Showing papers on "Mural published in 1980"

Pageantry and Mural Painting: Community Rituals in Allegorical Form

Abstract: N THE LATE nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as America moved forward to become an industrial state, one of its more popular art forms-mural painting-looked to an older allegorical tradition. But how meaningful was allegory in a world of \"bargain sales, excursions trains, taxicabs, Tungsten lights, eugenic babies, wrist watches, cash registers, and esculators\"?1 How did Americans look at the overly civilized, allegorical figures disjunctively set against a realistic mid-nineteenth-century frontier setting in Edwin H. Blashfield's Westward (fig. i)? We can easily understand Blashfield's choosing a subject from American history since the replay of historical episodes is still popular today in historical novels, plays, movies, and television programs. To comprehend the period's taste for allegory, however, we must immerse ourselves in its popular culture. By looking at another obsolete and (to our eyes) quaint art form-American pageantry-we can better understand all that allegory expressed for Americans at the turn of the century. The first widely publicized American allegorical pageant was given in June 1905 in Cornish, New Hampshire, to honor Augustus SaintGaudens.2 From then until World War I, Ameri-