The Spirit of America

On November 13, 2010 Brigham Young University hosted the Amateur Dance Sport Championship.  Dancing has become an extremely popular form of entertainment in America with dance television series emerging as tremendous successes like Dancing with the Stars, and So You Think You Can Dance, and Films like Step Up.  But, even more importantly Americans aren’t standing by to let others having all the fun.  People are making dancing apart of their lives as evidenced from the vast array of competition on Saturday.

Dancers of all levels took the floor in the Ballroom at BYU. Many commented that they had never danced in their lives, let alone competed against others in a formal competition.  There were some that made fools of themselves, there were some that victoriously succeeded.  But, the fact of the matter is that young adults who never before had any interest in Dance are looking to it now for some form of expression and entertainment. 

History has demonstrated the prominent place that dance fills in western culture.  Due to the migratory nature of American culture dance forms have been borrowed rather than created here.  It wasn’t until the late 19^th century that dance started to become uniquely American, and then blossomed into it’s own with the rise of jazz and the big band.  This period marks a fusion of European musical and dance techniques with American flare and innovation.  Out this period were born the Quickstep, Cha Cha, Jive, and American Swing. 

Unfortunately, as the war came to a close dance as popular past time died out.  But, the vitality and huge numbers of contestants at the Dance Sport Competition demonstrated that American dance is still very much alive and well. What started as a bunch of fun in the dance halls across America has become institutionalized and perfected into the basic steps and forms that allow for organized competition.  However, the evolution and innovation of American dance has not gone anywhere. In the recently released film Step Up 3 forms featuring traditional high technique from ballet and ballroom melded with street and funk forms emerging from common people raised the roof.  Such a movement seems to identify with the post modern movement away from forms and conventions to letting whatever emerges from the human spirit take control.

America the Sublime

Adirondacks, by Homer Doge Martin, inspires awe and wonder in passersby. The painting gives a glimpse of the world in its most natural state, wild chaos untamed by human convention and industry. Adirondacks tells the story and the hope of America. Martin accomplishes this American vision by subscribing to the artistic philosophy of the Hudson River School, catering to the desire to get back to Edenic paradise, and perpetuating the American concept of opportunity and a new life.

Martin in his earlier life subscribed closely to the Hudson River School, as evidenced through his choice to portray a landscape in his painting. Adirondacks communicates the awe and majesty that exists in the raw wilderness. The Hudson River School attempted to show nature as pastoral, creating scenes where man and the natural world can exist in harmony with one another. However, Adirondacks was painted in 1879; American history up to that point had revealed a rugged and aggressive natural world that was no respecter of persons.

As most of the colonizers discovered, a lack of respect for the power of nature in the new world could quickly cost you your life. You can almost see the Nietzsche-esque concept of the Dionysiac in this painting through the wild trees and bushes growing over anything and everything in their way in an epic struggle to reach the life giving sunlight and claim their own space to inhabit. The over all feeling of painting demonstrates symmetry and harmony, but the details of the picture and the brushwork show a much more aggressive vitality of the natural world. Martin has combined the two elements and created a nuanced romantic vision of the wilderness that is uniquely sublime.

Adirondacks also has a spiritual element in its composition. The type of awe communicated in this work is the same type of awe one experiences in a cathedral. Architects and clergy designed cathedrals so that when you walk in the cathedral is so big and so deep that you can’t help but feel small and insignificant in comparison to it, subsequently comprehending the grandeur of God. Looking at Adirondacks you get the same feeling, that there is something of divinity in this landscape and there is even more of divinity in it because it remains unpolluted by civilization, that it might look just as it did after the creation.

The discovery of the new world awoke a yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world that had been lost as society continually became more modernized. As America moved into the industrial age and the exploitation of natural resources further ravaged the land, locations that remained preserved became more and more important. There is certainly no paradox in the fact that this yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world brought religious settlers to the America’s and viewed their community as a city upon a hill and a light to the nations. From this mentality have stemmed many visions of America namely the land of promise and the land of opportunity.

Martin’s compositional style is extremely inviting. It seems to operate on the ideas of discovery, opportunity, adventure, and settlement. Part of the foundation that is America is the concept that you can shape your own future. The Declaration of Independence says that every man has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is an extension of Locke’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. In this painting is evidence that both are true. There are still places to conquered, property to be owned, adventures to be had, and new opportunity to be claimed for any one willing to try their hand at chance. This is the American dream. To make your own way, owning your own land, tilling the earth, living off of your own industry, and forging your own destiny.  A compelling message for immigrants coming through Ellis Island and lower class citizens that had grown tired of working in factories, the idea that even though a good portion of America had been conquered there was still, to make a biblical allusion, an inheritance waiting just for them.

Adirondacks' rugged nature and aggressive survivalist attitude could also be interpreted as a commentary on the time period. Social Darwinism mirrored the behavior portrayed in the painting through the trees and bushes. Just as they fight to get to the top of the tree line and battle for space the viewer can practically see urban centers like New York with its crowded spaces and capitalistic battles to get to the top of the ladder with out any regard for those who are marginalized on the way. Only the tough will survive and by natural selection rise to the top.

Homer Dodge Martin’s Adirondacks is a breath-taking glimpse into the beauty of natural America. However, the painting is doing much more than painting a landscape, it communicates American ideals through its subscription to Hudson River artistic theory, its play on western desire to get back to an Edenic paradise, and through a call to the world that just like this landscape you don’t have to be governed by civilization you can make your own way. Martin’s Adirondacks is in a very real way America.