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What makes Thomas Cole’s “Course of Empire” Cycle as Relevant Today as in the 19th Century
83 Plays2 years ago
This week Benjamin Miller is joined by filmmaker Rachel Gould, better known on YouTube as the Art Tourist, to discuss Thomas Cole’s Course of Empire cycle of about 1834–1836. A watershed in the genre of landscape painting, Cole’s canvases use an allegory of empire—germination, prosperity, decline—to preach a cautionary tale about environmental and spiritual overreach. It was message delivered with earnest intent to the citizens of the young and ravenous American republic, and is hardly less relevant today.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' and Emotional Impact of Cole's Paintings
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
There's a group of five paintings at the New York Historical Society that I have loved for a long time.
00:00:20
Speaker
Partly I like them because they're beautiful and large and impressive, but they also carry a message that personally I find somehow both ominous and comforting at the same time.
00:00:32
Speaker
It's one of the remarkable things about art that it can hold contradictions like that.
00:00:36
Speaker
And there are other contradictions in these paintings too.
00:00:40
Speaker
I think it's the kind of contradiction that makes you pause and question your assumptions, your beliefs, even your experience.
00:00:49
Speaker
The paintings are by the artist Thomas Cole.
00:00:52
Speaker
They're called The Course of Empire, and they are today's curious object.
00:00:57
Speaker
But this is not going to be an academic art history talk because my guest is someone who approaches art in a way that honestly I want to get better at doing myself.
00:01:06
Speaker
And I think you might feel the same way.
Rachel Gould's Favorite Art Periods and Influences
00:01:09
Speaker
Rachel Gould is the face and the voice of The Art Tourist, a YouTube channel about art and artists, which I actually had the great pleasure of joining earlier this year for a special video they did about antique silver.
00:01:22
Speaker
And there are, you know, a lot of YouTube channels about art.
00:01:26
Speaker
But what I love about Rachel and the Art Tourist is that she communicates more than just the facts and the academic and intellectual interpretations, etc., etc.
00:01:37
Speaker
Rachel helps us, I think, in a deeper way to connect with art and to really get it.
00:01:44
Speaker
And, you know, the history and the context and the intellectual study, that's all important.
00:01:49
Speaker
And you'll find plenty of that in the Art Tourist videos.
00:01:52
Speaker
But Rachel helps us to understand that all of that is really a means to an end.
00:01:58
Speaker
And the ultimate goal of looking at art is to feel something and maybe discover something about yourself and about the world.
00:02:06
Speaker
She did a terrific video all about Thomas Cole, which includes a section about these paintings in particular.
00:02:12
Speaker
And watching that actually gives me goosebumps.
00:02:15
Speaker
So Rachel, I am so happy that you could join me.
00:02:17
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:02:19
Speaker
You made me sound so fabulous.
00:02:21
Speaker
Oh, you simply are.
00:02:23
Speaker
That was difficult to do.
00:02:25
Speaker
I'm excited to be here.
00:02:25
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:27
Speaker
Let's start with some rapid fire questions.
00:02:28
Speaker
Are you ready?
00:02:28
Speaker
All right, let's do it.
00:02:30
Speaker
Okay, I'm giving you an unlimited budget.
00:02:33
Speaker
Well, maybe not me.
00:02:34
Speaker
Some fantastically wealthy person is giving you an unlimited budget to buy artwork for your home.
00:02:40
Speaker
But there's a catch.
00:02:42
Speaker
It all has to be from the same period in the same region.
00:02:44
Speaker
What period and region are you going to choose?
00:02:48
Speaker
Hmm.
00:02:49
Speaker
Victorian England.
00:02:51
Speaker
Wow.
00:02:53
Speaker
Interesting.
00:02:53
Speaker
I think that's an unusual choice.
00:02:55
Speaker
Do you think?
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, people think of Victorian England as being so fussy and frou-frou, but obviously there's a lot of great art that came out of it.
00:03:05
Speaker
I'm a big fan of the pre-Raphaelites and a big fan of the arts and crafts movement, as in William Morris, for example.
00:03:13
Speaker
So there's an abundance of gorgeous art from that period.
00:03:18
Speaker
Terrific.
00:03:19
Speaker
What's your favorite museum that listeners might not know about?
00:03:23
Speaker
Perhaps a lesser known museum would be the National Gallery of Scotland.
00:03:29
Speaker
I was there last Christmas and it was just the time of my life.
