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American Art Deco: An Illustrated Survey
by R. L. Leonard C. A. GlassgoldOne of the most popular forms of twentieth-century design, the Art Deco style dominated the decorative arts in the 1920s and '30s. Championed by progressive architects and inspired by such diverse influences as the industrial age and Native American art, it became a form of artistic self-expression for nearly three decades. This volume includes scores of photographs and important articles that describe the aesthetics of this distinctive style. An introduction by architectural critic Lewis Mumford is followed by commentaries by such notables as Frank Lloyd Wright on design principles; theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes on outfitting business interiors; and Edward Steichen on commercial photography. A fascinating glimpse of an exciting and innovative period in the history of American design, this book will appeal to a wide audience ― from interior decorators and graphic artists to students of art and lovers of the Art Deco style.
American Art Since 1900: A Critical History
by Barbara RoseThe history of American art since 1900, especially with regard to its European roots and subsequent transformation.
American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence (Routledge Research in Art History)
by Michelle LimThis book challenges existing notions of what is "American" and/or "Asian" art, moving beyond the identity issues that have dominated art-world conversations of the 1980s and the 1990s and aligning with new trends and issues in contemporary art today, e.g. the Global South, labor, environment, and gender identity. Contributors examine both historical and contemporary instances in art practices and exhibition-making under the rubric of "American art in Asia." The book complicates existing notions of what constitutes American art, Asian American (and American Asian) art. As today’s production and display of contemporary art takes place across diffused borders, under the fluid conditions of a globalized art world since transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, new contexts and art historical narratives are forming that upend traditional Euro-American mappings of center-margins, migratory patterns and community engagement. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, American studies, Asian studies and visual culture.
American Art to 1900: A Documentary History
by John Davis Sarah BurnsFrom the simple assertion that "words matter" in the study of visual art, this comprehensive but eminently readable volume gathers an extraordinary selection of words—painters and sculptors writing in their diaries, critics responding to a sensational exhibition, groups of artists issuing stylistic manifestos, and poets reflecting on particular works of art. Along with a broad array of canonical texts, Sarah Burns and John Davis have assembled an astonishing variety of unknown, little known, or undervalued documents to convey the story of American art through the many voices of its contemporary practitioners, consumers, and commentators. American Art to 1900 highlights such critically important themes as women artists, African American representation and expression, regional and itinerant artists, Native Americans and the frontier, popular culture and vernacular imagery, institutional history, and more. With its hundreds of explanatory headnotes providing essential context and guidance to readers, this book reveals the documentary riches of American art and its many intersecting histories in unprecedented breadth, depth, and detail.
American Art, volume 36 number 2 (Summer 2022)
by American ArtThis is volume 36 issue 2 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 36 number 3 (Fall 2022)
by American ArtThis is volume 36 issue 3 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 37 number 1 (Spring 2023)
by American ArtThis is volume 37 issue 1 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 37 number 2 (Summer 2023)
by American ArtThis is volume 37 issue 2 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 37 number 3 (Fall 2023)
by American ArtThis is volume 37 issue 3 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 38 number 1 (Spring 2024)
by American ArtThis is volume 38 issue 1 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 38 number 2 (Summer 2024)
by American ArtThis is volume 38 issue 2 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 38 number 3 (Fall 2024)
by American ArtThis is volume 38 issue 3 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Art, volume 39 number 1 (Spring 2025)
by American ArtThis is volume 39 issue 1 of American Art. American Art publishes innovative peer-reviewed scholarship on the history of art and related visual culture. The journal critically engages with the material and conceptual conditions of art and provides a forum for the expanding field of American art history. It welcomes scholarship on the role played by art in the ongoing transnational and transcultural formation of America as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Committed to rigorous inquiry, the journal presents a range of approaches to the production and consumption of art.
American Artists Engage the Built Environment, 1960-1979 (Routledge Research in Art History)
by Susanneh BieberThis volume reframes the development of US-American avant-garde art of the long 1960s—from minimal and pop art to land art, conceptual art, site-specific practices, and feminist art—in the context of contemporary architectural discourses. Susanneh Bieber analyzes the work of seven major artists, Donald Judd, Robert Grosvenor, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Mary Miss, who were closely associated with the formal-aesthetic innovations of the period. While these individual artists came to represent diverse movements, Bieber argues that all of them were attracted to the field of architecture—the work of architects, engineers, preservationists, landscape designers, and urban planners—because they believed these practices more directly shaped the social and material spaces of everyday life. This book’s contribution to the field of art history is thus twofold. First, it shows that the avant-garde of the long 1960s did not simply develop according to an internal logic of art but also as part of broader sociocultural discourses about buildings and cities. Second, it exemplifies a methodological synthesis between social art history and poststructural formalism that is foundational to understanding the role of art in the construction of a more just and egalitarian society. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, architecture, urbanism, and environmental humanism.
