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Chapter 3: A Further Look at Clarence Cook and the “Revolution” in Art
- Penn State University Press
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The study of Clarence Cook in the preceding chapter was limited to his early writing. The New-York Daily Tribune reviews discussed there represented his thinking from roughly 1863 to 1865. They expressed his opinions to the broad readership of that paper. His philosophy and his tone were also integral to his other main publication at this time: Cook, as noted, was the principal spokesman for the so-called American Pre-Raphaelites—that is, the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art—and editor of their journal , the New Path.1 Though Cook’s career was not limited to this period, his texts from that time in comparison with those of Jarves exemplify the structure of the critical writing that the chapter was designed to explain. As argued there, the critical discourse employed by Cook and Jarves (and their peers) reinforced a single and inflexible definition for art—however much each writer championed a formal language apparently contrary to the other ’s. This was the manner in which the rhetoric of the dyad functioned; it ought not be understood as representing two distinct definitions of art. Cook’s career was long, however, so an expanded look at his writing is relevant. This chapter considers other central aspects of his early PreRaphaelitism not yet addressed and then compares them with his later work, in which he toned down his strident youthful posturing. From that later phase, the chapter will concentrate on Cook’s two most widely read works. These are, first, his popular series on furnishings and the aesthetics of the home written for Scribner’s Monthly and, second, the American section of his 3 a further look at clarence cook and the “revolution” in art clarence cook and the “revolution” in art 59 six-volume work Art and Artists of Our Time, published in 1888.2 These texts are relevant not just because they offer pertinent examples of Cook’s most visible critical writing over time, but also because they show that his opinions and aesthetic prescriptions unfolded in a manner somewhat contrary to the easy classification that his words have often seemed to imply. The last part of the chapter follows the pattern of the others by concluding with speculations on the nature of current tendencies in present-day historiography of this mid-nineteenth-century art world. In this case questions arise about our modern insistence on the idea of rupture, conflict, turmoil, and transformation in the history and definition of American art. Cook’s work raises the issue since at least part of his career was erected upon a platform of rebellion, of overtly rejecting establishment and convention and even using terms like “revolution” in the context of art criticism. With such concrete references, it is very easy to then historicize Cook or Cook’s moment as having been revolutionary. Nonetheless, a closer look at his writing and the continuity of the principles he expounded immediately raises questions about our modern sense of the term “revolution” and what it has come to stand for with regard to art production and reception—particularly in light of what we have already seen with Cook’s and Jarves’s shared antebellum definition of art. Might the term or its past connotation have signified something different from current notions of transformation in art? Indeed, there is reason to wonder whether “revolution” did not have its own logic in nineteenth-century American art history, prior to any speci fic instances in which the term may have been used. The chapter seeks to ponder this question and its implications for fundamental aspects of American art history, such as the treatment of form and style. Again, the texts themselves are the guide. Returning to Clarence Cook where we last left him, we see an uncompromising critic, a somewhat righteous young Ruskinian who carelessly dismissed all that he found conventional and at odds with his system. As George W. Curtis, the articulate and level-headed editor of Harper’s Weekly, described him in 1864, Cook laid “an imperative hand” on the reputation of painters and critics alike. Curtis also perceived clear influences behind the attitude and judgments of this new arrival to the critical scene, and they were those of the Pre-Raphaelites. He noted, “It was impossible that we should not feel in this country, sooner or later, the influence of the spirit of Pre-Raphaelitism, of the originality of Ruskin’s criticisms, of...