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Indepth Arts News: "Picturing the Banjo" 2005-12-10 until 2006-03-05 Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, DC, USA
"For more than two centuries, the banjo has played an integral role in
American history and culture and has inspired an eclectic array of
artists," said Sarah Cash, the Corcoran's Bechhoefer Curator of American
Art. "A highlight of the Corcoran's own collection is Richard Norris
Brooke's best-known work, A Pastoral Visit, which exemplifies the
frequent presence of the banjo in visual representations of the African
American community. The banjo bridges the aural and visual histories of
America from its use by African Americans on antebellum plantations to
its enjoyment by Anglo-Americans in their Gilded Age parlors."
From the stringed gourd instrument brought to this country by West African slaves in the eighteenth century, to its presence in the
nineteenth-century minstrel show and the Gilded Age parlor, to its
depiction in twentieth-century African American self-portraiture, the
evolution of the banjo illuminates several national sagas and histories,
including racial typing, minstrelsy and the rise and fall of vaudeville
and other popular entertainments. Artists have seen the banjo as a
Janus-faced cultural monument, capable of denoting such themes as
simplicity, ridicule, nostalgia and authenticity.
Picturing the Banjo features 72 works on loan from 41 collections and
examines the visual representation of the banjo, probing the icon's
aesthetic and cultural usage in American paintings, drawings,
photographs and other artifacts. Included are banjo images by such
artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt, Charles Demuth, Thomas
Eakins, Eastman Johnson, William H. Johnson, William Sidney Mount,
Norman Rockwell and Betye Saar. Also on display are equally important
works by some lesser-known practitioners, including Helen Corson,
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Clare Rojas, Thomas Hope, D. Morrill and
William Henry Snyder. The exhibition also includes a handful of musical
instruments, including several "presentation banjos," which were meant
to be seen but not played. Other decorative art objects - including a
banjo "chair" and accompanying tambourine stool - round out the
exhibition.
The exhibition is divided into seven thematic categories. Early
Artistic Prototypes explores the origin of the banjo's depiction in
British and American art and its appearance in works dating from the early eighteenth century, including Hans Sloane's A Voyage to the
islands Madera, Barbados, Neves, S. Christophers and Jamaica
(1707-1725).
IMAGE
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The banjo is one of the most frequently encountered
icons in American art. Historians and curators have amply documented the
evolution of the instrument itself, yet its recurring imagery in
paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and decorative arts, has escaped
prolonged scholarly engagement. Picturing the Banjo will be the first
exhibition to underscore the banjo's symbolism in American art from the
eighteenth century through the present day. Organized by the Palmer
Museum of Art at The Pennsylvania State University, Picturing the Banjo
will debut at the Corcoran where it will be on view from December 10,
2005 through March 5, 2006.
