Identity in Doubt: American Art Theory in the Formative Years

继本杰明·韦斯特之后，两代美国艺术家来到伦敦，学习高级艺术风格，并将其带回美国，意图建立一个美国艺术流派。然而，在获得民族独立后，欧洲关于艺术的学术体系似乎不再适合美国社会。在关于艺术在自由社会中的作用的争论中，伦敦仍然存在的美学共识破裂了。在接受和拒绝欧洲文化遗产之间寻求辩证的解决办法，对于创造艺术中的民族特性至关重要。对独立后几十年来艺术基本思想的发展进行分析，将有助于理解美国艺术史直到现代主义的发展，并将为整个19世纪的视觉艺术研究提供一个概念性的框架。研究项目将通过对个人主人公的研究跟踪观点的变化，并通过比较书面文件，如演讲、出版物和信件，分析美国艺术理论发展逐渐进步的条件，以揭示偏离最初信念的个人原因。它将为未来的研究开辟一个领域，既可用于艺术史，也可用于美国研究。

Following Benjamin West, two generations of American artists came to London in order to study the high style of art and bring it back to America, with the intent to establish a school of American art. However, after gaining national independence, the European academic system of thinking about art seemed no longer appropriate for the American society. The aesthetic consensus still shared in London broke up in a controversy about the role of art in a free society. The search for a dialectical solution between adoption and rejection of the European cultural heritage was of crucial relevance for the creation of a national identity in the arts. The analysis of the development of fundamental ideas about art in the decades after Independence will help to understand the development of the history of American art up to Modernism and will provide a conceptual framework for the study of the visual arts throughout the 19th century.The research project will analyze the conditions of the gradual advancements in the development of American art theory by tracking the change of opinion through the study of individual protagonists and comparing written documents, such as lectures, publications and letters in order to reveal personal reasons for deviations from initial convictions. It will open a field for future research utilizable for both the History of Art and the American Studies.