'America as landscape': Marsden Hartley and New Mexico, 1918--1924

Immediately after World War I, Marsden Hartley, like many artists and writers associated with Alfred Stieglitz, wanted to create an authentic American modernist art based on the direct observation of America itself. Hartley went to New Mexico in 1918 with this goal in mind. Hartley's New Mexico period is compelling not only because he was one of the first to try to realize this objective, but also because his attempt soon became fraught with ambivalence and uncertainty, ultimately leading him to create a very different version of American art than the one he expected to realize. By examining the complex intersection of aesthetic philosophy, landscape theory and national identity in Hartley's New Mexico work, this dissertation uncovers an overlooked, darker and more anxious side of post-war American modernism.; "America as Landscape": Marsden Hartley and New Mexico, 1918--1924 closely examines the trajectory of Hartley's art and writings about New Mexico subjects and places them in their post-war cultural context. His New Mexico work developed in three distinct stages, each linked to a different physical location. Hartley initially attempted to record his direct sensation of the landscape in pastels created in New Mexico in 1918 and 1919. Yet, these works show the difficulty he had in putting the theories he expressed in essays such as his 1918 "America as Landscape" into practice. After leaving New Mexico itself, he painted increasingly ambivalent landscapes of New Mexico from memory while in New York in 1919 and 1920. Hartley's final response to the New Mexico landscape was the unique and challenging Recollections series, painted in Europe in 1923 and 1924. Dark and turbulent, these landscapes work and rework the neglected underside of the post-war attempt to construct an authentic American art. The complexity of Hartley's theoretical and aesthetic evolution over the years in which he painted the New Mexico landscape resulted in an exceptionally rich body of work, distinct from any other version of American modernism visible after World War I.