00:03:32
Speaker
I spent three days in that museum.
00:03:35
Speaker
I was very envious.
00:03:37
Speaker
I graduated from the University of Edinburgh, so the Scottish capital has a real special place in my heart.
00:03:43
Speaker
What's the most interesting location that you've gone to for art tourist filming?
00:03:48
Speaker
I would say the Nicholas Roerick Museum on the Upper West Side.
00:03:53
Speaker
It's obviously not the most exotic location that you can visit to see art, but the story behind this man's life is absolutely wild.
00:04:02
Speaker
And it was really fascinating to see his work in person.
00:04:06
Speaker
I grew up on the Upper West Side and I had no idea that this place was there.
00:04:10
Speaker
It's kind of tucked away on 105th Street near Riverside Park.
00:04:13
Speaker
And it was a special experience to not only see the art, but to have the context of who this artist and mystic was.
Influential Art and Personal Favorites
00:04:24
Speaker
Of course, we would love to one day go further afield, but for now, we've stayed relatively local just for practical purposes.
00:04:32
Speaker
So I would say that museum.
00:04:34
Speaker
I loved your video about that museum.
00:04:36
Speaker
I thought that was fantastic.
00:04:37
Speaker
I hope listeners will check that out.
00:04:40
Speaker
What movie has the most interesting depiction of art or artworks?
00:04:45
Speaker
It's funny that you mentioned that because one of our viewers recently reminded me of the scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where I think they go to the Art Institute of Chicago.
00:04:54
Speaker
And I hadn't seen the movie in a while.
00:04:55
Speaker
And so I pulled it up on YouTube and just watched that one particular scene.
00:04:59
Speaker
And there's some really incredible cameos in there.
00:05:02
Speaker
Not cameos, jewelry cameos, but really wonderful works of art.
00:05:07
Speaker
And it's a long sequence of masterworks.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny.
00:05:12
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I hadn't thought about that in a long time.
00:05:14
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, Surratt, of course, makes a very prominent appearance in that movie.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's a Chagall and it's very dreamy.
00:05:23
Speaker
It's a dreamy sequence.
00:05:25
Speaker
What artist living her dad would you invite to dinner?
00:05:29
Speaker
Oh, you know who would be fun?
00:05:30
Speaker
Gertrude Abercrombie.
00:05:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:05:32
Speaker
She was a party gal.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:34
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Yeah.
00:05:34
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What a personality.
00:05:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:36
Speaker
And she loves cats.
00:05:37
Speaker
Right.
00:05:38
Speaker
So we could probably strike up a conversation.
Inspiration from Thomas Cole and Film Creation
00:05:40
Speaker
I bet.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:41
Speaker
Maybe she could actually shed some light on what those paintings, what the hell they actually mean.
00:05:48
Speaker
What I could use help with that anyway.
00:05:50
Speaker
What's the first painting that you remember falling in love with?
00:05:54
Speaker
Believe it or not, it was actually Thomas Cole's Desolation.
00:05:57
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I saw it when I was probably in middle school.
00:05:59
Speaker
I don't entirely remember the context of why I was at the New York Historical Society, but I do vividly remember that The Course of Empire was the first series of works that had a lasting impact on me, and particularly Desolation, I was just magnetically attracted to it.
00:06:17
Speaker
What's one book about art or art history that you would recommend to listeners?
00:06:22
Speaker
I actually just made a little video on Instagram about this.
00:06:24
Speaker
I would recommend On Ugliness by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco.
00:06:28
Speaker
Can't go wrong with Eco.
00:06:30
Speaker
What was the last artwork you saw that gave you a feeling of the sublime?
00:06:34
Speaker
I would say Two Men Contemplating the Moon by Caspar David Friedrich.
00:06:38
Speaker
It's at the Met and it's a painting that I can revisit time and time again and it never feels less impactful to me.
00:06:44
Speaker
Give us a sneak peek.
00:06:45
Speaker
What does it look like?
00:06:47
Speaker
So it pictures two men, one of whom is the artist, and they're contemplating the moon.
00:06:52
Speaker
They're on a stroll in the evening in the woods, and there's this beautiful crescent moon in a Friedrich-style purple sky.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I just think it's the most timeless concept, just two people awing at nature.
00:07:07
Speaker
I'm going to have to go take a look at that.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's really beautiful.
00:07:13
Speaker
We'll be right back with Rachel Gould to talk about Thomas Cole.
