Ethnicity, Music, and Virginia City

Virginia City, Nevada's musical life demonstrated an astounding diversity, while emphasizing class structure, reinforcing gender roles, and underscoring (and sometimes celebrating) ethnicity. In his book "The Roar and the Silence," Ronald James expertly explores the Comstock's unique social workings. According to James, in this 1863 depiction of "Hurdy Gurdy Girls" in a Virginia City music hall, artist J. Ross Browne provides some intriguing insight into the performers and clientele of a run-of-the-mill performance venue.

The dancer in the center is portrayed with distinctly "Irish" features according to standards of the day. She has a rounded face with large cheeks, a recessed chin, and a puggish nose. The overall impression is somewhat impish or elf-like, and we find such depictions quite common in nineteenth century American cartoons depicting the Irish. This also coincides with stereotypes of the day that the majority of Irish women were prostitutes and/or of questionable moral persuasion. No decent woman would ever perform professionally as a musician or dancer, so she had to be Irish.

Second, the male figure near the center of the back row is noticeably darker than the other clientele. On closer inspection, he appears to be African American. This is astonishing for a number of reasons. First, it implies that Virginia City was not generally segregated, at least for African Americans. Second, the Virginians are demonstrating an amazing amount of enlightenment, by nineteenth century standards, in allowing an African American to participate in the enjoyment of a performance by White women who not only danced but who dealt in sexual transactions. It appears, at least according to J. Ross Browne, that entertainment in Virginia City involved many players from diverse backgrounds who were sometimes drawn together by music.

Boris Vian and American Daydreaming

Under the pseudoym of Vernon Sullivan, a fictitious African American author in need of a Francophone translator, twentieth century French writer Boris Vian inspired an international scandal and mythologized the American cultural landscape for generations of Europeans. Sensational and provocative, Vian's romans noirs (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, Les morts ont tous la meme peau, Elles se rendent pas compte, and Et, on tuera tous les affreux) tackle taboos such as race, sexuality, and violence through the lens of the shrewd Absurdist eye. His interpretations of the American landscape, while jarringly stereotypical in their noir-esque renderings, also contain astonishing clarity in the denunciation of racism.

From the Deep South to the metropolis, Vian cuts away the polished facade of 1950s America to reveal an alternate landscape, a seedy underbelly rife with rape, murder, and revenge. The creation of a distinct sense of place is both astonishing in parts and faulted in others as Vian never personally visited the United States. His sense of place is largely achieved, not through careful attention to detail, but emphasis on the racial tensions pervading the United States of the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, his settings focus not on particular locale but rather America as a whole.

This is the America where an African American could be both a decorated war veteran and a humiliated passenger forced to the back of the bus, an America that boldly appropriated jazz music and filtered it through White musicians and venues while denigrating and belittling its African American inventors. Vian never provides the reader with an intimate presentation of a regionalized American setting but rather a broad depiction of White suburban America as a whole. He contrasts this with the plight of a fringe element, light skinned African Americans who attempt to pass themselves off as White. Ironically, as Vernon Sullivan, Boris passes himself off not only as Black but as African American.

By painting America with a broad brush, he implicates the entire country in his generic portrayals of American vernacular landscapes and the rampant racism underlying them. Moreover, he exploits representations of the United States familiar to French readers to the fullest extent. Ever a master of popular culture, Vian infuses his novels with a heady dose of America, from Hollywood icons to smoke-filled jazz clubs, while still conveying distinct messages against racism. Vian's settings are not regionalized but rather nationalized, because racism was a national topic.

