William Blake: Brothers' Bones Beside - Catalog - Page 14
To See a New Nation
Oil on linen | 80" x 54" | 2025
To See a New Nation depicts Jean-Antoine Houdon’s statue of
George Washington, installed in the Virginia State Capitol. At
Washington’s feet lies the severed head of the Apollo Belvedere,
a neoclassical ideal, used in 19th-century racial science to
visualize white supremacy.
The painting collapses enlightenment ideology, neoclassical
aesthetics, and American myth into a single fractured image.
During the Civil War, Washington’s image was claimed by
both Union and Confederate causes, each side projecting
its ideals onto the Founding Father’s image. This contested
symbolism reveals how images have been used not just to
commemorate virtue, but to legitimize violence and power. n
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