Narrative Art
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The challenge for the narrative artist is to orchestrate various figures and their setting so that the significance of the depicted incident, or "story," is clearly communicated. John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark is a masterful example of narrative staging. The painting illustrates a true story from the life of Brook Watson, London's mayor at the time, who had been attacked by a shark as a youth. Every element in Copley's composition--from the frenzied actions of the rescuers to the look of horror on the victim's face--contributes to the drama of this scene.
Religion provides other sources for narrative art. Some of the earliest surviving American works are of biblical subjects. Benjamin West created many works based on the Bible, such as The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, an emotionally charged drama of light and gesture in the romantic style. For the self-taught artist Edward Hicks, a passage in Isaiah inspired scores of paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom, an Edenic forest where even natural adversaries coexist in harmony. Hicks also painted several versions of William Penn meeting the Indians, which he saw as a parallel for the Isaiah story. This meeting, while documented only anecdotally, by Hicks' day had taken on mythic qualities. Hicks emphasized the connection between the stories by combining the two scenes in a single composition.
Other literary sources for narrative art include the work of American writers such as Washington Irving. His popular tales were the source for both Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman and The Return of Rip Van Winkle. The theater also inspired narrative works, as in Albert Pinkham Ryder's Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens. The work depicts a scene in Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, the last opera of Wagner's epic "Ring Cycle." The artist told of being so moved by the performance that he rushed home to spend all night painting this work.
Another narrative strategy involves the use of allegory. Here, the artist is not illustrating an existing literary source, but is telling a story based on a concept or principle. For example, Allegory of Freedom, painted during the Civil War, provides a visual celebration of the abolition of slavery. Narratives of this type continued to be popular through the nineteenth century. Thomas Cole's elaborate series The Voyage of Life is presented as an allegory in four parts. The sequence follows the protagonist from infancy to youth, adulthood, and old age. The human voyage parallels the cycles in nature, including the times of day and the seasons. Not only is there a moral message of the need for salvation, but possibly also historical meaning--some observers relate the castle-in-the-air optimism of Youth to the abundance and promise of the young nation.
Early-twentieth-century realist artists used narrative as a vehicle for social comment. George Bellows' Murder of Edith Cavell protests the execution of a British nurse during World War I. Reginald Marsh combines this social awareness with elements of satire in his prints of upper-class revelry in New York, providing a window into urban life. Similarly, in the 1930s such artists as Thomas Hart Benton revealed aspects of the midwestern experience to the rest of America. Some of the best examples of narrative art are found in the work of Jacob Lawrence, who recounted African American history in a powerful, abstract, graphic style. In keeping with the narrative tradition, Lawrence uses dramatic compositional effects to call the viewer's attention to the important elements of the story.
Modern and contemporary works can also carry narrative content--even nonrepresentational works. Barnett Newman's abstract series, Stations of the Cross (1964), suggests a sequential unfolding of meaning. It is based on the medieval tradition of pilgrimage through episodes of Christ's Passion. In Newman's interpretation of the pilgrimage, these episodes symbolize aspects of universal suffering. In a different vein, the artist Jonathan Borofsky gives detailed narrative instructions to the viewer by actually imbedding a story in the title of his 1983 work, I dreamed I was having my photograph taken with a group of people. Suddenly, I began to rise up and fly around the room. Half way around I tried to get out the door. When I couldn't get out, I continued to fly around the room until I landed and sat down next to my mother who said I had done a good job!. Thus, narrative continues to figure among the strategies of contemporary artists.
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