Kenyon Cox

Kenyon Cox was among the best-known cultural figures in the United States during the first two decades of this century, thanks to his reputation as a mural painter and especially as a critic. In this first biography, H. Wayne Morgan focuses on Cox's development and personality, treating his art as an expression of his idealism. Cox was born in Warren, Ohio, grew up in the Cincinnati area, and attended the McMicken School of Design there. His art training continued in Paris, where he studied for five years in the academic setting of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as well as in private ateliers, such as those of Emile Carolus-Duran, Rodolphe Julian, and Jean-Leon Gerome. An academic, Cox was committed to learning traditional drawing and composition before establishing his own artistic identity. Cox became well known as a muralist during the prosperous years from 1897 to the 1920s, providing works for the new state capitols of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the Library of Congress, and several public buildings in New York City. His large allegorical decorations rested on a thorough knowledge of Italian Renaissance masters, many of whose works he had seen as an impressionable student. In addition, Cox's gift for pithy phrases and his obvious knowledge gained him considerable prominence as a critic and reviewer. Throughout his career, he emphasized the values of craftsmanship and of attachments to ongoing traditional ideals that emphasized harmony, order, and unity of artist and public. He became famous, or notorious, as an outspoken opponent of the trend toward modernism, which he believed glorified individual expression at the expense of communicating with an audience. Cox saw this asculturally divisive, destroying the power of art to expand the viewer's imagination and consciousness. Eventually, however, modernism overcame the traditional ideals and styles that Cox and many of his contemporaries had represented.

Kenyon Cox was born in Warren, Ohio, in 1856 to a nationally prominent family. He eventually became a leading painter in the classical style - particularly of murals in state capitols, courthouses, and other major buildings - and one of the most important traditionalist art critics in the United States. An Artist of the American Renaissance is a collection of Cox's private correspondence from his years in New York City and the companion work to editor H. Wayne Morgan's An American Art Student in Paris: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882 (Kent State University Press, 1986). These frank, engaging, and sometimes naive and whimsical letters show Cox's personal development as his career progressed. They offer valuable comments on the inner workings of the American art scene and describe how the artists around Cox lived and earned incomes. Travel, courtship of the student who became his wife, teaching, politics of art associations, the process of painting murals, the controversy surrounding the depiction of the,nude, promotion of the new American art of his day, and his support of a modified classical ideal against the modernism that triumphed after the 1913 Armory Show are among the subjects he touched upon.

Like a magic potion, Italianita has seeped through the stream of American aesthetic consciousness ever since Benjamin West stepped onto Italian soil in 1760. The first period of this artistic phenomenon was investigated in The Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860 and the book at hand thus continues this intellectual exploration in its development during the following sixty years. Those decades between the Civil War and World War I brought to a climax the growing sense of American continental nationhood, and this strengthened perception of national identity was reflected in American art. A synthesis was achieved in which American values and images were fused with the great tradition flowing from its Italian source. Among the themes that arise from this examination of the role that Italy played in shaping American art is first and foremost the struggle to resolve the issue of what American art ought to express: our European heritage or our cultural independence. This question penetrates to the heart of the most widely debated topic in present-day American culture - multiculturalism. The reader may well find previously unconsidered relationships between our past and present, and may be led to reconsider problems posed by the conflicting needs of unity and diversity in our nation. Other themes that appear in these essays deal with the development of American wealth and its role in influencing the taste of the period, and with feminism. In these pages it will be noticed how very closely American art mirrors the American Experience. While all art reflects the cultural context in which it is created, the nature of American art, predominantly Romantic-Realism, makes the link between idea and image particularly visible. What becomes evident is that "the Italian presence" was almost never a simple matter of direct influence; rather it was an experience for American artists that afforded them, above all, insight and inspiration. Italy was America's muse.

Some of America's most influential artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are featured in this guide, along with a concise overview of the colonies in which they worked. These colonies ranged from Carmel-Monterey in California to Gloucester-Rockport in Massachusetts to Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico. Some of the artists are famous today, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, while others were well known at the time and added to the name recognition of their particular colonies. Scholars, students, and anyone interested in American Art History will find valuable information on how the closeness of colonies can affect and influence artists.