1955 and all that: A book divided

Associated media

A House Divided: American Art since 1955

by Anne Middleton Wagner

As scholars reconsider the chronology of contemporary art, they keep pushing its starting date farther back in the 20th century.  Anne Middleton Wagner’s book is a collection of essays on contemporary American art from 1955 and after.  Her starting point is when Neo-Dada was emerging and there was little about Abstract Expressionism that was still radical.  Her initial thesis is that the particularly American qualities of American art since the Second World War were never limited to the New York School and the theories of Clement Greenberg.  Wagner is deeply concerned with how changing economic, political and cultural circumstances, including the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, have affected how American art has been interpreted, both domestically and internationally.  America’s cultural dominance over the past 70 years, which some would decry as overbearing, self-righteous and arrogant, but which scholars often refer to as ‘hegemony’, is also of concern to her.

Many of these essays were written over a period of several years and revised for this book.  They focus on one artist and sometimes on just one work and are arranged loosely chronologically.  The lack of a unifying thesis among the essays is disappointing and muddles the book’s purpose as cultural critique.  The chapters are divided into two sections, but the reasons for this are vague.  As the sense of purpose outlined rather vaguely in the introduction fades from chapter to chapter, the book becomes an anthology of one scholar’s writings.  If there is any unifying thesis, it has to do with issues of the physical embodiment of identity, sexuality and social class in post-war American art.

The essays are quite uneven in originality, clarity and persuasiveness.  The first one, on Jasper Johns’ flags, mostly summarizes what is already known and does not offer much that is new.  When Wagner attempts to relate Johns’ flags to post-9/11 politics and recent politically inflammatory works by Hans Haacke that use the American flag, her thesis is murky and hesitant.  This seems to demonstrate how time is often needed for proper perspective or the author’s reluctance to take a stronger political stance on the most controversial issues of today.

The second essay, on Andy Warhol’s silkscreened race riots, offers some astute observations on Warhol’s use of narrative and allegory, and how his depictions of these themes affected more militant explorations of racial division later in the 1960s.  Wagner’s willingness to examine how the viewer’s racial identity enters into his response to these works is particularly interesting, and shows how she can become deeply engaged with art.  Her personal concern for the topics she covers is one of the strongest qualities of this book.  The analysis of racial identity and typing in Kara Walker’s wall-sized silhouettes of African Americans is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking studies in the book.  Wagner’s consideration of the impact of one’s own racial identity and baggage in responding to these works, and how white viewers tend to feel surprisingly comfortable when viewing these racially sensitized images, is quite intriguing.

In keeping with Wagner’s scholarly interests, most of the chapters deal with post-Second World War American sculpture.  The essay on Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial seems almost obligatory for this book, given the author’s scholarly interests and concern for recent political issues.  Wagner does not offer many new observations here, although she provides a highly cogent explanation of how Minimalism eventually acquired expressive and symbolic power after its heyday and she takes the reader into a careful analysis of how the memorial should be experienced. 

The essay on David Smith provides some interesting thoughts on masculine, working-class identity and the artist as a worker-labourer back when America’s economy was still heavily industrial.  The essay on Dan Flavin’s reliance on architectural spaces in composing his ‘object-image’ neon tubes is also insightful, although the importance of Flavin’s lively personality explained at the beginning of the chapter is not well-connected to the broader argument of how architectural space cooperates with neon light installations. 

Wagner’s chapter on Louise Bourgeois is one of the most useful in the book, because she does an impressive job explaining stylistic changes, the importance of biographical information and autobiographical writings, and intricate references to the human body in these complex works.  The chapter on Eva Hesse’s choice of titles and use of language is a thoughtful examination of the artist’s thinking about issues of meaning in her work.

Another essay that offers sporadic insights is Wagner’s analysis of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting, a dissected house that was recorded in notes, photographs, collages, and small sections of the house itself carefully cut away and removed for exhibition.  It suffers somewhat when the author extends her focus to other sculpture of the 1970s and struggles to draw broad conclusions about the entire decade.  In fact, this faulty effort reveals that this decade is really not well understood or remembered compared with the 1960s, and that Earth Art and Feminist Art do not adequately explain it.  Wagner’s attempts to connect 1970s sculpture to Rosalind Krauss’ theories on modern sculpture seem forced.  There are a few chapters in this book in which Wagner invokes Krauss’ theories to support or counter various opinions and arguments, and these approaches tend to falter.  It seems Wagner is unnecessarily compelled to involve Krauss because she was so important as a critic and theorist in the late-1960s and 1970s, and many scholars still rely on her to legitimize and theorize this art, sometimes to the extent that her ideas actually become burdensome.

Ultimately, A House Divided is a book divided.  It offers many insights yet often confuses the reader.  For scholars of contemporary art, especially American sculpture from the 1960s and 1970s, it should be a useful addition to their libraries.

A House Divided: American Art since 1955  by Anne Middleton Wagner is published by Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 304 pp., illustrated in colour and mono, £24.95/$34.95(ppb). £48.95/$70.00 (hb) ISBN: 978-0520270978 (ppb) / 978-0520268470 (hb). Adobe PDF e-book version available: ISBN: 978-0520950030 / e-book price: $34.95.