Construction of the national hero mythologem in lifetime portraits of George Washington
Abstract
The end of the XVIII century is marked for the Americans not only with establishment of independence of the country, but also with formation of a single national identity. Contradictions which had been hampering this process had in many ways been overcome due to a special phenomenon — the myth of George Washington as an identifying hero. This work is an attempt to describe the complex way in which the myth of “the Father of the Nation” came into being by studying GW’s lifetime portraits. During the whole period of its evolution this process was marked with a constant clash between “ideal” and “real”, which took shape in two major pictorial strategies — a reductionist image of an ageless warrior and that of a statesman sacrificing himself for the good of his country. Each of these strategies had its own set of characteristics which depict the concept of the national symbol. Portraiture as a source of information enables to mark out main features which formed the basis of the mythologem, and to determine mechanisms of its functioning and its role in the creation of American identity.
Keywords:
George Washington, portraiture of the XVIII century, heroic myth, American art, national identity
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References
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Published
2014-06-03
How to Cite
Agranovksii, N. S. (2014). Construction of the national hero mythologem in lifetime portraits of George Washington. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Arts, 4(2), 53–71. Retrieved from https://artsjournal.spbu.ru/article/view/4488
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Visual arts
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Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Arts" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.
