Through oceans of raw experiment: Holger Cahill and the road to American art 1887--1960

Instead of bringing intensity to life, the art the National Academy of Design, the bastion and arbiter of American art, selected for its exhibitions at the turn of the 19th century were meaningless, emotionless, imitations, without ties to place and time. Rejected by curators and collectors, ignored by Europeans, the only people with the slightest interest in what American artists were doing were wealthy businessmen looking to enhance their status. They were, furthermore, the only ones who had access to art. Paintings were confined to museums, and its patrons and administrators made it clear who was welcome to visit and who was not.;Over the following four decades, however, the framework of rules, conventions, beliefs, and assumptions that had governed American art crumbled, enabling a new system to emerge. The principle that a few like-minded artists could determine what was and what was not good lost its clout. The idea that art belonged to only the wealthy was overthrown. The dominance, but not the influence, of European trends and motifs came to a close. No longer just a status symbol with monetary value, art took on a wider range of meanings. No longer something to be looked at from afar and confined to gilt frames or marble halls, art grew closer to life. The boulevard-wandering, Beaujolais-drinking painter turned out to be an out-of-work chum. Subject matters changed. The role of the public changed. Art education changed. Media changed. Government's role changed. And, by 1939, millions of Americans in every region of the country had exposed themselves to art, and more artists expressed themselves in more ways than ever before. Soon, American art reached unimaginable aesthetic heights.;The main argument put forth in this dissertation is that neither the changes nor the outcome were accidental; rather, they were the result of serious thought and hard work by a small but determined group of artists, critics, and administrators, chief among them Holger Cahill. Though few today recognize the name, he once exercised more power over American art than anyone has before or since.