Compass and Clock: Defining Moments in American Culture - Hardcover

Wilmerding, John

9780810940963: Compass and Clock: Defining Moments in American Culture

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810940965 ISBN 13: 9780810940963

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 1999

Covering literature, art, architecture and music, this book discusses the evolution of American culture - art, literature, architecture and music. It includes stimulating analyses of masterworks from this period, from Moby Dick to the paintings of Thomas Eadkins.

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Review:

As a professor at Princeton University, visiting curator at the Metropolitan Museum, and former deputy director of the National Gallery, John Wilmerding has established himself as a preeminent scholar of American art history. In his current work, Compass and Clock: Defining Moments in American Culture, Wilmerding steps beyond the parameters of the strictly art-historical and offers a fresh perspective on American intellectual history. Compass and Clock focuses on three turning points in American history, the years around 1800, 1850, and 1900, and examines how their literary, architectural, and art-historical forces synergize and embody the mood of the expanding and maturing nation.

Placing important works of literature, architecture, and visual arts in their cultural context, Wilmerding skillfully demonstrates how America expressed itself as it evolved as a nation in the 19th century. For example, by juxtaposing close readings of MelvilleMoby Dick and Whitman's Leaves of Grass with discussion of formal and iconographical elements of Robert Mills's Washington Monument and the landscapes of Hugh Lane, he shows how each embodies the sense of expansiveness, self-confidence, and flourishing prosperity that defined America's self-image around 1850. Wilmerding proves himself equally comfortable and adept at literary examination and political analysis as he is at examination of visual arts and architecture. Extensive quotations from books and reproductions of paintings under analysis supplement the study. At the same time academically rigorous and conversational in tone, Compass and Clock provides important clues to the evolution of the U.S. as a nation and people. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

From the Publisher:

In this provocative book, a prominent art historian discusses the evolution of American culture-literature, art, architecture, and music-during the 19th century as the nation expanded and matured. John Wilmerding focuses on three turning points-around 1800, when America began to find its identity as a republic; the mid-century, a self-confident period of prosperity and growth; and the century's close, a time of anxiety over profound changes in the psychological and physical dimensions of life. The author provides stimulating analyses of the masterworks of these periods-from Walden and Moby-Dick to the paintings of Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer-finding common threads and complementary expressions among the images that writers and visual artists alike used to convey the mood and vision of each distinctive era. 90 illustrations, 15 in full color, 711/4 x 977/8" John Wilmerding is Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University and visiting curator in the Departments of American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The former deputy director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Wilmerding has written a number of books on American art, including Abrams' Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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