00:07:18
Speaker
If you want to have a mental image of these paintings while you listen, you can find photos at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast, or you can see them in person at the New York Historical Society.
00:07:28
Speaker
If you'd like to check out The Art Tourist on YouTube, which you should very much do, you can find them at youtube.com slash at symbol The Art Tourist.
00:07:39
Speaker
And they're also on Instagram at The Art Tourist.
00:07:41
Speaker
Also, if you enjoy this episode and you want more curious objects about paintings, we've got that for you.
00:07:48
Speaker
You can look up our episodes Corot's Impressionist Lunchbox.
00:07:52
Speaker
And also, Is It Real?
00:07:54
Speaker
A Caravaggio Rediscovered.
00:07:56
Speaker
And of course, our three-part series on the painting of Belisere and the Frey Children.
00:08:01
Speaker
And by the way, I can't say anything about that yet, but we're going to have more news about that painting soon.
00:08:06
Speaker
Thank you so much to everyone who has left us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
00:08:12
Speaker
That is really terrific.
00:08:14
Speaker
This is a totally free podcast and we don't do Patreon or anything like that.
00:08:19
Speaker
But another thing you could do if you want to support our work is to tell a friend about Curious Objects who you think might enjoy listening.
00:08:27
Speaker
Everything you do to help the show grow really means a lot to me.
00:08:31
Speaker
And at the end of the day, that is what allows us to keep bringing you these episodes.
00:08:34
Speaker
So thank you.
00:08:36
Speaker
If you want to get in touch with me personally, you can do that by email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Life Changes During COVID and Film Production
00:08:46
Speaker
I really love hearing from you.
00:08:51
Speaker
Okay, with all that said, I think it's time to talk about Thomas Cole.
00:08:56
Speaker
Rachel, I want to ask just right off the bat, why did you want to make a video about Thomas Cole?
00:09:03
Speaker
So I have this vivid memory in the peak COVID era.
00:09:08
Speaker
My husband, Jason, who was also my collaborator on The Art Tourist, we lost our jobs.
00:09:14
Speaker
We gave up our apartment in the city.
00:09:17
Speaker
And we were staying kind of indefinitely with family in Connecticut.
00:09:22
Speaker
It was the most chaotic and confusing and anxiety-inducing time for us.
00:09:29
Speaker
And so late one night, we were talking about making a documentary.
00:09:35
Speaker
And I think it's interesting when you're so untethered.
00:09:40
Speaker
you all of the parameters of normal society kind of like fall away and it gives you the space to dream bigger and maybe even impractically.
00:09:49
Speaker
So I don't want to go too far into detail about what this initial idea was, because I do hope that it eventually comes to fruition.
00:09:57
Speaker
But needless to say, it would require a budget that we didn't have, a super nice camera that we also didn't have and an extended stay actually in Scotland.
00:10:06
Speaker
So
00:10:08
Speaker
Even though we knew that perhaps we should cut our teeth on something a little bit more practical than that, it really lit me up from the inside out just thinking about doing something ambitious.
00:10:19
Speaker
And so eventually we started to think about more local figures who have had an impact on
00:10:26
Speaker
not only on the trajectory of art history, but on us personally.
00:10:31
Speaker
And so going back to what I was talking about before, I first encountered Cole's work when I was young and his work was really the first series of paintings that moved me.
00:10:45
Speaker
I was
00:10:45
Speaker
fortunate to grow up in New York City.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I luckily had a mother who forced me to do many different cultural things.
00:10:52
Speaker
But I was kind of like a free range kid.
00:10:54
Speaker
And I just wanted to roll around in the dirt.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I wanted to run a mile.
00:10:57
Speaker
I wanted to be outside.
00:10:58
Speaker
And the idea of a refined afternoon at the museum just did not appeal to me.
00:11:03
Speaker
Until that day.
00:11:21
Speaker
and something that transcended the materials that he used the genre that he was painting in and even the time period it just resonated with me and so it made perfect sense that we should make a film about thomas cole and then fast forward two years ago um around christmas time actually
00:11:42
Speaker
There was a resurgence with COVID and everything just felt really awful.
00:11:47
Speaker
I felt kind of despondent.
00:11:49
Speaker
And I went to the New York Historical Society because I had this intense craving to commune with Cole through the course of empire.
00:11:59
Speaker
And the paintings weren't there.
00:12:02
Speaker
I wandered the galleries.
