- Artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, e.e. cummings and Charles Sheeler are among the highlights of this incredible selection of 20th century American art- Publication accompanies a major exhibition to be held at The Ashmolean Museum from March until June, 2018- Many of these works have never been exhibited in the UK As some American artists began to eliminate people and remove extraneous details from their compositions, they often employed neat, orderly brushwork or close-up, unemotional photography. Artists as diverse as Patrick Henry Bruce, John Covert, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand and Arthur Dove navigated European and American avant-garde circles, picking and choosing new ideas and methods. Inspiration ranged from cubism and machine parts to new technologies, and they found ways to bring order to the modern world through extreme simplification. For them, abstraction involved absence and presence - the evacuation of human beings but also the desire to depict something that would not otherwise be visible or to render visible unseen natural processes like the passage of time, sound waves, or weather patterns. Their artworks provide a new context for the precisionist works in the subsequent sections and point to modern ideas about what art could be. How does a crisp painting technique relate to an aesthetic of absence?
Sister Wendy Beckett has been dubbed a "pop star" by the New York Times and "a phenomenon" by the Washington Post. She is certainly one of the world's best-known and best-loved art critics, familiar to millions from her wildly popular art series on PBS.
In Sister Wendy's American Collection, she visits six of America's most prestigious museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, Massachusetts), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In each, Sister Wendy chooses a wide variety of artpaintings, sculpture, porcelain figures-and draws attention to the small details of the work, revealing hidden meanings and symbolism. She relates the background of the artist and explains the techniques and the histories behind each work in a straightforward language that speaks to all with humor and insight.
More than 250 full-color illustrations illuminate Sister Wendy's text. Sister Wendy's American Collection is a wonderful tour of six great American museums -- it is also the equivalent of taking a personal tour with Sister Wendy, studying and enjoying her favorite pieces of art, chosen from across the whole breadth of history to the present. It is a fascinating journey, one that can be taken again and again. Sister Wendy's American Collection is soon to be a PBS miniseries.
Told in a unique first-person creative nonfiction narrative, Women Artists of the West profiles five important women artists who lived, worked, and created in the early years of the twentieth century--Georgia O'Keeffe, Maria Martinez, Dorothea Lange, Laura Gilpin, Mary-Russell Colton.
Provides a social history of early America by assembling and categorizing illustrations and descriptions of folk art, from needlework, to weathervanes, to pottery
A radical re-evaluation of American modernism through four generations of artists and their work - now in paperback.
"That rarity of rarities, an opinionated but not eccentric scholarly history by a veteran museum curator whose every page crackles with original thinking and bears the stamp of a preternaturally sharp eye? Excellent reproductions and crisp typography complement the lucid prose." --Wall Street Journal
Twentieth-century art in America has long been understood in two very separate distinct halves: pre-World War II, often considered as inferior and provincial; and the triumphant, international post-war work that made a complete break with everything that went before. Agee discovers exciting new connections between artists and artworks, which strongly suggest that 1945 was not such a dividing line in art history after all. His fresh research offers an innovative approach and a brilliant take on art history.
In the mid-20th century, ceramics evolved from a utilitarian craft or therapeutic hobby into a well-recognized fine art that continues to occupy a place in today's art world. In this pioneering study, leading scholar Martha Drexler Lynn explores how and why this shift occurred by examining the pivotal period for the maturation of American studio ceramics. Lynn traces critical developments in ceramics education, exhibition, patronage, and technology from 1940 to 1979, as magazines dedicated to the practice appeared, institutional support flourished, audiences grew, and star artists emerged.
The most in-depth history of American studio ceramics to date, this book is the first to fully explore the works of art alongside the societal trends that shaped them and the organizations that propelled the movement. Lynn considers the movement's fluctuation across geographic regions as well as stylistic responses to advances in technology and cultural influences from across the United States and abroad. Key patrons and practitioners such as Aileen Osborn Webb, Glen Lukens, Peter Voulkos, and Robert Arneson are featured alongside lesser-known figures. This groundbreaking volume illustrates how studio ceramics came to define itself and challenged the boundaries between fine art and craft. It will be a definitive resource on the movement for years to come.
Nineteenth-century Americans responded to landscape paintings because the subject existed all around them. Unlike paintings of ancient kings or mythic goddesses that in Europe were regarded as the highest achievement but in America were considered frivolous or morally corrupt, the land was a tangible presence, sometimes tranquil and serene, often mysterious and dangerous. Before 1820, depictions of the landscape had essentially served as backgrounds for portraits or as topographic documents. Thomas Cole transformed this "useful" landscape into a transcendental vision, where the hand of God was seen enlivening every aspect of nature. Cole's example opened the eyes of countless talented artists who sought the American soul in the vistas of its landscapes.
This quest is vividly brought to life in the paintings included here, by 31 artists who painted in and around the Hudson River in the 19th century. They not only show an America that was, but an America that still exists in the core of our national consciousness.
A comprehensive new assessment of the South Seas works of American painter, muralist, and stained-glass artist John La Farge, published on the 100th anniversary of his death
In 1890, John La Farge (1835-1910) and his close friend, historian Henry Adams, embarked on a journey to the islands of the South Pacific, where the artist experienced a period of great creative output.This book showcases many of the most important oils, watercolors, and sketches to come out of La Farge's two-year voyage to the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and is the first to place the artist's South Seas work in the broader context of exotic travel by artists and writers of the 19th century.
The essays in John La Farge's Second Paradise explore the artist's reemergence as a plein air landscape painter, his use of the sketchbook, and his late decorative work, which was reinvigorated by the experience of light and color he discovered in the South Seas. Further discussions examine the prevailing notions of tropical paradise perpetuated since Captain Cook's "discovery" of Polynesia in the late 18th century, and offer the first extended comparison of the careers and art of La Farge and Paul Gauguin, who arrived in Tahiti only days after La Farge left in 1891. Featuring many previously unpublished works, this beautiful book is a major contribution to the study of La Farge's life and art.
From its birth as a remote trading outpost on the fringes of the Dutch empire to its current status as the so-called Capital of the World, New York has always captivated visual artists. The extraordinary prints collected by the New-York Historical Society over the course of its history vividly preserve these impressions on paper. In this handsome volume more than 150 of these views of the city -- including two spectacular gatefold panoramas -- speak eloquently of the surging power of this dynamic urban center. At the same time, they present an intimate portrait of everyday life as it has been lived and savored in this great city for more than three centuries.
The companion to an exhibition celebrating the New-York Historical Society's bicentennial anniversary, this beautifully printed volume presents a full range of historic images, from 1672 to the present. In the lively essay and information-filled captions, curator and historian Marilyn Symmes tells the unique stories behind the people and places, parks and buildings, streets and neighborhoods, parades and events depicted in each image -- in essence, the story of New York City itself.
