Reading American Art - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300069987 ISBN 13: 9780300069983

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

This anthology brings together twenty outstanding works of recent scholarship on the history of the visual arts in the United States from the colonial period to 1945. The selected essays―all written within the past two decades―reflect the interdisciplinary character of current art historiography in America and the variety of approaches that contribute to the dynamism in the field. The authors take up diverse subjects―from colonial portraits to nineteenth-century sculptures of women to photographic images of New York―and invite those with a general knowledge of the history of American art to think more deeply about art and culture.

Employing many interpretive methodologies, including iconology, social history, structuralism, psychobiography, and feminist theory, the contributors to this volume combine close analysis of specific art objects or groups of objects with discussion of how these works of art operated within their cultural contexts. The authors consider the works of such artists as John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock as they assess how paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and photographs have carried meaning within American society. And they investigate how the conceptualization, production, and presentation of works of art both inform and are informed by prevailing attitudes toward the role of the arts and the artist in American culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Marianne Doezema is director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Elizabeth Milroy, associate professor of art at Wesleyan University, teaches art history and American studies.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0300069987
• ISBN 13: 9780300069983
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Marianne Doezema, Elizabeth Milroy