Marsden Hartley's late paintings: American masculinity and national identity in the 1930s and '40s

This dissertation examines historically and critically the paintings that Marsden Hartley produced from the mid-1930s to his death in 1943. It investigates in particular the issue of "American-ness," not only as it pertains to Hartley's late paintings, but also as it was constructed in American culture in the 1930s and '40s. By examining broad political debates of the period, aspects of popular culture, and the reception of art (especially European modernism) in America, I argue that national identity in the 1930s and '40s was constructed as both masculine and primitive. Hartley's late paintings conformed to and reinforced this construction.; Following basic precepts of contemporary critical theory, this dissertation approaches Hartley as a subject in and of cultural discourse in an effort to elucidate the unacknowledged politics of his late production. In this respect, I approach Hartley throughout my study as a homosexual male for whom cultural discourses concerning gender held particular importance. As a man whose sexual desire cut against the dominant construction of masculinity, Hartley was ever positioned in interwar culture as a "feminine" subject. His late work constituted an effort to disavow his "feminine" subject position (and thus his homosexuality) and align himself with the "masculine" construction of national identity. Hartley's paintings are examined as objects that existed (and exist) at the intersections of these gendered discourses.; Hartley allowed his viewers to see in his late paintings only what he wanted them to see; and what he wanted them to see was a great American painter, one whose work expressed powerfully the nation's primitive and masculine identity, which corresponded (not coincidentally) to the artist's own character. To achieve this goal, Hartley loaded his work with available "masculine" and "primitive" signs that circulated throughout 1930s and '40s American culture. This dissertation exposes and explores those signs and thus offers a more critical and historically grounded reading of the artist's late career.