its citizens. During the Civil War, President Lincoln was decried for continuing to spend money on the Capitol’s expansion when Union soldiers needed supplies, but the president contended, “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.”19 Freedom’s final piece was hoisted into place by wires on scaffolding, accompanied by cheers and a thirty-five-round cannon salute (one for every state, Union and Confederacy).

A writer from the New York Tribune remarked Freedom stood triumphantly over the Capitol “now that victory crowns our advances, and the conspirators are being hedged in and vanquished everywhere, and the bonds are being freed. [She] faces rebukingly toward Virginia… [and ensures] National Unity and Personal Freedom.”20 The Statue of Freedom accomplished exactly what Davis attempted to prevent. The statue’s erection at such a 16 Scott, pg. 100 17 Ibid.

18 Burns, Roger. “The Embodiment of Freedom.” American History Illustrated 28.4 (1993) 19 Ibid.

20 Vivien, p. 199

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pertinent time epitomized the victory of anti-slavery values in a struggle between the moral and wicked. Perhaps Freedom’s most remarkable (and incidental) attribute is the “American globe” upon which she stands. At the time of her creation the orb symbolized America’s influence over the world, and when she was finally raised, the globe was an affirmation of the righteous victory of America’s enduring union.

Even though the liberty cap was eliminated from the final design, slavery is indelibly connected to the history of the Statue of Freedom because Philip Reid, the slave personally responsible for Freedom’s completion. Crawford finished the plaster model early in 1857 but died from a brain tumor in October before the model could leave Rome. Workers packed Freedom into five crates that left Italy on a boat in the spring of 1868. After a nightmarish trip, including emergency stops in Gibraltar and Bermuda, the crates finally arrived in Washington in March of 1859.21 An Italian sculptor employed by the government successfully reassembled the model, but he refused to reveal how to separate the sections until he received a higher salary. This lead to an impasse solved only by Phillip Reid, who was working as a slave at the bronze foundry of Clark Mills. Reid, an illiterate but highly-skilled, self-taught American sculptor from South Carolina, produced the first bronze statue ever cast in America and came up with an ingenious solution: he used a pulley and tackle to lift Freedom’s head upward until a hairline crack appeared, thus indicating where the first interior connection was located.22 This process was repeated five times so that the enormous plaster model could be taken apart and transported to Mills’ foundry. Because of the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862, Reid was a free man by the time Freedom ascended the dome. Reid’s story is known because of a written account of his work, a pay stub for his work on Sundays (he worked thirty-three Sundays at $1.25 a day)23, and his master’s petition to the federal government for recompense when his 21 Burns, Roger. “The Embodiment of Freedom.” American History Illustrated 28.4 (1993) 22 S.B. Wyeth, The Rotunda and Dome of the U.S. Capitol (Washington, DC: Gibson Bros., 1869) 23 Kiely, Kathy. “Slave had a Hand in Freedom; Workman Teased Out Capitol Statue’s Secret.” USA TODAY Aug 15 2007: D.6. National Newspapers Premier. 21 Nov. 2011 <http://search.proquest.com/ docview/409007031?accountid=12861>.

“property” was set free.

The full story of the Statue of Freedom provides insights into the multi-functional role of art in the Capitol, the dialectical tension between the artist and patronage in shaping the art’s ideological content, and the government’s willingness to remember those histories. While Congress officially acknowledged the work of enslaved laborers in June 2010 with commemorative plaques in the Capitol, nothing can fully heal the wounds inflicted by the government’s blatant hypocrisy during the antebellum period.24

24 “Slaves Who Built Capitol Building Honored.” TheGrio | African American Breaking News and Opinion. Web. 22 Nov. 2011. <http://www.thegrio. com/politics/slaves-who-built-national-capitol-building-honored.php>.

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FROM THE PRESIDENT» I

t brings me honor to see Northwestern Art Review’s twelfth journal at its finishing point.

Like art, these pages have a theory and a practice: they put ideas of “art in the time of war” in conversation with one another through a process of essay submission, selection and edits. This work showcases the critical dialogue of visual culture that occurs at Northwestern and among undergraduates nationwide. I want to thank our journal’s fearless leader, Editor-in-Chief Kathryn Watts, and the entire Editorial Team for their dedication and eye for content that tells a compelling story.

My first quarter as NAR’s President has shown me that Northwestern is filled with compelling stories. Some are new: for the first time, NAR collaborated with Mayfest Productions to bring a student-created, student-curated art installation to the lakefill for Dillo Day, the nation’s largest student-run music festival. NAR’s own Sophie Lee and Nikita Kulkarni exhibited paintings as glorious as the event itself. Some stories are expected: we held the Abandoned Art Market, our most popular event of the year, and shared hidden and discarded gems of NU’s Art Theory & Practice Department, plaster legs included. Other stories are less expected and downright amazing: this June, we secured The Keg of Evanston as the pop-up venue for our annual spring exhibition of student work. Sure, it was under construction and an eerie ghost of past Monday nights, but NAR’s event staff transformed a Northwestern legend into a chic gallery of art by students from any and all majors.

There’s only more brilliant work to come, and it starts here with Northwestern Art Review’s Spring Journal, Issue 12, “Art in the Time of War.” Rather than replace war or tragedy, our featured undergraduate authors repeat a narrative while giving each a contemporary frame. In the essays that follow, students from Northwestern and beyond share voices and images that resonate with and challenge each other, a true testament to the endurance and timelessness of art in times of conflict and tension. Dive in and enjoy.

AILEEN MCGRAW PRESIDENT NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW

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