American Visions: The Epic History of Art in AmericaWriting with all the brilliance, authority, and pungent wit that have distinguished his art criticism for Time magazine and his greatly acclaimed study of modern art, The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes now addresses his largest subject: the history of art in America. The intense relationship between the American people and their surroundings has been the source of a rich artistic tradition. American Visions is a consistently revealing demonstration of the many ways in which artists have expressed this pervasive connection. In nine eloquent chapters, which span the whole range of events, movements, and personalities of more than three centuries, Robert Hughes shows us the myriad associations between the unique society that is America and the art it has produced: "O My America, My New Founde Land" explores the churches, religious art, and artifacts of the Spanish invaders of the Southwest and the Puritans of New England; the austere esthetic of the Amish, the Quakers, and the Shakers; and the Anglophile culture of Virginia. "The Republic of Virtue" sets forth the ideals of neo-classicism as interpreted in the paintings of Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, and the Peale family, and in the public architecture of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Latrobe, and Charles Bulfinch. "The Wilderness and the West" discusses the work of landscape painters such as Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, and the Luminists, who viewed the natural world as "the fingerprint of God's creation," and of those who recorded America's westward expansion--George Caleb Bingham, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Remington--and the accompanying shift in the perception of the Indian, from noble savage to outrightdemon. "American Renaissance" describes the opulent era that followed the Civil War, a cultural flowering expressed in the sculpture of Augustus Saint-Gaudens; the paintings of John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Childe Hassam; the Newport cottages of the super-rich; and the beaux-arts buildings of Stanford White and his partners. "The Gritty Cities" looks at the post-Civil War years from another perspective: cast-iron cityscapes, the architecture of Louis Henri Sullivan, and the new realism of Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, the trompe-l'oeil painters, and the Ashcan School. "Early Modernism" introduces the first American avant garde: the painters Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and Georgia O'Keeffe, and the premier architect of his time, Frank Lloyd Wright. "Streamlines and Breadlines" surveys the boom years, when skyscrapers and Art Deco were all the rage . . . and the bust years that followed, when painters such as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Thomas Hart Benton, Diego Rivera, and Jacob Lawrence showed Americans "the way we live now." "The Empire of Signs" examines the American hegemony after World War II, when the Abstract Expressionists (Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, et al.) ruled the artistic roost, until they were dethroned by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, the Pop artists, and Andy Warhol, while individualists such as David Smith and Joseph Cornell marched to their own music. "The Age of Anxiety" considers recent events: the return of figurative art and the appearance of minimal and conceptual art; the speculative mania of the 1980s, which led to scandalous auction practices andinflated reputations; and the trends and issues of art in the 90s. Lavishly illustrated and packed with biographies, anecdotes, astute and stimulating critical commentary, and sharp social history, American Visions is published in association with a new eight-part PBS television series. Robert Hughes has called it "a love letter to America." This superb volume, which encompasses and enlarges upon the series, is an incomparably entertaining and insightful contemplation of its splendid subject. |
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Page 70
... Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley . Benjamin West was the tenth child of a Pennsylvania innkeeper . He had little education and , even when president of the Royal Academy , could scarcely spell . He did , however , have an ego the ...
... Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley . Benjamin West was the tenth child of a Pennsylvania innkeeper . He had little education and , even when president of the Royal Academy , could scarcely spell . He did , however , have an ego the ...
Page 77
... West started planning a set of paintings commem- orating the glories of the American Revolution . ) No English ... Benjamin West became the second . He was immediately offered a knighthood , which he declined . Not be- cause of some ...
... West started planning a set of paintings commem- orating the glories of the American Revolution . ) No English ... Benjamin West became the second . He was immediately offered a knighthood , which he declined . Not be- cause of some ...
Page 83
... Benjamin West's success , went right to the top . He sent Boy with Squirrel to the Society of Artists ' annual jury in London , through a seagoing friend , Captain Bruce , who reported Sir Joshua Reynolds's reaction to it back to the ...
... Benjamin West's success , went right to the top . He sent Boy with Squirrel to the Society of Artists ' annual jury in London , through a seagoing friend , Captain Bruce , who reported Sir Joshua Reynolds's reaction to it back to the ...
Contents
O My America My New Founde Land | 3 |
The Republic of Virtue | 69 |
The Wilderness and the West | 137 |
Copyright | |
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abstract Abstract Expressionism Amer American art American artists architect architecture Armory Show became Benjamin West blue Boston building century Charles Charles Sheeler Charles Willson Peale Church Civil Cole colony color Copley Cubism culture death drawing Eakins Eakins's early Edward Hopper England English esthetic Europe Figure frame French Gallery George Henry history painting Hopper idea Indian Jackson Pollock Jefferson John John Singleton Copley Kooning landscape later light look Marsden Hartley mass Metropolitan Museum Modern Art modernist mural Museum of Art National nature never Oil on canvas painter painting Paris Peale Philadelphia photographs picture political Pollock portrait Prout's Neck Puritan Quaker Rauschenberg Robert scenes sculpture sense social Stieglitz style symbol things Thomas Thomas Cole Thomas Eakins tion ture turned Virginia walls wanted Washington watercolor West Whistler William Winslow Homer wrote York young