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American Graffiti This book gives a new analysis of the intersections between graffiti art and the work of Basquiat. Not only are there few existent writings on the subject, but the book will also appeal to a very large public.
American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience with a New Preface In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our artworks, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about therole in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature.Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history.
American Realism The unconventional movement of American Realism allowed artists to break free from the established traditions of art in America and enabled the birth of a true national artistic identity. Through detailed descriptions of both the strong personalities and the artistic exchanges marking this movement, Souter shows the reader how these artists radically altered the art of their time and forever impacted the history of art.
A Companion to American Art A Companion to American Art presents 35 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history. Features contributions from a balance of established and emerging scholars, art and architectural historians, and other specialists Includes several paired essays to emphasize dialogue and debate between scholars on important contemporary issues in American art history Examines topics such as the methodological stakes in the writing of American art history, changing ideas about what constitutes "Americanness," and the relationship of art to public culture Offers a fascinating portrait of the evolution and current state of the field of American art history and suggests future directions of scholarship
Edward Hopper In his works, Hopper poetically expressed the solitude of man confronted to the American way of life as it developed in the 1920s. Inspired by the movies and particularly by the various camera angles and attitudes of characters, his paintings expose the alienation of mass culture. Created using cold colours and inhabited by anonymous characters, Hopper's paintings also symbolically reflect the Great Depression.Through a series of different reproductions (etchings, watercolours, and oil-on-canvas paintings), as well as thematic and artistic analysis, the author sheds new light on the enigmatic and tortured world of this outstanding figure.
Encyclopedia of American Folk Art For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of American Folk Art web site. This is the first comprehensive, scholarly study of a most fascinating aspect of American history and culture. Generously illustrated with both black and white and full-color photos, this A-Z encyclopedia covers every aspect of American folk art, encompassing not only painting, but also sculpture, basketry, ceramics, quilts, furniture, toys, beadwork, and more, including both famous and lesser-known genres. Containing more than 600 articles, this unique reference considers individual artists, schools, artistic, ethnic, and religious traditions, and heroes who have inspired folk art. An incomparable resource for general readers, students, and specialists, it will become essential for anyone researching American art, culture, and social history.
Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees In Faces in the Forest Michael Blackstock, a forester and an artist, takes us into the sacred forest, revealing the mysteries of carvings, paintings, and writings done on living trees by First Nations people. Blackstock details this rare art form through oral histories related by the Elders, blending spiritual and academic perspectives on Native art, cultural geography, and traditional ecological knowledge. Faces in the Forest begins with a review of First Nations cosmology and the historical references to tree art. Blackstock then takes us on a metaphorical journey along the remnants of trading and trapping trails to tree art sites in the Gitxsan, Nisga'a, Tlingit, Carrier, and Dene traditional territories, before concluding with reflections on the function and meaning of tree art, its role within First Nations cosmology, and the need for greater respect for all of our natural resources. This fascinating study of a haunting and little-known cultural phenomenon helps us to see our forests with new eyes.
Georgia O'Keeffe In 1905 Georgia travelled to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she enrolled at the Art Students' League in New York City, where she studied with William Merritt Chase. During her time in New York she became familiar with the 291 Gallery owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1912, she and her sisters studied at university with Alon Bement, who employed a somewhat revolutionary method in art instruction originally conceived by Arthur Wesley Dow. In Bement's class, the students did not mechanically copy nature, but instead were taught the principles of design using geometric shapes. They worked at exercises that included dividing a square, working within a circle and placing a rectangle around a drawing, then organising the composition by rearranging, adding or eliminating elements. It sounded dull and to most students it was. But Georgia found that these studies gave art its structure and helped her understand the basics of abstraction. During the 1920s O'Keeffe also produced a huge number of landscapes and botanical studies during annual trips to Lake George. With Stieglitz's connections in the arts community of New York - from 1923 he organised an O'Keeffe exhibition annually - O'Keeffe's work received a great deal of attention and commanded high prices. She, however, resented the sexual connotations people attached to her paintings, especially during the 1920s when Freudian theories became a form of what today might be termed "pop psychology". The legacy she left behind is a unique vision that translates the complexity of nature into simple shapes for us to explore and make our own discoveries. She taught us there is poetry in nature and beauty in geometry. Georgia O'Keeffe's long lifetime of work shows us new ways to see the world, from her eyes to ours.
Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) not only put American art on the map with his famous "drip paintings," he also served as an inspiration for the character of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire—the role that made Marlon Brando famous. Like Brando, Pollock became an icon of rebellion in 1950s America, and the brooding, defiant persona captured in photographs of the artist contributed to his celebrity almost as much as his notorious paintings did. In the years since his death in a drunken car crash, Pollock's hold on the public imagination has only increased. He has become an enduring symbol of the tormented artist—our American van Gogh. In this highly engaging book, Evelyn Toynton examines Pollock's itinerant and poverty-stricken childhood in the West, his encounters with contemporary art in Depression-era New York, and his years in the run-down Long Island fishing village that, ironically, was transformed into a fashionable resort by his presence. Placing the artist in the context of his time, Toynton also illuminates the fierce controversies that swirled around his work and that continue to do so. Pollock's paintings captured the sense of freedom and infinite possibility unique to the American experience, and his life was both an American rags-to-riches story and a darker tale of the price paid for celebrity, American style.
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: An American Modernist The first full-length critical analysis of the paintings of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, this book focuses on Smith's role as a modernist in addition to her status as a wellknown Native American artist. With close readings of Smith's work, Carolyn Kastner shows how Smith simultaneously contributes to and critiques American art and its history. Smith has distinguished herself as a modernist both in her pursuit of abstraction and her expressive technique, but too often her identity as a Native American artist has overshadowed these aspects of her work. Addressing specific themes in Smith's career, Kastner situates Smith within specific historical and cultural moments of American art, comparing her work to the abstractions of Kandinsky and Miró, as well as to the pop art of Rauschenberg and Johns. She discusses Smith's appropriation of pop culture icons like the Barbie doll, reimagined by the artist as Barbie Plenty Horses. As Kastner considers how Smith constructs each new series of artworks within the artistic, social, and political discourse of its time, she defines her contribution to American modernism and its history. Discussing the ways in which Smith draws upon her cultural heritage--both Native and non-Native--Kastner demonstrates how Smith has expanded the definitions of "American" and "modernist" art.
Making Pictures in Stone: American Indian Rock Art of the Northeast The Indians of northeastern North America are known to us primarily through reports and descriptions written by European explorers, clergy, and settlers, and through archaeological evidence. An additional invaluable source of information is the interpretation of rock art images and their relationship to native peoples for recording practical matters or information, as expressions of their legends and spiritual traditions, or as simple doodling or graffiti. The images in this book connect us directly to the Indian peoples of the Northeast, mainly Algonkian tribes inhabiting eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and the lower Potomac River Valley, New York, New Jersey, the six New EnglandStates, and Atlantic Canada. Lenik provides a full range of rock art appearances in the study area, including some dendroglyphs, pictographs, and a selection of portable rock objects. By providing a full analysis and synthesis of the data, including the types and distribution of the glyphs, and interpretations of their meaning to the native peoples, Lenik reveals a wealth of new information on the culture and lifeways of the Indians of the Northeast.
Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880 Winner of the Ewell L. Newman Award from the American Historical Print Collectors Society (2009) Winner of the Betty M. Linsley Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History (2010) This is the first book-length account of the pioneering and prolific Kellogg family of lithographers, active in Connecticut for over four decades. Daniel Wright Kellogg opened his print shop on Main Street in Hartford five years before Nathaniel Currier went into a similar business in New York and more than twenty-five years before Currier founded his partnership with James M. Ives, yet Daniel and his brothers Elijah and Edmund Kellogg have long been overshadowed by the Currier & Ives printmaking firm. Editor Nancy Finlay has gathered together eight essays that explore the complexity of the relationships between artists, lithographers, and print, map, and book publishers. Presenting a complete visual overview of the Kelloggs' production between 1830 and 1880, Picturing Victorian America also provides museums, libraries, and private collectors with the information needed to document the Kellogg prints in their own collections. The first comprehensive study of the Kellogg prints, this book demands reconsideration of this Connecticut family's place in the history of American graphic and visual arts. CONTRIBUTORS: Georgia B. Barnhill, Lynne Zacek Bassett, Candice C. Brashears, Nancy Finlay, Elisabeth Hodermarsky, Richard C. Malley, Sally Pierce, Michael Shortell, Kate Steinway.
