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Joseph Lee

HSAR 487: Art in the Anthropocene

Professor Siobhan Angus

Final Paper

Christian Settler-Colonial Art and Modern Refutations

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth

and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature

that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1: 28, The Bible (NIV)

The western frontier was brought to life in newspapers, dime novels, church sermons, and

tourist guides, attaining a mythological status in 19th century American subconscious

(Hauptman). Of the many myths promulgated about this land, the idea that westward expansion

was divinely mandated achieved most renown. The American impulse to settle the west was

quite in line with its largely Puritan beliefs—as seen in Genesis, the first book of the Bible,

Christians were already under the impression that the natural world was theirs for the taking.

American settlers, by default, operated under the assumption that God had set them apart from

the natural world in order for them to domesticate it, to lorde over it as proxy for the deity

himself. This working theory of the natural world, first seen in their Creation Myth, had driven

colonization and empire for centuries already; white male colonizers transposed this Christian

dichotomy of ruler and ruled—of human and subhuman—onto their oppressive dynamics with

indigenous populations, enslaved peoples, and women.

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Artwork depicting the frontier very much reflected this classical understanding of white,

Puritan holiness—the original Hebrew word in Biblical canon literally translated as “set apart”.

What exactly did these settlers feel set apart from? A look at the work of frontier artists at the

time evinces the self-perceived distinction of the white man from the natural world (the frontier)

and Indigenous populations (stewards of the frontier). Frontier artists also relied upon gendered

depictions of landscape to make the stratification of man and nature more distinct, reflecting

colonial impulses of domination and perversion against women.

I will first interrogate the ways in which the artist Albert Bierstadt depicted the frontier in

order to perpetuate Christian colonial conceptions of gender roles, environmentalism, and

humanity. I will show that his artworks were not the grandiose masterpieces that they have been

celebrated as; his art was imbued with sociopolitical arguments about race and gender,

intentionally disseminated to the general public to entrench white, colonial supremacy.

Following this discussion, I will provide two modern examples of how this

settler-colonial worldview has been reimagined and challenged. First, I will present Silver

River—Housatonic, a modern landscape sculpture by Maya Lin, who struggles to balance the

message of the art with its contradictory means of extractive creation. Then, I will take a look at

Marie Watt’s dyad tapestry Things that Fly, Parts 1 and 2 as a more cohesive departure from

colonial frameworks.
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Settler-Colonial Depictions of the West

The whole continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode

of a great nation, yet unborn.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

The progenitors of the American colonial project have obsessively mapped and measured

the country at length since its inception as a fledgling colony. Bierstadt continues this

compulsive tradition with sweeping landscapes that portray western territories as uninhabited,

fertile, and young—adding fuel to the metaphorical fire set under the asses of American settlers

as they set out from East to West in search of land that was destined to be theirs (according to

“Providence”, as claimed by John L. O’Sullivan). Specifically, I will be looking at how Yosemite

Valley, Glacier Point Trail (1873) by Bierstadt relies on conventional gender norms and other

Christian rhetoric to reinforce the artist’s worldview.

The method by which Bierstadt produced his paintings of the frontier give us our first

look at how he understood the land he painted. At the time, it was popular for artists to utilize

plein-air studies; they “painted passages of scenery directly from nature and then used them as

the basis for finished studio compositions,” (Miller). This method was most convenient for

Bierstadt, who observed his natural subjects on government surveys into the west in the 1850s

and 60s (Hendricks). These expeditions generated much material for Bierstadt to then create

paintings such as Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail. Upon return to his studio, “Bierstadt

selected and recombined natural elements to emphasize a structured visual experience” (Miller).

Bierstadt essentially cherry-picked aspects of the environment that suited his colonial agenda, so

his depiction was not a faithful one. In the painting, he leaves out notable indications of
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settlement that has already occurred, such as railroads, bridges, and other man-made

constructions. And although he paints the burn patches in the meadow, which evidences the

indigenous population that already resided in the area, the untrained eye sees free real estate.

Consequently, the image that lingers in the mind of the viewer is an unadulterated, state of

nature—it was this image that was widely disseminated in order to attract tourists and settlers,

calling them to feast upon the “uninhabited” land rich in material resources and agricultural

fertility.