00:12:04
Speaker
I asked every security guard I could find where they were.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I'm not entirely sure why they weren't on view, but it turned out that they were in storage and I couldn't see them that day.
00:12:14
Speaker
And I just felt absolutely shattered.
00:12:16
Speaker
I went home and I cried, honestly.
00:12:19
Speaker
And it made me realize that other people could benefit from connecting with Cole and his story.
00:12:23
Speaker
Maybe they're not as emotional about it as I am, but it started to come into focus that
00:12:29
Speaker
making this film that follows in his footsteps to the extent that we could follow in his footsteps might just have an impact on somebody.
Exploration of 'Course of Empire' Series and Its Themes
00:12:37
Speaker
It might, it's an interesting story.
00:12:39
Speaker
He was such an intrepid spirit and his work is really beautiful.
00:12:43
Speaker
So we wanted to, we wanted to share our,
00:12:47
Speaker
appreciation for his work.
00:12:49
Speaker
But we also wanted to include voices of art historical authority.
00:12:52
Speaker
So along the way, we visit curator Elizabeth Kornhauser in the American Wing at the Met, curator Wendy Ikamoto at the New York Historical Society, and Betsy Jacks, who is the executive director at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, which was Cole's home and studio in Catskill, New York.
00:13:09
Speaker
He would have known it as Cedar Grove.
00:13:12
Speaker
So this film marked a really significant turning point for us as creators and as people.
00:13:19
Speaker
When Jason first showed me the final edit, we both like projectile cried.
00:13:24
Speaker
It was the most profound sense of accomplishment I have ever experienced.
00:13:28
Speaker
It was like, and I hope I don't offend any mothers who might be listening.
00:13:32
Speaker
It was like a birth for me.
00:13:33
Speaker
It was this just so much pride.
00:13:37
Speaker
And the process of realizing this thing was fantastic.
00:13:41
Speaker
frustrating and it was laborsome and it was also absolutely amazing.
00:13:46
Speaker
And even though I can now take a step back and I can see the imperfections, it was our first film.
00:13:52
Speaker
It's an honest love letter to Cole and the Hudson Valley, which we got to see through his eyes while we were making it.
00:13:59
Speaker
And as he did, we totally fell in love with this place so much so that we actually moved up here last year and we just celebrated our first year in November.
00:14:10
Speaker
You know, I wonder if the Course of Empire was not on view at New York Historical Society when you went because it had gone over to the Met for their Thomas Cole show.
00:14:19
Speaker
I think that was a couple of years earlier.
00:14:22
Speaker
Honestly, I have I don't know if maybe they had them down for conservation or perhaps they were on loan elsewhere, but they weren't there and I needed to see them.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny.
00:14:32
Speaker
That show was actually the first time that I saw them in person.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yes, I remember that show is beautiful.
00:14:37
Speaker
Since then, I've gone over to, you know, made the pilgrimage to New York Historical Society because, you know, they, I was aware of them before, but seeing them in person, of course, made such a huge difference.
00:14:48
Speaker
And now they've etched their way into my soul.
00:14:51
Speaker
As they do.
00:14:53
Speaker
And it's interesting that this came about, as you put it, during that sort of untethering experience of COVID, when civilization felt like it had come loose at the seams in a lot of ways, which is very appropriate for the subject matter of the paintings, because the course of empire is the depiction of the rise and decadence and ultimately the collapse of this grand classical city.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I wonder if you would like to talk to us about the allegorical significance of that, which might be obvious, but it might also be subtle in some way.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was actually about to make a joke, but it's not exactly subtle.
00:15:37
Speaker
But just to give a little bit of background, Cole began the course of empire in the late 1820s.
00:15:42
Speaker
And as you mentioned, it traces the tragic arc of a civilization.
00:15:47
Speaker
And clearly, Cole is pulling from classical aesthetics in these paintings, seemingly ancient Rome.
00:15:52
Speaker
But the subject transcends time and place because, as we know, the rise and fall of empire is just the natural order of things wherever or whenever that civilization may be.
00:16:04
Speaker
He painted this five-part series for a man named Lumen Reed, who was a wealthy merchant in New York.
00:16:11
Speaker
And Reed actually died in 1836, just before it was completed.
00:16:15
Speaker
But luckily, Reed's family encouraged Cole to finish the project regardless, and it would become...
00:16:20
Speaker
in my opinion, and I think in many other people's opinions, his greatest contribution.
00:16:25
Speaker
So it is a deeply allegorical series of paintings.