American Artists On Art: From 1940 To 1980
by Sherron SparksFrom the Preface: The fact that so much of modern art has devoted itself to the exploration and assertion of its own identity is reflected in, but does not explain, the increasing amount of writing and talking on the part of contemporary artists. Rather, the whole history of the changing role of art and artists in a democratic, industrial, and technological society stands behind the spate of artists' words and the public's hunger for them--even some of the general public out there beyond art's little circle. Statements by artists appeal somewhat the way drawings do: they bring us, or at least they hold the promise of bringing us, closer to the artist's thoughts and feelings and to an understanding of his or her modus operandi; they hold the keys to a mysterious realm. And sometimes they offer us the sheer pleasure of good reading. Such is the primary raison d'etre of this book.Its other motivation is educational, and stems from the frustrating lack, in teaching contemporary art, of any single compilation of statements by American artists from 1940 to the present.... This anthology differs in several respects from those others that do include documents of American art since 1940.... The selection I have made is devoted exclusively to statements of artists; it is limited to the last four decades; it presents in a single volume a representative and fairly comprehensive coverage of major developments in American art beginning with Abstract Expressionism; and, whenever possible, it cities the first, or among the very earliest, documents signalizing a shift in the definition, intent, or direction of art."
American Association Milwaukee Brewers, The (Images of Baseball)
by Bob Koehler Rex HamannMany people know of Milwaukee's famous beer brewers, such as Schlitz, Pabst, and Miller, but these pages contain the story of the original baseball Brewers. The Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association spent 51 seasons (1902-1952) on the city's near north side. To have had the opportunity to stretch out in the sun-soaked stands of Borchert Field during that era was to witness minor league baseball at its best. The Brewers were the second-winningest franchise in the league's history, and names like Tom "Sugar Boy" Dougherty and Nick "Tomato Face" Cullop were once household words throughout the city. This book stands as a tribute to the colorful history of this team and to all the former players, coaches, and managers who ever wore the woolens for Milwaukee.
American Autopia: An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury (Midcentury: Architecture, Landscape, Urbanism, and Design)
by Gabrielle EsperdyEarly to mid-twentieth-century America was the heyday of a car culture that has been called an "automobile utopia." In American Autopia, Gabrielle Esperdy examines how the automobile influenced architectural and urban discourse in the United States from the earliest days of the auto industry to the aftermath of the 1970s oil crisis. Paying particular attention to developments after World War II, Esperdy creates a narrative that extends from U.S. Routes 1 and 66 to the Las Vegas Strip to California freeways, with stops at gas stations, diners, main drags, shopping centers, and parking lots along the way.While it addresses the development of auto-oriented landscapes and infrastructures, American Autopia is not a conventional history, offering instead an exploration of the wide-ranging evolution of car-centric territories and drive-in typologies, looking at how they were scrutinized by diverse cultural observers in the middle of the twentieth century.Drawing on work published in the popular and professional press, and generously illustrated with evocative images, the book shows how figures as diverse as designer Victor Gruen, geographer Jean Gottmann, theorist Denise Scott Brown, critic J.B. Jackson, and historian Reyner Banham constructed "autopia" as a place and an idea. The result is an intellectual history and interpretive roadmap to the United States of the Automobile.
American Avant-Garde Theatre: A History (Theatre Production Studies)
by Arnold AronsonThis stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s. American Avant-Garde Theatre offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by examining: *Gertrude Stein *John Cage *The Beat writers *Avant-garde cinema *Abstract Expressionism *Minimalism There are fascinating discussions and illustrations of the productions of the Living Theatre, the Wooster Group, Open Theatre, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and Performance Group. among many others. Aronson also examines why avant-garde theatre declined and virtually disappeared at the end of the twentieth century.
American Axe: The Tool That Shaped a Continent
by Brett McLeodFrom bronze axes of the Viking conquests to the American homesteader&’s felling axe, this is a tool that has shaped human history like few others. American Axe pays tribute to this iconic instrument of settlement and industry, with rich history, stunning photography, and profiles of the most collectible vintage axes such as The Woodslasher, Keen Cutter, and True Temper Perfect. Combining his experiences as a forester, axe collector, and former competitive lumberjack, author Brett McLeod conveys the allure of this deceptively simple woodcutting implement and celebrates the resurging interest in its story and use.
American Beauties: The Artwork of Harrison Fisher
by Harrison FisherHarrison Fisher's portraits of healthy, poised, active, and confident women set the standard of American beauty in the early 20th century -- and he enjoyed a celebrity status that was unparalled for an illustrator. This original publication compiles his very best black-and-white and color illustrations for Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, books, and other publications.
