{"product_id":"visual-shock-isbn-9781400034642","title":"Visual Shock","description":"In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece \u003ci\u003eThe Gross Clinic\u003c\/i\u003e, (considered “too big, bold, and gory” when first exhibited) to the bitter disputes about Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, this is an eye-opening account of American art and the battles and controversies that it has ignited.\"Deep, richly detailed, and enlightening.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e“Compelling. . . . A nuanced study . . . offers an important context for looking at ongoing issues of censorship and debates about the point of art.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e \"Kammen . . . handles these variegated brouhahas with welcome deftness; he squeezes in all the facts while maintaining a nice narrative flow.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\"A detailed and comprehensive survey of the history of artistic battles in the United States.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Houston Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Kammen \u003c\/b\u003ewas born in Rochester in 1936. He took his BA at George Washington University and his PhD at Harvard. He is Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1965. A past President of the Organization of American Historians, he is the author or editor of numerous works and has lectured throughout the world. His \u003ci\u003ePeople of Paradox \u003c\/i\u003ewas a Pulitzer Prize winner.Chapter 1Monuments, Memorials, and AmericanismAlthough the particulars have now grown hazy, older portions of the   American public recall that the genesis of the Vietnam Veterans   Memorial in 1980–83 prompted considerable controversy. It seemed quite   shocking at the time that the design competition could be won by a   twenty-one-year-old architecture student. Even more provocative,   because her plan seemed so austerely postmodern, it failed to fulfill   customary notions of what a suitably heroic memorial should look like.   Hence the harsh criticism that a \"black gash of shame\" actually   \u003ci\u003edishonored\u003c\/i\u003e those who had died in Southeast Asia (fig. 4). A mere list   of names placed in a wide-angle pit, with a plaque referring only to an   \"era\" rather than an actual war? Could the nation do no better?Although H. Ross Perot had initially funded the design competition, he   joined traditionalists in denouncing Maya Lin's winning entry and   calling for a representational monument showing U.S. soldiers and an   American flag. Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who had the power   to veto the whole project, allowed it to go forward, but only on   condition that a compensatory statue be commissioned and situated   nearby (fig. 5). Watt forced his compromise on the federal Fine Arts   Commission, which genuinely did not want to upstage Lin's design with   what commission chairman and National Gallery of Art director J. Carter   Brown called a \"piece of schlock.\"By 1983 the interchange between Maya Lin and Frederick Hart, the   sculptor for the figural addition, served only to intensify   ill-feelings underlying two conflicting visions of what might be the   most appropriate ways to memorialize a massive number of deaths in an   unpopular war. When asked her opinion of Hart's work, Lin candidly   replied: \"Three men standing there before the world-it's trite, it's a   generalization, a simplification. Hart gives you an image-he's   illustrating a book.\" Hart became even harsher when asked whether   \"realism\" was the only way to reach the disaffected veterans and   politicians.The statue is just an awkward solution we came up with to save Lin's   design. I think this whole thing is an art war. . . . The collision is   all about the fact that Maya Lin's design is elitist and mine is   populist. People say you can bring what you want to Lin's memorial. But   I call that brown bag esthetics. I mean you better bring something,   because there ain't nothing being served.In the decades since those two interviews took place, Americans have   voted with their feet, but more powerfully with their hearts and minds.   Lin is a winner.In 1987 Congress finally began its initial and pedestrian reaction to   long-standing requests for a World War II memorial situated in a   suitable place of honor in Washington, D.C. By the mid-1990s likely   designs received a critical response for several reasons: first, they   seemed too grandiose and therefore reminiscent of conservative   monuments in Europe; second, they would likely obstruct the widely   cherished two-mile vista between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln   Memorial; and third, they would bisect the Mall by straddling its   entire width. There were traditionalists on \u003ci\u003eboth\u003c\/i\u003e sides of the issue:   those who wished to preserve the uncluttered \"purity\" of the Mall and   those eager to honor the \"greatest generation\" with a genuinely worthy   plan consistent in merit with others in that coveted location. This   conflict boiled up a full head of steam between 1997 and 2000, but   Friedrich St. Florian's winning design finally received presidential   approval when many pleaded that World War II veterans were rapidly   dying and \u003ci\u003esomething\u003c\/i\u003e should be completed before they had disappeared   entirely (fig. 6).Too few Americans are aware that most of the issues raised between 1980   and 2000 had been hashed out long before when initial plans were   unveiled for the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson   memorials. Moreover, major statues meant to honor Washington and   Lincoln had also aroused the most intense feelings on similar grounds:   sheer size (gigantism), style (classical versus \"modern\"), location,   and even nudity in the case of Horatio Greenough's seated \u003ci\u003eGeorge   Washington\u003c\/i\u003e, commissioned by Congress in 1833, completed in Florence,   Italy, in 1839, and placed in the Capitol Rotunda in 1841. Scale,   style, site, and apparel (or lack thereof) would become persistent and   volatile issues in American art ever after.