Alison Boyd

This project analyzes how specific artists from different American identity groups conceptualized their relationship to the soil through art in the 1930s–1940s: the African American artist Horace Pippin, the Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo, and the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Although the term “soil,” especially in the 1930s, is associated with mainstream nationalism, these artists rerouted these discourses to make their own political claims. Crucially, they did this by constructing the meaning of soil according to their specific histories, identities, and worldviews. In all three cases, the artists framed the American soil as the progenitor of their art production, while also using their art to shift the meaning, temporality, and boundaries of what constituted the American soil. This book will analyze both the different ways that artists and critics framed and employed the soil and the very different art that was produced by these claims, including pottery, paintings, murals, and photographs. More broadly, this research will put pressure on the construction and boundaries of the category of American art history to create a more expansive but also more complicated geographic and temporal framework. The book will examine the uses and depictions of the soil as a locus point for labor, gender, political, and ecological concerns in art and art history. Comparing these artists’ different strategies for relating to the soil is crucial for creating a deeper understanding of the American experience and valuing the way in which a range of different heritages have manifested and intersected in the United States.