Sargent Sargent was born in Florence, in 1856, the son of cultivated parents. When Sargent entered the school of Carolus-Duran he attained much more than the average pupils. His father was a retired Massachusetts gentleman, having practised medicine in Philadelphia. Sargent's home life was penetrated with refinement, and outside it were the beautiful influences of Florence, combining the charms of sky and hills with the wonders of art in the galleries and the opportunities of an intellectual and artistic society. Accordingly, when Sargent arrived in Paris, he was not only a skilful draughtsman and painter as a result of his study of the Italian masters, but he also had a refined and cultivated taste, which perhaps had an even greater influence upon his career. Later in Spain, it was chiefly upon the lessons learned from Velázquez that he found his own brilliant method.Sargent belongs to America, but is claimed by others as a citizen of the world, or a cosmopolitan. Sargent, with the exception of a few months at distant intervals, spent his life abroad. The artistic influences which affected him were those of Europe. Yet his Americanism may be detected in his extraordinary facility to absorb impressions, in the individuality he evolved, and in the subtlety and reserve of his methods - qualities that are characteristic of the best American art.
Twentieth-Century American Art Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, and Laurie Anderson are just some of the major American artists of the twentieth century. From the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a rapid succession of art movements and different styles reflected theextreme changes in American culture and society, as well as America's position within the international art world.This exciting new look at twentieth century American art explores the relationships between American art, museums, and audiences in the century that came to be called the 'American century'. Extending beyond New York, it covers the emergence of Feminist art in Los Angeles in the 1970s; the Black artmovement; the expansion of galleries and art schools; and the highly political public controversies surrounding arts funding. All the key movements are fully discussed, including early American Modernism, the New Negro movement, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Neo-Expressionism.

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American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell Twentieth-century American society wittily and ironically portrayed by a great artist. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), one of the most popular American artists of the past century, has often been regarded as a simple illustrator and had his work identified with the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. He is, instead, a total artist. An acute observer of human nature and talented storyteller, Rockwell captured America's evolving society in small details and nuances, portraying scenes of the everyday life of ordinary people and presenting a personal and often idealized interpretation of the American identity. His images offered a reassuring visual haven in a period of epoch-making transformation that led to the birth of the modern American society. The art of Norman Rockwell entered the homes of millions of Americans for over fifty years, illustrating the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, and the 1950s and 1960s. His works mirror aspects of the life of average Americans with precise realism and often in a humorous light. The exhibition catalog organized in collaboration with the Norman Rockwell Museum of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, presents well-known and beloved masterpieces like the Triple Self-Portrait (1960), Girl at the Mirror (1954), and The Art Critic (1955) alongside carefully observed images of youthful innocence (No Swimming, 1921) and paintings with a powerful social message like The Problem We All Live With (1964).
Ancient American Art in Detail This latest title in a strikingly beautiful series of collectable books turns our attention to the rich variety of art from the Ancient Americas. We gain fascinating insights into the design and production of a wide range of objects from Mexico and Central and South America. Enlarged details chosen to inspire, illuminate, and surprise bring us close to the world of the Olmecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, Aztecs, and Incans. Beginning by asking what constitutes Ancient American art, Colin McEwan contextualizes this art in its complexity of form and meaning. The close-ups provide the reader with insights that even a behind-the-scenes museum tour cannot offer. As we move across a range of cultures and media, we understand larger issues within which these works of art are embedded: What is the relationship between art and nature in the Ancient Americas? How were these objects used in ritual and religious practices? What is the role of masks? How do the practices of ancestor deification, sacrifice, and rituals related to fertility and procreation shape the visual and material culture of the Ancient Americas? Jade, turquoise, featherwork, metalwork, wood, stone, ceramics, textiles, and illustrations each beautifully photographed object is part of the extraordinary Ancient American collection of the British Museum. The beauty of the smallest details is magnified and contextualized through accompanying essays written by experts in Ancient American art.
Art and Architecture From the Potomac to the Gulf, artists were creating in the South even before it was recognized as a region. The South has contributed to America's cultural heritage with works as diverse as Benjamin Henry Latrobe's architectural plans for the nation's Capitol, the wares of the Newcomb Pottery, and Richard Clague's tonalist Louisiana bayou scenes. This comprehensive volume shows how, through the decades and centuries, the art of the South expanded from mimetic portraiture to sophisticated responses to national and international movements. The essays treat historic and current trends in the visual arts and architecture, major collections and institutions, and biographies of artists themselves. As leading experts on the region's artists and their work, editors Judith H. Bonner and Estill Curtis Pennington frame the volume's contributions with insightful overview essays on the visual arts and architecture in the American South.
Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes Praise for the companion title Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America by Michael Johnson: "This substantial reference remains one of the most elaborately illustrated books on Native Americans now in print. . . . Highly recommended for North American historical and ethnographical collections." -- Library Journal Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes is an authoritative illustrated reference that has been carefully created to be a companion to Encyclopedia of Native Tribes of North America, not a competitive title. It examines in detail how Native American culture evolved and considers the regional similarities and differences of the arts and crafts created by tribes across the continent. Contemporary and modern photographs, fine line illustrations and step-by-step reconstructions (including a Plains Indian warrior dress with headdress, war bonnet, shirt and leggings) show the techniques of manufacture and display the skill and artistry of the crafters. The book opens with concise coverage of the main cultural areas of North America and a survey of styles by region and over time. A major section on the living structures -- huts, tipis, igloos, etc. -- is followed by an analysis of individual crafts. These include: Baskets -- plaiting, twining, coiling Bone, antler and horn -- implements, tools, pins, fishhooks Decorative arts -- beadwork, porcupine quillwork Featherwork -- bonnets and headdresses Metalwork -- copper, silver, iron, gold Pottery Shellwork Skinwork -- rawhide, leather, furs Stonework -- arrowheads, pipes, art Textiles -- spinning, weaving Woodwork -- totems, figures, masks, utensils, working with bark. Arts and Crafts of the Native American Tribes is destined to be a primary reference used by ethnographers, historians and collectors for years to come. It is essential for any library serving academic patrons.
Building Art : The Life and Work of Frank Gehry From Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger: an engaging, nuanced exploration of the life and work of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. This first full-fledged critical biography presents and evaluates the work of a man who has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture in his innovative use of materials, design, and form, and who is among the very few architects in history to be both respected by critics as a creative, cutting-edge force and embraced by the general public as a popular figure. Building Art shows the full range of Gehry's work, from early houses constructed of plywood and chain-link fencing to lamps made in the shape of fish to the triumphant success of such late projects as the spectacular art museum of glass in Paris. It tells the story behind Gehry's own house, which upset his neighbors and excited the world with its mix of the traditional and the extraordinary, and recounts how Gehry came to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his remarkable structure of swirling titanium that changed a declining city into a destination spot. Building Art also explains Gehry's sixteen-year quest to complete Walt Disney Concert Hall, the beautiful, acoustically brilliant home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although Gehry's architecture has been written about widely, the story of his life has never been told in full detail. Here we come to know his Jewish immigrant family, his working-class Toronto childhood, his hours spent playing with blocks on his grandmother's kitchen floor, his move to Los Angeles when he was still a teenager, and how he came, unexpectedly, to end up in architecture school. Most important, Building Art presents and evaluates Gehry's lifetime of work in conjunction with his entire life story, including his time in the army and at Harvard, his long relationship with his psychiatrist and the impact it had on his work, and his two marriages and four children. It analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which a casual, amiable "aw, shucks" surface masks a driving and intense ambition. And it explores his relationship to Los Angeles and how its position as home to outsider artists gave him the freedom in his formative years to make the innovations that characterize his genius. Finally, it discusses his interest in using technology not just to change the way a building looks but to change the way the whole profession of architecture is practiced. At once a sweeping view of a great architect and an intimate look at creative genius, Building Art is in many ways the saga of the architectural milieu of the twenty-first century. But most of all it is the compelling story of the man who first comes to mind when we think of the lasting possibilities of buildings as art. 
Frank Lloyd Wright Pulitzer Prize'winning critic Ada Louise Huxtable's biography of America's greatest architect Renowned architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable's biography Frank Lloyd Wright looks at the architect and the man, from his tumultuous personal life to his long career as a master builder. Along the way she introduces Wright's masterpieces? from the tranquil Fallingwater to Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder'not only exploring the mind of the man who drew the blueprints but also delving into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever.
Imagining America : Icons of 20th-Century American Art How did artists of the twentieth century use their work to respond to their unique personal experiences and moment in history? This provocative question is explored in this engaging new book on American art. By focusing on broad, defining themes, embodied in the work of such pivotal artists as Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, the authors look at how art provided a means for re-imagining America, visualizing what it had become, and where it might go in a century of turbulent change. Richly illustrated with 400 color images, Imagining America is organized around three main themes: nature and the ways diverse artists responded to the transformation of the landscapenbsp; from pastoral to industrial; how artists as different as Thomas Eakins and Jackson Pollock demonstrated the perpetual inclination to reinvent both personal and national identity; and the ways that key artists like Stuart Davis, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat taught us to understand the media and popular culture on a deeper level. The authors also provide a context of social history and parallel developments in American music and film. With an innovative design, a fabulous selection of iconic images, and an engaging juxtaposition of visual themes, Imagining America presents American art and artists in a completely new light.