\u003ci\u003e Monumental\u003c\/i\u003e is a more   neutral euphemism for \u003ci\u003egigantic\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ecolossal\u003c\/i\u003e, of course. Many artists,   sculptors, and architects who we might find guilty of gigantism were   only striving to do monumental work. Suitable scale seems to lie in the   eye of the beholder yet also reveals the ambitious needs of a principal   stakeholder.Greenough's \u003ci\u003eWashington\u003c\/i\u003e touched off one of the earliest conflicts in the   United States involving aesthetic criteria, and one of the most   representative. A particularly problematic question involved style: how   should the Father of His Country be depicted, as an idealized deity or   as a revered native statesman? Classical or \"American\"? Godlike and   spiritual or secular yet like-no-other? Greenough's solution turned out   to be a hybrid: the head based upon Houdon's life mask certainly   resembled Washington, but the body evoked Jupiter and Roman statuary   (fig. 7). Hence the work got nicknamed George Jupiter Washington when   it wasn't given more insulting designations. Greenough's inspiration   was actually the Elean \u003ci\u003eZeus\u003c\/i\u003e by Phidias, one of the greatest Greek   sculptors, a work known only by description. Greenough was apparently   seeking purity and simplicity rather than the pomposity that so many   critics seemed to see in the statue. The snarls that ensued would   demonstrate that compromise leaves almost no one satisfied.Greenough's statue as well as Robert Mills's Washington Monument   emerged in the wake of failed attempts to commemorate the centennial of   the founder's birth by unearthing his body from Mount Vernon for   reburial in the Capitol crypt in 1832. The cult of Washington as a   superheroic if not immortal figure remained exceedingly strong, though   strife persisted over the relative merits of his role as a symbol of   national unity and his symptomatic value to southerners as a   Virginia-based protochampion of states' rights. The Nullification   Crisis early in the 1830s, prompted by South Carolina's threatened   secession over tariff issues, added sectionalism to the mix of   aesthetic differences and complicated them. Similarly it has long been   forgotten that several significant sources of friction in the decade   following 1911 involving the Lincoln Memorial arose from sectional   tensions left unresolved by the Civil War. That monument, which is   virtually devoid of references to slavery and the conflict it   generated, was meant to serve as an emblem of national unification. The   intertwined boughs of southern pine and northern laurel that gracefully   encircle the frieze provide just one indication of that quest. (Because   laurel is a symbol of victory, of course, the northern Republicans who   called the shots enjoyed a not-so-subtle triumph.)Serious debate would persist for more than a century following the   1820s: namely, whether monuments and architecture in the United States   should pursue styles that feel native and new or should appropriate   motifs from antique Greece and Rome. Horatio Greenough received   interesting and revealing advice as he embarked upon his impassioned   career as the premier American sculptor in the early republic. When he   first attempted to model a figure of George Washington, he received   wise counsel from a patron, the novelist James Fenimore Cooper: \"Aim   rather at the natural than the classical.\" That same heated issue would   stay situated at the core of a decade-long quarrel over the most   suitable design for the Lincoln Memorial. \"Natural\" meant more than   avoiding stylistic imitation of the ancient world. It also meant having   a heroic figure clothed in modern dress, and standing rather than   seated like some emperor, Roman or Napoleonic.Greenough got mixed signals, however, because his fellow New Englander   Edward Everett advised him to \"go to the utmost limit of size. . . . I   want a colossal figure.\" That muscular word \u003ci\u003ecolossal\u003c\/i\u003e and its synonyms   would recur over and over again in intensely heated discussions about   the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, and the   memorial for Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally unveiled in 1997.   Midwestern opponents of the Lincoln Memorial design that ultimately   prevailed (albeit scaled back in size owing to considerations of cost   and weight) pleaded instead for a \"colossal statue\" of the man who   saved the Union. But in 1969 William Walton, chairman of the Fine Arts   Commission, epitomized more than a century of polemics when he wrote to   the chairman of the FDR Memorial Commission, a member of Congress: \"I   urge that we get away from bigness as a manner of memorializing great   men. A man's place in history is never determined by the size of his   monument.\"When Fenimore Cooper discovered the dimensions that Greenough had in   mind, he considered them grandiose and advised his friend accordingly.   The sculptor stuck with Everett's wishes, however, which reinforced his   own aspiration, and designed a massive marble chair from which his   seated Washington figuratively contemplated the ship of state he had   brought into being. His gestures followed a classical formula seemingly   well suited to a brand-new republic. Whereas Washington's right hand   points heavenward, the source of law by which men live, the left hand   returns his sword to the people because he has completed his service to   them. It was not such a bad compromise, actually, between imperatives   ancient and modern.Skeptics scoffed that the oversize statue would not even be able to   enter the Capitol for placement in the Rotunda. They were wrong, and   initial responses to the monumental piece in 1841–42 seemed more   favorable than not, though critics certainly made themselves known.   