A UNIQUE
SLANT OF LIGHT:
THE BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ART IN LOUISIANA
by Michael Sartisky, Ph.D.
Arguably the most tangible, durable, and important artifact that An Introduction
will be produced as part of the celebration of the impending e oen ephemeral and exotic quality of the art of Louisiana
Clarence Millet
bicentennial of Louisiana statehood in 2012 will be a history of the art may best be grasped by an appreciation of the unique and also
of the state. e title of this history, commissioned by the Bicentennial tenuous nature of the state’s very being, both in geologic and
Commission chaired by Gen. Russell Honore, is A Unique Slant of human time. Louisiana literally rests on land inherited from the
Light: e Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana. e project will rest of the American continent and deposited in sediment layers by
take three forms: a handsome commemorative hardcover book of 375 the riparian cycles of the Mississippi River where open water once
color pages featuring approximately 275 artists and photographers, lay. And yet today, Louisiana’s hold on this land is tenuous with a
and a digital version of the book which in turn will be linked to fully mass equivalent to the state of Connecticut being washed away
articulated entries on each artist and genre in KnowLA: the Digital with every passing year. e land loss is accelerated by the
(1897-1959)
Claiborne Court, c. 1940-1950,
Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture (www.knowla.org). inexorable collaboration of man and nature: the containment of
oil on canvas board; 157⁄8 x 175⁄8 in.
e KnowLA entries will include a full the Mississippi River and its tributaries
Clarence Millet, one of most important and prolific painters working in 20th-century New Orleans, earned a national reputation. In 1943, he was one of the
Courtesy of the Haynie Family Collection
few Southerners elected as an associate to the National Academy of Design. Millet was not an innovator but rather popularized a light-filled breezy style of
biography of each selected artist and a by man-made levees, dams and other
impressionism, which influenced his contemporaries and later 20th-century Southern artists. Like many of his contemporaries, he painted the picturesque
much more elaborated image gallery of erosion control measures upstream
architecture of the old French Quarter and the freshness of the surrounding Louisiana countryside with “a sense of motion and vigor.” He was fond of saying,
“I paint things I know, see and feel. I try to impart to the beholder an experience I have seen and felt.” —Susan Saward
their work than the book itself can channeling what sediment remains
accommodate. e book is edited by over the continental shelf; coupled
Michael Sartisky, Ph.D., president of the with the gradual settling and
Louisiana Endowment for the subsidence of the coastal soil;
Humanties (LEH) and editor-in-chief of pollution and channel cutting through
Louisiana Cultural Vistas and the marshlands; and then, too, the
KnowLA; J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D., rising sea levels and increasingly larger
director emeritus of the Ogden Museum and more devastating hurricanes.
of Southern Art; and John R. Kemp, It is a unique terrain and an equally
LEH deputy director emeritus. A truly unique culture that has evolved and
collective and collaborative effort, the adapted to it. Artists both native born
entries are being authored by dozens of and immigrant to the state have been
captivated by the unique, fragile, and
10 Louisiana EndowmEnt for thE humanitiEs • Winter 2011-12
notable scholars and the images have been contributed by private elusive quality of the state and its culture. Especially in Southeast
collections and the major museums and archives, including, among Louisiana and the environs of New Orleans the inherent plainness
others, e Ogden Museum of Southern Art, e Historic New of a deltaic terrain yields a perspective that lacks vast vistas and
Orleans Collection, the Louisiana State Museum, the LSU Museum of perspectives, but rather emphases the shortened sightlines cut off
Art, the Meadows Museum at Centenary College of Louisiana, and the by bends of a meandering river or bayou and the interiority
New Orleans Museum of Art. enforced by the dark canopies of live oaks and their encircling
is article offers a modest sample of art works culled from the full limbs. us it is easy to imagine the fascination with the bayous
array of artists and genres to be depicted from the colonial period of and the aqueous quality of the light suffused through the humid air
the 18th century to the present moment, as exemplified by our of John Alexander Drysdale, Joseph R. Meeker, Knute Heldner,
magazine cover image of the powerful and idiosyncratic late-life Rhea Gary, and Simon Gunning. It is a landscape that clings to and
portrait of Andrew Jackson by Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans, circles back on itself both in reality and in the imagination.
painted during sittings on the occasion of the former president’s visit to In contrast to the largely English and classical architectural
New Orleans in 1840. styles of the colonial New England and Atlantic coast states, the