Peter Brueghel the Elder

Popular Landscape

Specializing in landscapes populated by peasants, Brueghel is often credited as one of the first landscape artists to paint landscape for landscape's sake rather than focus on religious or historical themes. Due to his detailed depictions of common life among the peasantry, Brueghel distinguished himself from contemporaries who tended to focus on aristocratic and/or religious activities. His earthy, unsentimental portrayals provide excellent records of village rituals such as agricultural practices, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games. In a sense, Brueghel's work provides a visual 'ethnography' of vanished folk cultures in terms of both physical and social aspects. In this work, Brueghel depicts about 100 identifiable Netherlander idioms including some shared in English such as "swimming against the tide," "big fish eat little fish," "banging one's head against a brick wall," and "armed to the teeth." A comprehensive record of geography, culture, and folk practices, Brueghel maps out a peasant universe in this comprehensive work.

Albrecht Altdorfer

Dominant Landscape

In his work The Battle of Issus (or Alexander), Altdorfer's depiction of the famous battlefield is unequivocally dominated by the landscape rather than the human element. But, the historical content and warrior action are not central to the painting's composition. In fact, figures of soldiers are represented in miniscule scale and appear as extensions of the landscape rather than foci for the viewer. Considered to be one of the foremost painters of pure landscape, Altdorfer employed the Danube valley as inspiration for his lush forest scenes and gently rolling hills. This unusual painting was commissioned by William IV, Duke of Bavaria as one of a suite by various artists. Considered to be one of his most famous and best works, Altdorfer's chosen perspective takes a hypothetical view of the whole Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile and the Red Sea (behind the isthmus to the left). It is thought to be the earliest work of art to document the curvature of the Earth from a highly elevated vantage point.

Lucas Cranach

Universal Realism

In his masterpiece The Stag Hunt of the Elector, Cranach employs an aerial perspective reminiscent of Patinir's bird's-eye view. His realistic depictions of flora, fauna, and practices associated with hunting provide a comprehensive record of game hunting in the 16th century. In the distance, Cranach hints at an urban setting, and a castle looms over the entire scene validating the authority of the royal hunt. Cranach's rich use of geographical detail is apparant in the effusive portrayal of thick forests and river currents. The subject of a royal hunt is holistically documented in the artist's fastidious attention to detail.

Joachim Patinir

World Landscape

In his painting Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, Patinir employs a bird's-eye view over an expansive landscape encompassing both heaven and hell. This type of composition is known as a Weltlandschaft ("world landscape.") Patinir depicts the famed boatman of Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Inferno as he ferries a dead soul across the river Styx. Patinir symbolizes heaven and hell through his color choices. On the lefthand side, heaven is represented in vivid blue skies, sparkling turquoise rivers, and green, lushly forested hills. On the righthand side, a dark sky filled with ominous clouds and fiery flames hints at the horrors waiting behind the gates of Hell guarded by the sleeping three-headed dog Cerebus. The placement of Charon's boat in the center of the painting emphasizes the uneasy fate of the passenger caught between these two worlds. Based on observations of landscapes native to Patinir's native homeland the Netherlands, this work represents a synthesis of the local, national, and universal.

Cosmography & Autopsy

In his essay collection entitled Geography & Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World, Denis Cosgrove explores the historical linkages between geography and cosmography. Cosmography is the science of mapping the universe and attempts to describe both the heaven and the earth. According to Cosgrove, "Cosmographers mapped spaces well beyond the surface of the earth, recognizing the inseparability of terrestrial and celestial forms and patterns" (34). By the end of the Renaissance, a rise in technologies (e.g. the camera obscura and optical lens) and new empirical ways of viewing the world led to a crisis in cosmology. On one hand, religious critics argued that cosmographers were attempting to raise themselves to the level of the Creator in their ambitious pursuit of knowledge, not unlike the Biblical caution against hubris depicted in Brueghel's Tower of Babel to the left. On the other hand, since certain aspects of cosmography (such as the study of heaven) were based on second rather than firsthand knowledge, cosmography fell outside the range of what was construed to be scientific and verifiable. Cosgrove calls the new eyewitness approach "autopsy." Interestingly, he notes, "those who came closest to achieving such a cosmographic autopsy were not the scholars but the painters" (42).