When Greenough arrived from Florence in 1842 and saw how dim the   Rotunda lighting was, however, he tried to have torches illuminate his   work; but they only made matters worse. Flickering lights in a dim   chamber do not enhance greatness. He then pleaded with Congress to move   the monument out of doors so that it could be bathed in natural   sunlight—a serious error, as it turned out—and that is when the   harshest condemnations began to be heard. Maximum visibility only   encouraged calumny.Fierce blasts came from Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who   had offered stiffer warnings than Cooper's concerning size as well as   nudity, and from Philip Hone, the former mayor of New York, who   recorded the following in his diary:It looks like a great herculean Warrier—like Venus of the bath, a grand   Martial Magog—undraped, with a huge napkin lying on his lap and   covering his lower extremities and he is preparing to perform his   ablutions in the act of consigning his sword to the care of the   attendant. . . . Washington was too prudent, and careful of his health,   to expose himself thus in a climate so uncertain as ours, to say   nothing of the indecency of such an exposure on which he was known to   be exceedingly fastidious.Nathaniel Hawthorne was pithier: \"Did anyone ever see Washington naked?   It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine was born with   his clothes on and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his   first appearance in the world.\" Being unclothed from the waist up was   nude enough for the 1840s but particularly so for the Father of His   Country, a man renowned for his dignified reserve as well as other   self-possessed qualities. On this matter also, however, consensus could   not be achieved. Ralph Waldo Emerson described the work as \"simple \u0026amp;   grand, nobly draped below \u0026amp; nobler nude above.\" He declared that it   \"greatly contents me. I was afraid it would be feeble but it is not.\"   In many different ways and for numerous reasons, nudity would become a   prime cause of controversy during the century and a half that followed.Once it was determined that \u003ci\u003eWashington\u003c\/i\u003e would sit out of doors, exposed   to extremes of weather and the uncontrollable excretions of birds, the   figure became a prime target for pranksters. One inserted \"a large   'plantation' cigar between the lips of \u003ci\u003epater patriae\u003c\/i\u003e, while another had   amused himself with writing some stanzas of poetry, in a style rather   more popular than elegant, upon a prominent part of the body of the   infant Hercules.\" Exactly which body part is unclear; but quite   obviously political graffiti did not originate the day before   yesterday. This monumental statue increasingly became an occasion for   mockery, and Greenough's poignant letter to Robert Winthrop in 1847   sums up his frustration at having his motives and skills misunderstood   by a nation so lacking in artistic sophistication.A colossal statue of a man whose career makes an epoch in the world's   history is an immense undertaking. To fail in it is only to prove that   one is not as great in art as the hero himself was in life. Had my work   shown a presumptuous opinion that I had an easy task before me—had it   betrayed a yearning rather after the wages of art than the honest fame   of it, I should have deserved the bitterest things that have been said   of it and of me. But containing as it certainly\u003ci\u003e must\u003c\/i\u003e internal proof of   being the \u003ci\u003eutmost effort\u003c\/i\u003e of my mind at the time it was wrought, its   failure fell not on me but on those who called me to the task.Washington's state of undress also made him appear pagan—not exactly   proper in a society where evangelical Christianity enjoyed wide appeal.   Although Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and many others praised it, the   statue continued to inspire wags and scoffers throughout the remainder   of the nineteenth century. The early rumor that it was too large to   pass through the door of the Capitol gradually became a popular legend.   Stories were repeated that it had to be moved outside because it   threatened the very foundation of that big building and even that it   sank the first ship that attempted to load it for \"home\" in Leghorn,   Italy. The ultimate insult occurred in 1908 when Congress ordered that   it be moved to the Smithsonian Institution's \"Castle,\" ironic in turn   because of Greenough's disdain for the Gothic style. A monumental   mismatch of art and architecture.During the later twentieth century, when certain works of public   sculpture became crazily controversial, such as Claes Oldenburg's \u003ci\u003eFree   Stamp\u003c\/i\u003e in Cleveland, their defenders insisted that they could not be   moved because they were \"site specific,\" that is, designed with a very   particular place in view. To change their venue would be tantamount to   destroying them. This, too, was not a new issue. Greenough had been   commissioned to create his work specifically for the Capitol Rotunda.   It got moved outside at the sculptor's own request, though swiftly to   his profound regret; and it was resituated once again more than half a   century after his death. Relocation alone, however, had not denigrated   it. Dissensus already had. The country simply could not agree on the   most suitable aesthetic for honoring its foremost citizen with a   prominently placed statue (fig. 8).","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302432166117,"sku":"NP9781400034642","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400034642.jpg?v=1767743494","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/visual-shock-isbn-9781400034642","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}