Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300237006 ISBN 13: 9780300237009

Publisher: Princeton University Art Museum, 2018

Synopsis

A groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the environment

Public awareness of environmental issues has never been greater, nor has the need for imagining more sustainable and ethical habits of human action and thought, including environmentally informed ways of understanding art history. This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding.
 
Far-reaching in its interpretive approach, Nature’s Nation looks at artworks across genres and media—including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, decorative arts, and video—revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas. The book features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. 
 
Providing a fascinating and timely reframing of more than three centuries of American art, this volume is a powerful example of how greater ecological consciousness can expand and enrich the discipline of art history.

About this title

Book Description:

A groundbreaking ecocritical survey of American art that examines how artists have both responded to and actively shaped environmental understanding from the colonial period to the present day.

About the Author:

Karl Kusserow is John Wilmerding Curator of American Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Alan C. Braddock is Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History & American Studies, College of William and Mary.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Art Museum
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0300237006
• ISBN 13: 9780300237009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Kusserow Karl, Braddock Alan C.