With all of these elements, Bierstadt creates a landscape reminiscent of the garden of

Adam and Eve—a young, perfectly untouched paradise. This parallel in imagery evokes those

Christian values of humans ruling the earth and the subhuman. In separating humanity from

nature, Christianity leaves humans apathetic to the violent extraction and desecration of the earth

that imperial and colonial powers would rely on.

In addition, the feminization of the land makes it even more palatable for settler

consumption. The sun crowns the scene with a hazy, luxurious glow, reminiscent of the halos

that surround so many pure, virginal figures in classical antiquity. The river snakes its way

beyond the valley and into the distance—this direction bolstered by perspective lines pointed

towards the horizon—inviting the travelers in the foreground and even the viewing audience to

journey onward. There is no sign of life in the lush, gaping meadow, but it is pregnant with the

promise of it. The scene is rife with paradox: the landscape is expected to be simultaneously

untouched as well as ready for settlement and extraction.

In feminizing the landscape, Bierstadt draws upon the Christian conceptions of gender

roles that began in the creation myth. The first woman, Eve, is made in order to help the first
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man, Adam. Later on, when they succumb to the temptations of the serpent, God condemns

Adam to a life of subsistence farming, while Eve is given the punishment of painful childbirth.

At this instance, the concept of fertility is born, both in terms of the earth and the womb. This

marks the start of a long tradition demonstrating the close proximity of the female body and the

earth in the white colonial imagination. Having been characterized by the Christian

consciousness as virginal and unscathed, both land and body have become vulnerable to the

exploitation and extraction that endures to the present.

Modern American Depictions of Landscape

Centuries later, the legacy of artists like Bierstadt lives on in medium ranging from

traditional landscape paintings to nature documentaries. Earth is often seen as a pristine

sanctuary better off without human presence, reflecting the colonial delusion that humans are

somehow distinct from the natural world. However, many artists have provided an alternative to

this white, colonial worldview. I will first discuss Maya Lin’s Silver River—Housatonic as a

modern work of art that fails to fully extricate itself from colonial practices, though it is certainly

a departure from a white worldview. Then, I will present Marie Watt’s dyad tapestry Things that

Fly, Parts 1 and 2 as a successful counterargument to Christian, colonial perceptions of the

natural world.

In recent years, Maya Lin has created many sculptures that take the form of various rivers

around the world. Silver River—Housatonic is modeled after a Connecticut river, its namesake,

that she often rowed as a part of the Yale Women’s Crew team (Thomas). She creates these

pieces because she wants to “focus on how we relate to the land, how we look at the land. We
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tend to not think of a river as a system. I'm hoping to get people to focus on [the river] as a living

organism, as a singularity," (Thomas). Lin’s instinct does, in a sense, seem to imbue a sense of

agency, identity, and complexity to a non-human entity. She wants to transform the way we

perceive the non-human world so that we can better understand the harms that we have caused to

it; she believes that “what we don't see, we tend to pollute,” (Thomas). However, her intention

seems to be at odds with her chosen material for this work, silver.

Lin has stated that she prefers to use silver for her river sculptures because the materiality

emulates the reflective quality of water. It also alludes to her fancy that rivers were once so

bountiful with fish that they were described as “running silver” (Bahn). However, in creating all

of her sculptures, one of which was 84-ft long, she uses a material laden with colonial histories

of extraction. Silver was one of the most prominent metals extracted from the Americas under

European colonialism and onwards; silver mining was one of the most socially and

environmentally destructive practices of colonizers (Young). The magnitude of slave labor

utilized and the carbon footprint of the mining both evidence the unprecented impact on the

continent and its inhabitants.

Lin prides herself in using recycled silver for her projects; however, the truth is that much

of today’s recycled silver can be dated back to initial extraction under colonization—the silver

mined at the time was so immensely vast that it is still in circulation today (Hubbard). It is ironic

that Lin’s artwork, which is so occupied with how humans have impacted the natural world,

expresses no self-awareness about the very material it is constructed from and the violent

histories it represents. It is difficult for Lin’s work to fulfill her initial intent when it is made of

materials that tell a much more different story.

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In Things that Fly, Parts 1 and 2, Marie Watt maps out the trajectory of her life onto a

two-part landscape, honoring the Seneca Nation creation story and transposing it onto

environments that she has inhabited. The dyad takes on the silhouette of wings and the tapestry is

speckled with all sorts of flying objects, alluding to the story of Sky Woman—the first Senecan

ancestor who, ironically, fell from the heavens onto a place known as Turtle Island (Rooth). She

was supported by an assorted lot of animals who taught her how to live on the earth, which is

how animals received recognition as first teachers.