00:16:30
Speaker
It's a five part cycle of paintings.
00:16:32
Speaker
And the first painting in the series is The Savage State.
00:16:35
Speaker
And in it, we see the dawn of a new civilization.
00:16:39
Speaker
We see this society emerging.
00:16:41
Speaker
And it actually looks like dawn is the time of day.
00:16:45
Speaker
One figure is hunting a deer, we see a small village around a fire, but there's this sense of struggle or tension between nature and culture as this nascent civilization emerges in the wilderness.
00:16:59
Speaker
In the next painting, which is the Arcadian state, we see this harmony between nature and culture.
00:17:05
Speaker
The civilization is now established, but it's contained.
00:17:11
Speaker
As the people nurture the land, it nurtures them back.
00:17:13
Speaker
And so there's kind of this perfect balance that's been struck.
00:17:17
Speaker
In the third painting, The Consummate State, culture has far surpassed nature.
00:17:21
Speaker
Nature has been tamed and relegated to vases and man-made arrangements.
00:17:26
Speaker
And it's clear in this painting that the people of this civilization no longer worship the land the way that they do in the first and second paintings, but rather their own leaders and their own gods.
00:17:40
Speaker
And that seemingly inevitably leads to destruction and destruction.
00:17:44
Speaker
It's a scene of utter chaos.
00:17:47
Speaker
Those fabulous feats of architecture that we see in consummation are burning.
00:17:52
Speaker
There's an intense amount of bloodshed.
00:17:54
Speaker
And interestingly, that turbulent sky that appears in the first painting returns and it kind of foreshadows the balance between nature and culture that it's shifting back.
00:18:06
Speaker
And then finally, we end with desolation.
00:18:09
Speaker
This moonlit sky is illuminating the ruins of civilization, and nature is essentially reclaiming her domain.
00:18:17
Speaker
This painting is devastating.
00:18:18
Speaker
And yet, in my opinion, there's a strange optimism to it.
00:18:24
Speaker
The series is fascinating because when we typically think of the life cycle, it's with regard to nature.
00:18:30
Speaker
We think about the life cycle of a tree or an animal.
00:18:33
Speaker
And what Cole is describing here is the life cycle of culture, which reminds us that we are nature.
00:18:39
Speaker
And the nature of any cycle is that ends signal beginnings.
00:18:43
Speaker
And so the plant life that is growing all over the ruins and desolation is not the end of the story.
00:18:49
Speaker
It's the end of that civilization story, which is tragic in its own way.
00:18:53
Speaker
But it means that another one is on its way and a new cycle will
Environmentalism and Symbolism in Cole's Landscapes
00:18:57
Speaker
begin.
00:18:57
Speaker
And so for that reason, I sense comfort when I look at that painting in particular.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:19:05
Speaker
I think you just really put your finger on something that I was trying to think about on my own about my experience of this painting, which I described as
00:19:17
Speaker
both as paradoxically as sort of both ominous, but also comforting.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:22
Speaker
And that fresh beginning is certainly part of that comfort, I think, but maybe there's also a, a sense of a little bit of relief that the complexity and intricacy of society and culture is not, you don't have to worry about that anymore, that it's sort of, um,
00:19:43
Speaker
things are just simpler, they're a little bit easier to follow, a little bit easier to understand.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so it's less intellectually taxing, maybe.
00:19:54
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:19:54
Speaker
And the idea that this is part of nature just kind of means that that's the way that things are.
00:20:00
Speaker
Not that we shouldn't take measures to avoid our destruction and to avoid desolation, but I think there's just a comfort in, as you said, that you don't have to intellectualize it necessarily.
00:20:11
Speaker
It just, it is what happens.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, well, and so, I mean, Cole is, he is sort of the paradigmatic landscape, American landscape painter.
00:20:22
Speaker
And as you mentioned, you have the setting for all five paintings is it's the same location, the same sort of mythical imaginary valley.
00:20:34
Speaker
And so it's not a real place, but it does.
00:20:37
Speaker
Certainly, it is reminiscent of other paintings that Cole did of real places in some cases, particularly in the Hudson Valley.
00:20:48
Speaker
Is there a connection there?
00:20:51
Speaker
Eventually, yes.
00:20:52
Speaker
Cole lived during a period of rapid expansion and settlement in America.
00:20:57
Speaker
And there's actually a letter that he wrote to Lumen Reed, his patron, which documents his rage at what he calls the copper-hearted barbarians who were just tearing through the Catskills to build a railroad.
