|
[James Fenimore Cooper]. He wrote the The Leather Stocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, about this character Natie Bumpo who was a creature of the American wilderness. He had all the virtues that the European romantics associated with the American woodland; he was a crack shot, he was self reliant, he had fortitude and integrity and he was a gentleman and honest.
The reason they made him a bestseller in Europe was not because it was great writing; it wasn't. It was atrocious, but because they believed that there really was a new being being created out of the American forest. We made him a best seller in our country because we believe that about ourselves. A generation after that you had Emerson and Thoreau come along who have kicked off the traces of the European heritage and they embrace nature as a spiritual parable of all Americans.
They say if you're an American and you want to hear the voice of God you have to go into the forest and listen to the songs of the birds and the rustle of the leaves and if you want to see the American soul you have to look at the mirror of Walden Pond. Our poets Whitman, Frost, Emily Dickinson, Robert Service.
Our artists, we have two schools, defining schools of art in this country: the western school - Remington and Russell - and the Hudson River School - Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Samuel F. B. Morris, etc. And all of them painted these stark, indomitable portraits. Storm King Mountain, El Capitan, the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. Any evidence of humanity is in ruins.
And there are other national schools of art that painted nature. The British have their still lives and the French and Italians and their garden scenes, etc. But that's nature tamed.
The American artist chose to paint nature in its wildest state because they saw that as the way to capture the American soul.
As I said this is where our values come from.
|
|
