Where did the roots of Art in America begin? Art education is rooted in part in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century when drawing was taught in an effort to improve the production of products.
However, the real beginnings of the visual arts in America began when the first English settlers landed on the East Coast and established their homes and churches.
The colonist’s values were of a new world culture already established when they set out to take up residence in a new place and only gradually did they discover that they had formed an identifiable society of their own. The visual arts were left out of serious consideration not because the colonists were too busy with other things, but because the arts had not figured in any essential way in the environment from which the predominantly English colonist came and did not have much place in their life. Such attitudes toward art and life are usually laid at the door of the Puritans, and certainly Puritan precepts were hostile to many aspects of the arts. The religious beliefs of American Puritans disapproved of visual images. Religious revelations were to come through written scriptures, not through allegorical imagery. The only kind of visual expression officially excluded from this general prohibition were gravestone carvings with images of life and death. The England that the early settlers abandoned was a community indifferent to native painting, sculpture and architecture. An unusual situation considering the Renaissance of the arts was going on in Italy at the same time. But the great genius of the artists in Italy like Michelangelo had barely entered the English awareness when the small group sailed for America. The history of the fine arts in the United States and their Colonial ancestry is a story of the struggle between conflicting values and differing attitudes toward the nature of man (people) and the recognition of need for inspirational experiences. Basically, Americans had no art traditions of their own during the colonial period. The vast majority of the people were intent on making a living and possessed neither the ability nor the inclination to patronize the arts. The Puritan tradition had made its mark deep in holding back the arts, especially the theater.
A research paper was written about the development of the visual arts in America. The paper is available for those interested in reading the 32-page research paper on how it took 175 years for art to become rooted at least as a fundamental ingredient of American Culture.
For more information contact Jaylene Armstrong, retired art educator from Madison Wisconsin, at 661-255-3050 or email: Jaylenearmstrong@yahoo.com.