There is a stark contrast with the Biblical creation myth, wherein knowledge and divinity

originated from God above. In Watt’s cultural creation story, the animals and the natural world

are the ones who teach a goddess to live and survive. Immediately, Watt’s work begins with a

wholly subversive conception of natural hierarchy; to be more accurate, there doesn’t actually

appear to be one. The Seneca creation story emphasizes the coexistence of the divine and the

natural, of human and non-human.

Watt has embedded the tapestry of reclaimed wool blankets with flying entities that she

has seen across the country. Hot air balloons and UFOs signify her time in Santa Fe, while

Boeing airplanes and drones recall her home in the Pacific Northwest. Herons, hawks, and other

birds—first teachers from whom humans have learned to fly—soar throughout the landscape

alongside their technological counterparts. However, their silhouettes and bodies lack distinct

boundaries, and the stitching is often so layered and intertwined that it becomes difficult to see

form clearly.

Watt wants us to “reflect upon our twenty-first-century environment as both thriving and

vulnerable,” (McCleary). She celebrates this ambiguity of form, challenging the Christian
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stratification between the natural and the human. The tapestry challenges our ability to envision a

world where our human creations can coexist with the natural world. Whereas the colonial

worldview would imagine that beings like drones and planes have no place in our skies, Watt

accepts them as a part of a new technological ecology. This also challenges our understanding of

what it means to be non-human, as animals and technological entities—two ostensibly distinct

beings—fall under the same label. At the same time, she acknowledges the ecological crises

caused by the excessively extractive processes used to create these human creations. There is a

careful balance to be struck, represented by a large eagle serving as the main symbol of Prey and

a plane as the symbol of Predator. Looking at the tapestry—attempting to understand how the

entities exist together—is in and of itself an exercise in moving forward with care and attention

to the natural world.

Watt’s refusal of a dichotomy between the human and the non-human also leaves no

room for the imposition of a gendered dichotomy, as Bierstadt had included with his original

landscape. If any concept of gender is being presented, it is most strongly found in the source

material of Sky Woman and the medium/technique being used.

In the Creation Myth, Sky Woman contains a multidude of identities and capabilities: she

is a goddess, a mother, a farmer, and a builder. Through learning from the animal inhabitants of

the earth she has fallen to, she is able to lay the foundations of a society that eventually becomes

the Seneca Nation. Unlike virginal figures in classical Christian texts, there are no paradoxes

present within Sky Woman’s femininity—none of her identities are made to be at odds with one

another. Moreover, if animals are first teachers, then Sky Woman is the first student. She

embodies the Senecan values of learning from the environments that people inhabit because

people are naturally a part of them.

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Watt also wants to honor the legacy of the crafts of sewing, quiltmaking, and embroidery,

all of which have been traditionally used by women in her culture. The act of storytelling has

always been implicit in the art and the practical items that they make. Oral tradition and visual

storytelling from generation to generation are the ways in which women have upheld community

identity. In this way, they are the progenitors as well as the guardians of their culture.

Watt chooses the medium of quilt intentionally, acknowledging the fraught history of the

malicious transfer of disease by colonizers that decimated swaths of indigenous populations.

What was once used as a weapon is being reclaimed as art, as a medium to tell the story and give

life to the culture of those it once destroyed. The shape of the quilts themselves, outstretched like

a pair of wings, represent their culture’s ability to transcend the histories of violence they’ve

endured. Each member of the dyad, every predator and prey, is necessary in order for this work

of art to take flight.

Conclusion

The Christian tradition heavily influenced perceptions of race, gender, and environment

held by white settlers at the time of westward expansion. Their Christian imagination warped

perceptions of body and land into entities that were easily taken advantage of and extracted.

Centuries later, artists such as Maya Lin and Marie Watt grapple with the rampant practices of

extraction that continue to this day. While Maya Lin creates a piece that, in theory, honors

waterways and challenges the pollution facing them, we find that it is extremely difficult to

create art in the aftermath of such ecological disruption by colonial forces. Luckily, Marie Watt’s

vision, which pulls from her indigenous ways of thinking and refutations to Christian tradition,

saves her artwork from being another victim of the settler-colonial appetite.
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