The Art of Political Freedom: Alexander von Humboldt and the Hudson River School
In this RTF Lecture (delivered as a sequel to Benjamin West and Samuel Morse's Cultural War ), I introduce another episode in an ongoing series of lectures on the topic of classical painting with a focus on the political fight to establish a new type of nation on the earth premised upon the belief that each individual is sovereign.
This political ideal requires, of course, an integration of the emotions and reason which only art can provide, and an investigation into the movements led by such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller and Alexander von Humboldt in the new nation of the USA will be tackled in this presentation.
The rise and fall of the Hudson River School of American painting is treated in this lecture along, the brilliant artists Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church are also featured at some length and are contrasted with the perverse school of British imperial art which emerged with the figure of John Ruskin, the Pre-Rafaelite Society, hyper-realism and its twin impressionism is also outlined at length in this presentation.
