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By Associated press
ATLANTA – At a time when southern counties, cities, and states are removing or recovering Confederate monuments, one of the largest paintings of the American Civil War will be reopened to the public on Friday.
But works of art have never been designed to celebrate Confederation, say historians.
Atlanta's Cyclorama depicts charges, wounded soldiers, cannon shots and smoke on a battlefield of the American Civil War in Atlanta. Union troops defeated Confederate forces before torching much of the city.
The painting also takes viewers into another, more personal battleground in the mind, one involving memory, facts, fiction, propaganda and fictionalized representations of history, according to historians.
German immigrants who painted at the American Panorama Company in Milwaukee created the work intended for a northern audience to celebrate a northern victory at the Battle of Atlanta.
"So when people worry about Confederate monuments – those who want to hug them and those who want to demolish them – they will be surprised to discover that this is not the case," he said. said Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. "And it is at that moment that you have the opportunity to have a glimpse and learn."
DIVERGENT VIEWS OF HISTORY
The painting was made about 22 years after the Battle of Atlanta in 1864. It made its debut in Minneapolis in 1886.
When the artwork was transferred to Atlanta in 1892, Confederate sympathizers focused on the value and courage they displayed, said Gordon Jones, senior military conservator at the center. history. It was announced in Atlanta as "the only Confederate victory ever made".
"It's one of the biggest touch-ups of an artifact," Jones said.
Although the painting represents a victory in the north, Southerners saw in this painting an Atlanta stand out as a mythical phoenix, a symbol still used today on police cars and town buildings.
"The more you learn about this painting, the more history will be remarkable," Jones said. "And the story is certainly that of an artifact that changes meaning over time, depending on how you look at it."
IMAX FILMS OF THEIR DAY
Before Hollywood movies, cycloramas such as "The Battle of Atlanta" were considered the virtual reality of their time.
"It's meant to surround you, to be that kind of temporal machine of virtual reality," Jones said.
After being painted in cities such as Milwaukee and Chicago, cycloramas were rolled and transported by train across the country. The inhabitants of different cities then paid to enter round buildings specially built to see them.
The Atlanta History Center has built the huge Lloyd and Mary Ann Whitaker Cyclorama building to display the painting. Inside, a 15-foot platform allows visitors to see the horizon at eye level, with a massive blue sky above and the battle going on beneath them. An awning covers the observation deck, much like the canopies of the 19th century.
"We gave painting back its original meaning in 1886 and it was conceived as an illusion, as a mass entertainment," Jones said. "Nobody saw this painting the way it was originally designed in 1886."
ONE OF THE GREATEST PAINTS IN THE WORLD
The 360-degree paint is longer than a football pitch at 371 feet; and is nearly 50 feet tall. He weighs 10,000 pounds.
When it will be on Friday again, "The Battle of Atlanta" will only join a handful of giant cycloramas remaining in the world. Another remarkable American cyclorama, "The Battle of Gettysburg", is visible at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.
THE IMMIGRANT ARTISTS
Among the exhibitions that will open Friday, there is one about immigrant painters – mainly German – who fought seasickness on the steamboat that took them to New York.
In order to make their scenes as authentic as possible, some of the painters went to the battlefields and met with Civil War soldiers in retirement homes before creating their cycloramas in Milwaukee.
Michael Kutzer, a German-speaking painter and historian, works in Wisconsin to decipher the hand-written journals of the artist Friedrich Wilhelm Heine, who oversaw the cyclorama painters in Milwaukee. This helped to shed light on who they were and on their impressions of the United States after their arrival from Europe.
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The new inaugural exhibition on Friday will also include the first sketches of cycloramas, commercials and audio tours of earlier eras. Military objects include a wooden chest used by Union General James McPherson, who died at the Battle of Atlanta.
Actors who play historical characters will also provide context, said Hale. Among them, Paul Atkinson, the entertainment promoter from Georgia who brought the painting to Atlanta, explains how he interpreted the work for a southern audience.
On the red clay landscape under the painting, the history center also restored the 128 soldier figurines on the "diorama" located under the painting. These figures include a fallen Union soldier, created in the image of actor Clark Gable after his visit to the Cyclorama during the creation of "Gone With the Wind" in Atlanta in 1939.
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