American Images: The Sbc Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art - Hardcover

Fahlman, Betsy; Baigell, Matthew; Larsen, Susan C.; Agee, William C.; Ashton, Dore; Plagens, Peter; Sandler, Irving; Clarke, John R.; King-Hammond, Leslie; Quirarte, Jacinto; Beardsley, John; Sbc Communications

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810919699 ISBN 13: 9780810919693

Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1996

Synopsis

The SBC Collection, formed by SBC Communications, Inc (formerly Southwestern Bell), reflects the intellectual and cultural trends that have influenced artists working in the United States during the 20th century. Works by many of the leading names in American art are illustrated in this book, which also contains 13 essays by scholars, critics and curators to offer an understanding of American art for both the general reader and the student of art history. Beginning at the turn of the century and closing with a look at Postmodernism and the visual culture of today, the essays investigate various aspects of American Modernism. Along the way they focus on major American movements, schools and artists of the century. The book also contains a complete catalogue of the SBC Collection.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Featuring 13 essays by art historians, critics and curators wrapped around 166 color plates and 364 black-and-white photographs, this serendipitous catalogue of telecommunication giant SBC Inc.'s corporate art collection selectively chronicles the pluralistic concerns of 20th-century American art, from George Bellows and Childe Hassam to Robert Longo's provocative explorations of gender identity, Neil Welliver's crystal-clear semiabstract landscapes and William Wegman's wildly humorous photographic dog portraits. Rutgers professor Matthew Baigell groups Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield and Milton Avery as artists who probed the national character by focusing on the American scene. Eminent critic Dore Ashton charts the New York School's emergence in works by Pollock, de Kooning, Gorky, arguing that abstract expressionism's guiding philosophy was respect for each individual as a reservoir of feelings and images. Other essays explore pop art's debt to happenings, minimalism's reductive aesthetics, Ashcan school realism, African American and Hispanic art. Carlos Almaraz's powerful symbolist serigraph Greed and Pat Steir's marvelously evocative white-on-black oil Waterfall of Ancient Ghosts typify the diversity of the current scene.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Corporate patronage of the arts has a long tradition; as is frequently the case, the corporate collection of SBC Communications Inc., begun in 1985, devotes itself to art being created in its own country, in its own time. However, it differs from many other collections of this type in that it is strongly committed to playing a public role in gathering, displaying, and circulating its holdings. This book examines the past century of American art in scholarly fashion and presents the entire collection?nearly 1000 works gathered over the past decade that reflect the multiple facets of the "American image." The essays touch on American Modernism, Regionalism, and the New York School, as well as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism. The writing on "Contemporary Diversity," in particular, provides insight into our energy-filled, constantly changing cultural view. Excellent, well-annotated illustrations and an extensive bibliography make this handsome production a useful resource for those researching contemporary American art; the volume is also a comment on what can be accomplished by corporate sponsorship with a commitment to public education. For large public and art collections.?Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0810919699
• ISBN 13: 9780810919693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320