American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder (Sign, Storage, Transmission)
by Charles R. AclandBen-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
American By Degrees: The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand
by Robert J. YoungThe expressions of American hostility toward France after 9/11 are not new - Franco-American relations in the early twentieth century were also difficult, characterized by the same antagonistic depictions of the other's culture. Ambassador Jules Jusserand's years in Washington (1903-24) were defined by efforts to correct such misconceptions, whether they came from the venomous pens of French extremists or from members of William Randolph Hearst's press empire. In An American by Degrees Robert Young explores Ambassador Jusserand's life and legacy. Fluent in English, married to an American, and a historian who was a frequent guest at many American universities, Jusserand deftly cultivated American sympathies for France. His tasks as a diplomat were formidable, whether during the period of America's war-time neutrality - when France was nearly over-run by the German army - or when as allies they competed for control of the peace process or sought to resolve post-war issues like disarmament, war debts, and reparations. Jusserand relentlessly reminded Americans that France had been an ally during their Revolution and that their concept of "civilization" was part of France's intellectual and cultural legacy. His emphasis on their shared history was natural, as befitted the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History and only the second foreigner to serve as president of the American Historical Association.
American Character: Surprising Portraits of an Unseen Nation
by Peter GuttmanAward-winning photographer Peter Guttman showcases the vibrant and wildly diverse American people in an unprecedented, multi-decade collection of sharply etched portraits Like few nations, the United States flourished through the hard work and enterprising creativity of individuals from myriad identities. These cultural strands––along with sprinklings of imagination, eccentricity, even skullduggery––weave together an entertaining narrative of a fascinating country. American Character offers readers a peek into the seldom viewed worlds of Buddhist monks, "freak show" performers, and nuclear physicists, and an opportunity to tag along on the quests of gold miners and Bigfoot hunters. Diving into the ethnic enclaves of Yupik hunters, Amish farmers, Hopi elders, native Hawaiian storytellers, and Hasidic bakery owners, the book also trains a lens on distant or underseen communities to cobble together an unforgettable American landscape. Driven by an explorer&’s fearless instinct for investigating obscure cultures and hidden corners in all fifty states, photographer and journalist Peter Guttman presents this richly visual parade in stunning color photography, accompanied with evocative, deeply researched prose. Almost encyclopedic in scope, a dizzying array of arresting occupational niches and lifestyles are presented and enhanced with intriguing personal backstories, winding connections, and amusing historical tales. When each half of a polarized country seems to view the other half with deep suspicions, American Character may provide a healing balm and offer much deeper understanding of the vast spectrum of Americans and our mutual aspirations.
American Childhood: A Photographic History
by Todd BrewsterA remarkable collection of over 200 stunning photographs of children—from the Civil War era to the present—that captures the ever-changing experience of childhood throughout American history.Did Americans &“invent&” childhood? Author Todd Brewster believes we did, or at least childhood as &“a period of life cordoned off from that of full maturity, covered with a veil of protection, and subject to a program of nurture.&” That&’s the inspiration behind this rich, compelling volume of rarely seen historical images drawn from the photography collections at the Library of Congress, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and the Magnum Photo Agency as well as dozens of other archives, flea markets, and antique shops. The result is a carefully curated paean to American youth: 200-plus photos from all parts of American history, joined by a series of deeply insightful essays on the topic of the American child. American Childhood reveals American children of all types: white, Black, gay, straight, poor, middle-class, upper class, in cities, on farms, at work, at play, lost in reverie, posing for the camera, or captured in their innocence as the lens gazes at them from afar. Some of them would go on to fame: A young Mark Twain is here. So is a juvenile Thomas Edison, Shirley Temple, Lady Gaga, Sammy Davis Jr., Truman Capote, and dozens of others. Can you see the spark of genius in the life of a child? Brewster thinks so. Still, most subjects here are unknown; in many cases a photograph may be the only public trace they have left behind. Both a powerful study of American childhood and a beautiful gallery of extraordinary photography, American Childhood is a terrific addition to an under-appreciated part of American history.
American Chinatowns: Race, Identity, and Postwar Urban Redevelopment
by Chuo LiAmerican Chinatowns: Race, Identity, and Postwar Urban Redevelopment offers a captivating exploration of the vibrant yet contested landscapes of Chinatowns across the United States.Through a critical and nuanced lens, Li examines how postwar urban redevelopment, racial dynamics, and identity politics have profoundly transformed these iconic neighborhoods. Blending rich historical research with sharp analysis, this book uncovers the interplay of race, urban planning ideologies, and social equity, shedding light on how Chinatowns navigate resilience and reinvention amid shifting urban paradigms. Li’s work highlights the tension between cultural preservation and modernization, exploring the built environment alongside community-driven spatial activism to reveal how these urban spaces persist as sites of resistance, identity, and transformation. American Chinatowns is a compelling study of cultural landscape, urban justice, and the politics of city-making.This book is essential reading for scholars, urbanists, and anyone intrigued by the intersection of race, identity, and the evolving narratives of America’s cities. This book invites readers to rethink the meaning of place, heritage, and equity in the urban fabric.