00:21:10
Speaker
And he was essentially living in the Arcadian state of the course of empire at that point.
00:21:14
Speaker
He was at Cedar Grove and...
00:21:17
Speaker
He found such profound peace and inspiration in the wilderness up in the Catskills.
00:21:24
Speaker
So he knew what was to come if this territorial expansion continued at the expense of the environment.
00:21:31
Speaker
So I'm just curious about Thomas Cole's personal politics and how those might connect with the narrative that he is trying to convey through these paintings.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, so Cole was, I believe, a conservative.
00:21:44
Speaker
That probably meant something different in the 19th century than it does today.
00:21:48
Speaker
I'm not a political historian, so I don't know the intricacies, but he was also one of the first environmentalists and
00:21:58
Speaker
the preservation of the environment was of the utmost importance to him.
00:22:04
Speaker
The 19th century was largely characterized by this concept of manifest destiny, the idea that it was America's divinely appointed destiny to expand westward.
00:22:15
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And of course, expansion comes at a cost, particularly to the environment.
00:22:19
Speaker
And Cole was especially sensitive to this because he saw firsthand growing up during the Industrial Revolution in England,
00:22:27
Speaker
What modern industry looks like and what the quality of life is in a modern society, it's a nightmare.
00:22:34
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But Cole was also a religious man, and he believed that the wilderness was God's creation.
00:22:39
Speaker
So the course of empire is a warning against the destruction of beauty and resources in the name of empire.
00:22:47
Speaker
To Cole, that was an act of desecration.
00:22:50
Speaker
Hey friends, it's Karamo, talk show host, life coach, and your next best friend.
00:22:54
Speaker
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00:22:55
Speaker
I'm hosting a new podcast called Started on WhatsApp Brotherhoods.
00:22:59
Speaker
We're going around the world to explore male friendships and all the wins, challenges, and bonds that are made in WhatsApp group chats.
00:23:07
Speaker
And that's exactly where you can listen to it.
00:23:09
Speaker
Right in the app.
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Speaker
It's streaming on the official WhatsApp channel.
00:23:12
Speaker
Just open the app and go to the updates tab to start listening.
00:23:15
Speaker
While you're at it, message your best friend and make sure they listen too.
00:23:19
Speaker
I'll see you there.
00:23:20
Speaker
So let's get a little more specific about some of the symbolic imagery because these paintings are so rich.
00:23:26
Speaker
They're, again, they're, they're quite large.
00:23:29
Speaker
They're very complex.
00:23:30
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They depict all kinds of different activities.
00:23:33
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Can you talk to us about some of the encoded messages that we might find in these, in these pictures?
00:23:40
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Yeah, so I actually got this from our interview with Wendy Ikamoto at the New York Historical Society.
00:23:45
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And she pointed out that the placement of Cole's signature is an interesting detail in each of the paintings.
00:23:52
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In the savage state, it's carved rather crudely into a rock.
00:23:56
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In the Arcadian state, it's beneath a boy who's drawing, a symbol of the emergence of the visual arts.
00:24:03
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In the third painting, it appears on the architecture of this great city.
00:24:07
Speaker
And then it's slashed onto a pedestal of a decapitated statue in the fourth painting.
00:24:13
Speaker
And in the fifth, it appears upside down on a fallen ruin.
00:24:17
Speaker
And I think that's just the most fascinating story.
00:24:21
Speaker
little tidbit that I had never noticed when I looked at the paintings, because if you haven't seen them in person, they're quite monumental.
00:24:28
Speaker
And particularly the third and fourth paintings are just they're pure chaos.
00:24:33
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They have hundreds of figures in them, and you wouldn't think to look for his signature.
00:24:38
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It's kind of hidden.
00:24:39
Speaker
But it gives you interesting insight into what Cole's opinion was on each state of the course of empire.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the consummation of Empire, in particular, the third painting, it really could be the setting for Where's Waldo?
00:24:54
Speaker
But there's so many people, so many activities.
00:24:59
Speaker
And it feels to me looking at it like it's opening windows into hundreds of stories that you can only imagine.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:07
Speaker
No, I was going to say, in addition to his signature, consummation, because it's so jam-packed with detail, has two interesting symbols that I think are worth noting.
00:25:18
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We see an emperor of sorts, perhaps some sort of a leader, being carried across a bridge in this large procession.