Mark Rothko A critical study of a pioneer of abstract expressionism analyzes his life and the progression of his art and contains reproductions of one hundred ninety-eight oils and watercolors, ninety-six of which are in full color.
Native North American Art An innovative survey of Native North American art history which fully incorporates substantive new research and scholarship, and examines such issues as gender, representation, the colonial encounter, and contemporary arts. By encompassing both the sacred and secular, political and domestic,the ceremonial and commercial, it shows the importance of the visual arts in maintaining the integrity of spiritual, social , political, and economic systems within Native North American societies. This exciting new investigation explores the indigenous arts of the US and Canada from the early pre-contact period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over five centuries and across an immensely diverse range of regions. The richness of Native American art isemphasized through discussions of basketry, wood and rock carvings, dance masks, and beadwork, alongside the contemporary vitality of paintings and installations by modern artists such as Robert Davidson, Emmi Whitehorse, and Alex Janvier.
North American Indian Art This timely new book surveys the artistic traditions of indigenous North America, from those of ancient cultures such as Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Anasazi to the work of modern artists like Earnest Spybuck, Fred Kabotie, Dick West, T. C. Cannon, and Gerald McMaster. The text is organized geographically and draws upon the testimonies of oral tradition, Native American history, and the latest research in North American archaeology. Recent art historical scholarship has helped restore, to a large degree, some understanding of the identities and cultural roles of Native American artists and the social contexts of the objects they created. Native American art is often discussed simply as a cultural production rather than the work of individual artists who made objects to fufill social and cultural purposes; this book focuses as much as possible on the artists themselves, their cultural identities, and the objects they made even when the names of the individual artists remain unrecoverable. But this is not a book of artists' biographies. It seeks to inform a general readership about the history of Native American art with a lively narrative full of historical incident and illustrated with provocative and superlative works of art. It explores the tension between artistic continuities spanning thousands of years and the startlingly fresh innovations that resulted from specific historical circumstances. The narrative weaves together so-called "traditional" arts, "tourist" arts, and Native American art of today by taking the point of view of their particular and local histories--the artists, their communities, and audiences. Among the many cultures included are: Arapaho, Athapascan, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chumash, Hopi, Hupa/Karok, Inuit, Iroquois, Kwakiutl, Lakota, Miwok, Navajo, Ojibwa, Pomo, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Uypik, and Zuni.
Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol is a groundbreaking reassessment of the most influential and controversial American artist of the second half of the 20th century. Writers Tony Scherman and David Dalton disentangle the myths of the great pop artist from the man he truly was, and offer a vivid, entertaining, and provocative look at Warhol's personal and artistic evolution. Drawing on brand new sources--including extensive new interviews and insight from those who knew him best--Pop offers the most dynamic, comprehensive portrait ever written of the man who changed the way we see the world.
Roy Lichtenstein Featuring close to 50 full color illustrations, this entry in the Modern Masters series demonstrates how artist Roy Lichtenstein was not only one of the most significant postwar artists, but also a perceptive, ironic commentator on contemporary society. Roy Lichtenstein became famous in the early 1960s for his deadpan recreations of popular imagery, particularly paintings based on war and romance comics. As this book demonstrates, Lichtenstein's interest in quoting subjects form both high and low art has continued throughout his career, producing a fascinating and varied body of work. As Lawrence Alloway's incisive text makes clear, Lichtenstein was not only one of the most significant postwar artists, but also a perceptive, ironic commentator on contemporary society. About Abbeville's Modern Masters series: With informative, enjoyable texts and over 100 illustrations--approximately 48 in full color--this innovative series offers a fresh look at the most creative and influential artists of the postwar era. The authors are highly respected art historians and critics chosen for their ability to think clearly and write well. Each handsomely designed volume presents a thorough survey of the artists life and work, as well as statements by the artist, an illustrated chapter on technique, a chronology, lists of exhibitions and public collections, an annotated bibliography, and an index. Every art lover, from the casual museum goer to the serious student, teacher, critic, or curator, will be eager to collect these Modern Masters. And with such a low price, they can afford to collect them all.