I don’t like [American antiques] because they are old, but in

spite of it. I’d like them still better if they were made
yesterday because then they would afford proof that the
same kind of creative power is still continuing.
—Charles Sheeler, artist,
(1883–1965)

Artists seeking a new national identity generally focused

on the present and the modern. But a few artists looked to
the past and found characteristics of the modern in earlier
American artifacts. They were among the first wave to develop
a taste for “Americana”—a word coined during the period. Given
their desire to invent a new national aesthetic, artists sought out
and, then, celebrated the humble spirit and spare designs found
in Shaker furniture and the unschooled paintings by itinerant and
outsider artists. They delighted in the abstract patterning found in
rag rugs, quilts, and stencil paintings. Artist Charles Sheeler
explained that he did not like these things because they were old
but rather because, to him, they looked so modern. He felt that he
had located authentic American qualities in earlier folk art and
crafts of all varieties. From these things, artists borrowed and
newly interpreted skewed perspectives, strong colors, bold
designs, and streamlined forms, making the old appear modern.
A national consciousness is a sadly needed element in American
life. . . . It is the redman that offers us the way to go.
Marsden Hartley, artist,
(1877–1943)

Some artists found that Native American arts and rituals

offered them something profound, religious, ancient, and
national. Drawn to Santa Fe and Taos, with its unique mix of
Native American and Hispanic cultures, Anglo artists and writers
declared the Southwest to be America’s Greece and Rome. In
Taos, artists such as Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe deeply
admired the handmade crafts, Indian dances, and adobe
architecture of the Pueblo peoples. They found evocations of an
earlier, unspoiled America in the desert terrain and dry, clean
climate. In touch with nature, and away from the crush of the
metropolis, they felt spiritually renewed and a kinship with the
country’s first artists.