00:25:26
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He's surrounded by a crowd.
00:25:28
Speaker
And this might be a reference to
00:25:31
Speaker
the then president Andrew Jackson, who was spearheading the rapid settlement of the US, obviously much to Cole's chagrin.
00:25:38
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So you see a little bit of his opinion, you know, sliding back in there too.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I think on top of that, there's a connection to a statue of Minerva, who was the Roman goddess of wisdom, who essentially presides over the empire as this pillar of virtue.
00:25:56
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But she's positioned on a really tall pedestal at a notable height.
00:26:01
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Perhaps so high that she's been forgotten.
00:26:03
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And so, of course, in the following painting, Destruction, we see what happens when we lose sight of wisdom, which may in turn be a reference to President Jackson's hubris at that time.
The Sublime in Cole's Work and Its Emotional Resonance
00:26:15
Speaker
Interesting.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, that it's, it's always fascinating to look at these old pictures with political messages and think about how the impact the emotional impact and then the electoral impact of that painting on a viewer today is no, in no way lessened by the fact that, you know, Andrew Jackson is no longer president of the United States, thank God.
00:26:37
Speaker
But, you know, these images which had one context at the time they were painted take on new meanings, new contexts.
00:26:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:26:48
Speaker
So one concept that comes up in your video about Thomas Cole is the notion of the sublime.
00:26:55
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Yes.
00:26:57
Speaker
And at the risk of delving back into my undergraduate philosophy lectures, I wonder if we could talk about the role that the sublime plays in Thomas Cole's work more generally, but it's certainly present in the course of empire.
00:27:14
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It was important to me with this film that we framed Cole's work within the context of the sublime because, at least in my opinion, the presence of the sublime is what makes his paintings more extraordinary than a typical landscape.
00:27:30
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So the film actually opens with a definition of the sublime that was written in a treatise from 1757 by the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke.
00:27:41
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And it's interesting to think about Burke
00:27:45
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writing this treatise at the time because this was the Enlightenment era.
00:27:49
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So his peers and his contemporaries were thinking about rationality and reason and restraint.
00:27:56
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And he's trying to articulate this intensely emotional and psychological and spiritual phenomenon that
00:28:05
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That just overtakes us.
00:28:07
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And I know that I personally have experienced what that feels like when I see particular works of art, when I listen to certain music, and like whole when I'm out in nature.
00:28:17
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And so it was important that we try to convey
00:28:22
Speaker
how powerful the sublime is and how powerful a sublime experience is and the extent to which it does overtake your reason.
00:28:30
Speaker
Cole was not necessarily painting with reference to the sublime, but because he believed that he was essentially communing with the divine in nature, you really do sense that extra spark of something in his landscapes.
00:28:46
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Yeah.
00:28:47
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How would you say the sublime fits into your impression or your interpretation or experience of the course of empire?
00:28:57
Speaker
It's sublime in that he's tackling one of the loftiest subjects I can imagine, the rise and decline of an entire empire.
00:29:08
Speaker
To me, the sublime...
00:29:12
Speaker
relates to these really big subjects that kind of dwarf us.
00:29:17
Speaker
They make us feel really insignificant and small.
00:29:24
Speaker
Space and time, death and nature, as I say in the film.
00:29:30
Speaker
And so Cole's representation of the rise and decline of an entire civilization over the course of who knows how many years
00:29:42
Speaker
centuries, who knows how many millennia.
00:29:44
Speaker
Clearly, it's a long span of time.
00:29:46
Speaker
But the fact that it ends in desolation and death is sublime to me.
00:29:53
Speaker
I'm curious.
00:29:54
Speaker
We talked a little bit about the political environment that Cole was
Cole's Influence on American Art and Personal Reflection
00:30:00
Speaker
operating in.
00:30:00
Speaker
The patron you mentioned, Lumen Reed, presumably had his own reasons for wanting to support Cole's work on this.
00:30:12
Speaker
But beyond that, Cole clearly understood at some stage, at least, that these works were going to be seen by many people.
00:30:23
Speaker
And I wonder if you have a sense of who that intended audience was and what Cole might have wanted to say to them through these works.
00:30:33
Speaker
I think everyone, I think humankind, but particularly the American people, because he was living through this period of manifest destiny.
00:30:41
Speaker
And it was a warning.
00:30:42
Speaker
It was just a cautionary tale of what happens when we become too big for our boots and our hubris takes over.
