This clear, thorough, and reliable survey of American painting and sculpture from colonial times to the present day covers all the major artists and their works, outlines the social and cultural backgrounds of each period, and includes 409 illustrations integrated with the text. Although some determining factors in American art are considered, Matthew Baigell views the rich and diverse achievements of American art as the result of the efforts and talents of a pluralistic society rather than as fitting into a particular mold.This edition includes corrections and revisions to the text, an updated bibliography, and 13 new illustrations.
Collects the best artwork created before, during and following the Civil War, in the years between 1859 and 1876, along with extensive quotations from men and women alive during the war years and text by literary figures, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. 15,000 first printing.
This clear, thorough, and reliable survey of American painting and sculpture from colonial times to the present day covers all the major artists and their works, outlines the social and cultural backgrounds of each period, and includes 409 illustrations integrated with the text. Although some determining factors in American art are considered, Matthew Baigell views the rich and diverse achievements of American art as the result of the efforts and talents of a pluralistic society rather than as fitting into a particular mold.This edition includes corrections and revisions to the text, an updated bibliography, and 13 new illustrations.
[This book is] for American art survey courses. [It] provides a thorough ... chronology of American art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and folk art. [The author] presents art and artists within the context of their times, including insights into the intellectual, spiritual, and political environment. [He] charts the growth of a distinctly American art culture.-Back cover.
With the advent of abstract expressionism in the 1940s, America became the white hot center of the artistic universe. Now, in The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists, the first such volume to appear in three decades, Ann Lee Morgan offers an informative, insightful, and long overdue resource on our nation's artistic heritage. Featuring 945 alphabetically arranged entries, here is an indispensable biographical and critical guide to American art from colonial times to contemporary postmodernism. Readers will find a wealth of factual detail and insightful analysis of the leading American painters, ranging from John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, and Mary Cassatt to such modern masters as Jackson Pollack, Romare Bearden, and Andy Warhol. Morgan offers razor-sharp entries on sculptors ranging from Alexander Calder to Louise Nevelson, on photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Ansel Adams, and on contemporary installation artists, including video master Bill Viola. In addition, the dictionary provides entries on important individuals connected to the art scene, including collectors such as Peggy Guggenheim and critics such as Clement Greenberg. Morgan also examines notable American institutions, organizations, schools, techniques, styles, and movements. The range of coverage is indeed impressive, but equally important is the quality of analysis that appears in entry after entry. Morgan gives readers a wealth of trustworthy and authoritative information as well as perceptive, well-informed criticism of artists and their work. In addition, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced, so readers can easily find additional information on any topic of interest. Beautifully written, filled with fascinating historical background and penetrating insight, The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists is an essential one-volume resource for art lovers everywhere.
American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London’s South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.
-World War I and American Art provides an unprecedented look at the ways in which American artists reacted to the war. Artists took a leading role in chronicling the war, crafting images that influenced public opinion, supported mobilization efforts, and helped to shape how the war's appalling human toll was memorialized. The book brings together paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, posters, and ephemera, spanning the diverse visual culture of the period to tell the story of a crucial turning point in the history of American art---
