Art as Propaganda

Just finished watching the first part (of 3) of a BBC4 TV programme entitled the Art of America presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Not quite what I expected. His presentation laid stress on the purpose of the art from advertisements of the promised land to encourage settlement to the hidden messages that the artist included in the work to express the artists feelings about what the march of progress truly meant. There was little doubt where the sympathies of the presenter lay.

It would have been easy to take the paintings at face value such as the early portraits of a Puritan couple dressed in the finery and in the case of the wife holding their child. The three were dressed in finery that demonstrated their wealth and there was no false modesty in the way that they demonstrated to the world how well they had done in the New World. The landscape paintings suggest an idyllic world that offered untold opportunities and offered no clues to the suffering and untimely deaths of the early settlers.

When the War of Independence had been won the leaders of the new Nation decided to demonstrate through architecture the aims and status of the people. They chose to build in the Roman style so that we now have the iconic buildings of Washington DC perhaps the best known of which is the Capitol building, the seat of government. Inside the building there are four paintings described by the presenter as being amongst the most boring pictures depicting key times in the battle for independence. The pictures glorify the incidents and in some way seem to have sterilised the reality of war by largely ignoring its reality.

The same symbols were used by an artist in his work. For example one included a tree stump that bore the marks of the axe and showed the splintering caused as the tree fell to the ground. It was claimed that this demonstrated the view of the artist that the land was being raped by the onward march of progress. Another image of Yellowstone National Park shortly after it became America's first such park includes, just above the artists signature, a dead deer again suggesting the effect upon the natural world of man's drive for progress.

It was the first time that I had seen any of the works portrayed and I sense I would have missed the message had it not been pointed out to me. I have often heard it said that many paintings are 'propaganda'  Portraits of the rich an landed gentry, so common in our stately homes, show the gentry in the best possible light and emphasise their wealth and power. The farm labourers cottage with the wife and the children paints a picture that is far from the truth of their hard existence. Perhaps there are no 'innocent' paintings and that all present some message.