Race and Art in America Midterm Terms

Neoclassicism

Artistic style based on the aesthetic principles of Greek and Roman antiquity

Ledger Art

Form of art made by Native American artists utilizing ledger or accounting books, starting in the mid-19th century.

Survivance

The active presence and ongoing thriving of Native culture and lifeways in defiance of colonial power and domination; coined by Gerald Vizenor

Double Consciousness

Describes an internalized feeling of “two-ness” among African Americans due to radicalized oppression and white scrutiny; coined by W.E.B. Du Bois.

Pictorialism

Photographic style around the turn of the century based around soft focus, atmospheric effects, heavy manipulation of printing process, and/or emulation of painting

Straight Photography

Photographic style that rejected Pictorialism; embraced sharp focus and lack of manipulation; coined by Sadakichi Hartmann

Orientalism

Describes the Western depiction of the “East” through essentialized stereotypes (such as exotic, mysterious, passive, timeless, sensual, barbaric); coined by Edward Said

Noble Savage

In US context, cultural archetype of Native Americans as living in harmony with nature, existing apart from modern civilization, and possessing an inherent purity and wisdom

Vanishing Race (also known as Vanishing Indian)

Widespread belief and ideology that Na;ve Americas were des;ned for ex;nc;on and/or cultural erasure

Playing Indian

Concept for describing how white American national identity is anchored to ideas about Native Americans, expressed through forms of direct or indirect emulation, discussed by Philip Deloria

Appropriation

In art, the practice of borrowing or adopting symbols, stylistic features, and/or images from pre-existing sources

Primitivism

A strand of modern Western art that appropriated stylistic features and formal strategies from non-Western and prehistoric art, as well as a broader ideology that viewed such art as evidence of “primitive” culture and unmediated expression

Modernism

In the fine arts, a global movement from roughly the 1860s to 1970s that rejected Western academic conventions in favor of formal experimentation, new subject matter, and at times an emphasis on abstraction

Ashcan School

Artistic movement of white Americans artists between the 1890s and 1920s, focused heavily on depictions of everyday urban life with a dark and gritty realist approach

Harlem Renaissance

Artistic and intellectual movement of Black Americans centered in Harlem during the 1910s to 1930s, peaking in the mid-1920s; spanned all art forms, but most famous for its impacts on music, literature, and fine artistic

Essentialism

The view that a racial, ethnic, national, or other group has fixed and unchanging

characterisics, which are innate (“essential”) to its identity rather than determined by

cultural or social factors

Diaspora

(1) The movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or

ancestral homeland; (2) A group of people who have undergone such movement

Marked vs. Unmarked Identities

Distinguishes how some identities are “marked” in a particular context (given an additional descriptor), while others are “unmarked,” effectively treated as given or self-evident.

Regionalism

US art movement from the 1930–40s concentrated on rural subjects and contexts, particularly in the Midwest, most associated with Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry

Social Realism

Loose artistic movement and style focused on working class subjects and critques of social and political power; often associated with US art of the 1920–40s