Yosemite: Art Of An American Icon

The sheer majesty of Yosemite has inspired painters and photographers for ages. The power of art to shape how the national park has been viewed, used, and protected is vividly captured in Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, at the Oakland Museum of California May 19-August 26, 2007.

Organized by the Museum of the American West, Autry National Center, in Los Angeles, the exhibition looks at Yosemite's changing visual identity and cultural role as a national and international destination, and the response by artists to its transition from an ideal of wilderness to a commercial and often congested venue.

The comprehensive exhibition spans artwork from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, more than 150 paintings, baskets, and photographs. Arranged in four chronological sections, Yosemite: Art of an American Icon examines Yosemite's ongoing relevance as a contemporary Western landscape and American icon.

1855-1890: Nature's Cathedral. Propelled by a spirit of discovery, America's long search for cultural prowess refocused on the West. Urged by writers, critics, and intellectuals to become directly involved with nature, artists sought out Yosemite, portraying it as a bastion of pristine wilderness and evidence of America's divine providence.

This section includes a selection of early baskets, mammoth-plate photographs by Carleton Watkins and Eadweard J. Muybridge, and grand landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt, William Keith, and Thomas Hill, documenting the presence of native people in Yosemite as central to its early identity as an exotic and distinctly Western destination.

1890-1916: The People's Playground. As the 1890 census declared the close of the American frontier, Yosemite achieved national park status and made its official transition from remote locale to popular resort. With the opening of the Yosemite Valley Railroad in 1905, the park became widely accessible.

This section, with photos by Isaiah Taber, George Fiske, and others that show visitors frolicking on overhanging rocks, explores the impact of tourism, from changing ideas regarding conservation to the invention of Indian Field Days and the transformation of basket weaving from utilitarian to a major art form. The failed efforts of William Keith and John Muir to save the Hetch-Hetchy Valley from
becoming a reservoir signaled the end of Yosemite as a scenic preserve and its future as a tourist mecca.

1917-1969: An Icon Comes of Age. Thanks to America's newfound love of the auto, Yosemite visitation doubled between 1915 and 1919 as the mood of its patrons shifted from exclusivity to development and the needs of the masses. From impressionists Maurice Braun and Colin Campbell Cooper to the pictorialists Alvin Langdon Coburn, William Dassonville, and Anne Brigman, Yosemite artists shaped a fresh identity for the park as an aesthetically stylish venue.

Ansel Adams created the iconic photos that soon dominated the public's imagination. As Yosemite's audience widened, the relationship between the park and its artists also became a more intimate one, as modernists from Edward Weston to Charles Sheeler explored its abstract potential.

1970-Present: Revisiting Yosemite. After a decade of social revolt, Yosemite faces overcrowding, uncertainty, and unrest. Yosemite artists, focusing on a landscape long removed from its frontier roots, now deal with a place of contradictions, where urban development abuts raw nature. Photographers Roger Minick, Ted Orland, Thomas Struth, John Divola, Richard Misrach, and others have looked past the romantic legacy of Adams. Major artists Wayne Thiebaud and David Hockney have also cast Yosemite in a modern light.

Beginning in the 1980s, painting returned with vigor. The diverse approaches from Greg Kondos, Wolf Kahn, Jane Culp, and Tony Foster close the exhibition on an optimistic note, looking to the future of the park through the eyes of its artists past and present. -- www.museumca.org

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Posted January 26th, 2007 by ruzik_tuzik

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Yosemite Native Americans and their art.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2007-02-09 03:05.
Since the earliest times when many of the tourists started entering Yosemite Valley there was an interest in our old art form of basket making. We Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiutes were the most prolific basket makers in Yosemite Valley. The Lower valley Miwoks, many who had married Caucasians, were using many of the non-Indian implements, like metal pails, utensils and other things that they had lost their skill at basket making. The Paiutes in Yosemite Valley and the eastern side still retained their basket making skills. Because of their location far away from the large white population, Paiutes and Washoes still retained their skills and made baskets and willow utensils. Paiutes made up the majority of the basket makers in Yosemite Valley and with the interest of non-Indian basket collectors paying top dollar for baskets, the Paiutes took the art of basket making to a higher level. In the early Yosemite Indian Field Days, some were held not in Yosemite, but in Mono County, where the Paiutes lived half year when not residing in Yosemite. The majority of Paiutes were nomadic and traveled back and forth from Yosemite to Mono Lake and to Hetch Hetchy Valley before it was flooded. The handful of Miwoks who lived in the lower foothills on the western side did the same. Very few Indians lived year round in Yosemite, those who did were Paiutes. The most famous basket makers in Yosemite and the area were mainly Paiutes, with a few Yokuts included.