00:30:49
Speaker
And, you know, as I had mentioned before, he...
00:30:53
Speaker
lived pre-Darwin and he was very religious.
00:30:55
Speaker
And he thought that when he came across this wilderness in the United States, that it had remained unchanged since God created it.
00:31:04
Speaker
And so what could be a more offensive act of desecration than to destroy God's creation in the name of expansion?
00:31:14
Speaker
Hmm.
00:31:15
Speaker
So we're talking about a British-born man who immigrated as a teenager to America.
00:31:21
Speaker
His painting style was developed entirely in America.
00:31:29
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But of course, the aesthetic connections between America and Britain in the early 19th century were still very, very close.
00:31:38
Speaker
You just mentioned the Hudson River School as being the sort of the first distinctively American school of art.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I wonder if you could say a few more words about that.
00:31:48
Speaker
How did this style start to diverge from British traditions and norms?
00:31:55
Speaker
Well, it's interesting learning about Cole's life because it doesn't seem like he lived that long ago, and yet he was there during the formative years of the United States.
00:32:04
Speaker
So when he came to the U.S., there were artists, but they were working very much in the style of other European artists.
00:32:14
Speaker
So it wasn't until Cole comes to the Hudson Valley that he imbues these landscapes with that sense of the sublime.
00:32:24
Speaker
He creates this new flavor of landscape that goes beyond just the typical landscape painting.
00:32:31
Speaker
He's not documenting the environment.
00:32:35
Speaker
He's recording how it feels to be in it.
00:32:37
Speaker
There is this emotional and spiritual element to his landscapes.
00:32:43
Speaker
And, you know, interestingly, in being British and pursuing a better life in the U.S., he was quintessentially American.
00:32:50
Speaker
Would he have painted another landscape with as much reverence if he lived in Canada or the Caribbean?
00:32:57
Speaker
Probably.
00:32:58
Speaker
But his story is indelibly linked to New York.
00:33:01
Speaker
And he's remembered as the father or founder of the Hudson River School, which, even though it seems outdated today and it's easy to pass by a Hudson River School landscape and just...
00:33:11
Speaker
Pay it no mind.
00:33:13
Speaker
It was a radical and pioneering American movement at the time.
00:33:16
Speaker
And the concept of an American art movement in itself was that was radical.
00:33:22
Speaker
So if listeners are going to remember just one thing about Thomas Cole, what would you like that to be?
00:33:31
Speaker
Give his work a chance.
00:33:32
Speaker
He, and I'm actually going to quote Jason on this one, he was in communication with a higher power and you can sense it.
00:33:40
Speaker
Landscape painting is an easy genre to disregard.
00:33:44
Speaker
It's not always very exciting.
00:33:46
Speaker
It can seem stuffy and old fashioned.
00:33:50
Speaker
But his landscapes are different.
00:33:51
Speaker
He just connected so profoundly with his surroundings.
00:33:56
Speaker
And it's funny because if you compare Cole's work to that of his protege, Frederick Church, for example, you can see that Church was far more technically skilled than Cole.
00:34:05
Speaker
And frankly, his paintings are more impressive.
00:34:07
Speaker
But Cole's paintings just have this undeniable passion that make them really inspiring to look at and almost more timeless because of it.
00:34:17
Speaker
So I wonder now that we've talked a little bit about the aesthetic context in which Cole was working, the influences that affected the style and composition of his paintings, with all of that intellectual work done and with the emotional context of the sublime that we've mentioned earlier,
00:34:41
Speaker
Taking all that into consideration, when you go to New York Historical Society and when the paintings are in fact on view and so you can stand in front of them and look up at them, how does that feel for you?
00:34:59
Speaker
It feels humbling in a word.
00:35:03
Speaker
I think it's important to find things in life, music, books, artworks, that bring you peace and give you hope.
00:35:13
Speaker
Cole is long gone, but his fears and his worries are pretty much always relevant, particularly to us today, which makes me feel less alone in my own anxieties about the future.
00:35:24
Speaker
So that connection is really incredible.
00:35:27
Speaker
But beyond that, how amazing is it to even momentarily connect with another person through the centuries?
00:35:34
Speaker
Cole has had such an impact on my life.
00:35:38
Speaker
And I can only hope that he would think that we've done him justice with our film.
00:35:43
Speaker
Well, Rachel Gould, thanks so much for talking with me today.
00:35:46
Speaker
Thank you.
00:35:48
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:35:54
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:35:57
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.
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