Transatlantic Narratives about American Art: A Chapter in the Story of Art History's Hegelian Unconscious

American art before 1945 has traditionally been considered a minor chapter in the history of art. In order to change this perception, American art historians needed a narrative that could make a convincing case for these paintings' significance. German-speaking emigre scholars, who went to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s provided a crucial contribution by drawing on the Hegelianism in which they had been trained in Germany. This essay argues that their Hegelianism provided a central theoretical underpinning for interpretations of American art based on the idea of American Exceptionalism that have continued to dominate professional views of American art even in its recent revisionist phase.