Americana is a broad term that refers to artwork and objects that reflect the cultural identity of the United States. Often, such works are suffused with nostalgia for a bygone era and evoke a broad sense of familiarity. Americana draws on folklore, history, and images and symbols that dot the American countryside. Beginning in the 1920s, Regionalist artists such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton made paintings and prints that showed idealized scenes of American life, often outside of large cities. Their figurative art stood in contrast with the abstraction that dominated the avant garde. Such works as Benton’s …
Americana is a broad term that refers to artwork and objects that reflect the cultural identity of the United States. Often, such works are suffused with nostalgia for a bygone era and evoke a broad sense of familiarity. Americana draws on folklore, history, and images and symbols that dot the American countryside. Beginning in the 1920s, Regionalist artists such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton made paintings and prints that showed idealized scenes of American life, often outside of large cities. Their figurative art stood in contrast with the abstraction that dominated the avant garde. Such works as Benton’s America Today murals (1930 – 1931) showed the diversity of the national landscape and the people who populated it.
Not all Americana was driven by sincere affection for the nation. Jasper Johns, a mid-century American artist associated with Pop Art, made paintings of, as he said, “things the mind already knows,” that would be familiar to his viewers. These included American flags, Ballantine Ale cans, and maps of the United States. These icons function as representations of America, but also, in the era of the Vietnam War, as critiques of the country’s jingoism.
