Art

The Hero

The hero is arguably the most recognizable masculine arche-type in American art. Characterized by either the use of a single male or groups of men as subject, the hero projects strength, virility, control, power, and dominance. In Eastern and European art, the hero symbolically represents exaggerated and hyper-idealized masculinity. In American art, however, the male form tends to be less idealized than it is standardized; that is, it has historically been used to create social and cultural norms of manhood, defined by characteristics of race (white), class (wealthy), and physical stature (grand). All of these traits exist in art as ideals of the form to which men of all backgrounds should aspire.

Early colonial and Jacksonian art focused largely upon the portrait, which was used to convey complex meanings of manhood, such as republican ideals of citizenship, individuality, and controlled mastery of the dual worlds of nature and science. For example, John Trumbull's painting General George Washington at the Battle of Trenton (1792) depicts Washington in immaculate dress (despite the circumstances of war) with his gaze cast slightly upward and to the left, one arm out-stretched, presumably toward battle, and the other arm resting nobly upon the hilt of his sword. Romanticized and reminiscent of ancient Greek form, Trumbull's painting nonetheless succeeds in conveying the potency of powerful leadership embodied in one individual, Washington.

Equally telling of man's role as conqueror is a later work, The Gross Clinic (1875), by Thomas Eakins. Within the setting of an operating amphitheater, a group of learned, stoic, white men hover over the exposed tendons and bright red blood of the patient, while the patient's mother, pictured in the back-ground, hides her face in horror. Thus, not only was science explicitly the arena of men, but the taxing responsibility for forging new frontiers implicitly resided solely within the spectrum of male ability.

Masculinity, then, in early American art, was defined largely by man's involvement within the world and his control over it. This theme also pervades works in which nature served as the subject, such as those of the Hudson River [Page 34]School of painting that emerged in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirits (1849) epitomizes the grandeur of the rugged and raw American frontier, though the presence in the painting of two well-dressed men standing upon a bluff offers a reminder that American men have properly tamed the wild forces of nature for the benefit of civilization.

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