Review: Looking into Walt Whitman American Art, 1850-1920

Author: Prof. Ruth L. Bohan

ISBN: 9780271027029

The following review was contributed by: NORM GOLDMAN: Editor of Bookpleasures. CLICK TO VIEW Norm Goldman's Reviews

American poet, journalist and essayist, Walt Whitman has long been regarded as one of the most outstanding Western poets in the past one hundred and fifty years. Whitman was born in New York, the son of a Quaker carpenter and he is best known for Leaves of Grass that was first published in 1855, which Ralph Waldo Emerson described as being “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." Today, even after its first publication, Leaves of Grass still remains a landmark of American literary achievement. Whitman’s collection initially comprised twelve poems and when it was finally put to rest in 1891-92 it had grown to over found hundred. What is not widely known or understood is Whitman’s many friendships he had cultivated with artists- he posed for more than one hundred photographs as well as several dozen drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures.

As mentioned in the introduction to Looking into Walt Whitman American Art, 1850-1920, Ruth L. Bohan, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, stated intent is the pushing back the frontiers of Whitman studies. In her brilliant exploration Bohan exhibits a great amount of insight with some earnest and worthy discussion pertaining to the changing dynamics that modified the relationship between literature and the pictorial arts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Prof. Bohan states, “I locate Whitman’s interactions with American visual cultural within the changing circumstances of his life, the evolving character of his verse, and developments within the American art community."

Essentially what Prof Bohan has masterfully authored is a text book that merges biography, cultural history, and art history in order to illustrate how Whitman was an active participant in American visual culture “both as an object of the artist’s gaze and as an “agent provocateur" of the avant garde."

Looking into Walt Whitman American Art, 1850-1920 is filled with twenty-two color and eighty-two black and white images, several of which have never been seen before, and all mirror Whitman’s statement in Leaves of Grass and which prefaces Bohan’s tome: “I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes. We convince by our presence." This becomes quite apparent as you view among the many portraits illustrated in the book William J. Linton’s design of the wood block portrait of Whitman where it is pointed out “that hatless, his head turned in the direction of the viewer, Whitman appears to deny the flatness of the page and constructed space of the image." He appears to be leaning out with his intense gaze and “like the poet himself, will not be denied."

Bohan’s exhaustive study of these portraits is logically structured into two parts commencing with his early years and ending with the modernists. Bohan reminds her readers as to how an astonishing number of artists absorbed Whitman into the very fiber of their art during the time he was alive and for decades thereafter. It should be pointed out that Whitman strongly encouraged artist’s intent on representing his likeness and with each new edition of Leafs of Grace there seemed to emerge a new self-image.

Bohan has done some rigorous research and the book’s greatest strengths are its lack of embellishment. Almost every page is substantiated with references containing foot-notes and unbelievable images. This is an impressive study of an underappreciated part of Whitman’s life. It should be pointed out, however, that although the book is accessible to the average reader, it may prove to be somewhat dry to those who are not too familiar with art history and consequently some readers may have some difficulty in fully appreciating its contents.