American Visions

American Visions PDF Author: Robert Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9781860463723
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
Robert Hughes begins where American art itself began, with the Native Americans and the first Spanish invaders in the Southwest; he ends with the art of today. In between, in a scholarly text that crackles with wit, intelligence and insight, he tells the story of how American art developed. Hughes investigates the changing tastes of the American public; he explores the effects on art of America's landscape of unparalleled variety and richness; he examines the impact of the melting-pot of cultures that America has always been. Most of all he concentrates on the paintings and art objects themselves and on the men and women - from Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins to Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, from Arthur Dove and George Bellows to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko -awho created them. This is an uncompromising and refreshingly opinionated exploration of America, told through the lens of its art.

American Visions

American Visions PDF Author: Robert Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9781860463723
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
Robert Hughes begins where American art itself began, with the Native Americans and the first Spanish invaders in the Southwest; he ends with the art of today. In between, in a scholarly text that crackles with wit, intelligence and insight, he tells the story of how American art developed. Hughes investigates the changing tastes of the American public; he explores the effects on art of America's landscape of unparalleled variety and richness; he examines the impact of the melting-pot of cultures that America has always been. Most of all he concentrates on the paintings and art objects themselves and on the men and women - from Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins to Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, from Arthur Dove and George Bellows to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko -awho created them. This is an uncompromising and refreshingly opinionated exploration of America, told through the lens of its art.

Visions in a Seer Stone

Visions in a Seer Stone PDF Author: William L. Davis
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469655675
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America. Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith's process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books—he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

Rival Visions

Rival Visions PDF Author: Dustin Gish
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813944481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
The emergence of the early American republic as a new nation on the world stage conjured rival visions in the eyes of leading statesmen at home and attentive observers abroad. Thomas Jefferson envisioned the newly independent states as a federation of republics united by common experience, mutual interest, and an adherence to principles of natural rights. His views on popular government and the American experiment in republicanism, and later the expansion of its empire of liberty, offered an influential account of the new nation. While persuasive in crucial respects, his vision of early America did not stand alone as an unrivaled model. The contributors to Rival Visions examine how Jefferson’s contemporaries—including Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall—articulated their visions for the early American republic. Even beyond America, in this age of successive revolutions and crises, foreign statesmen began to formulate their own accounts of the new nation, its character, and its future prospects. This volume reveals how these vigorous debates and competing rival visions defined the early American republic in the formative epoch after the revolution.

Chicano Visions

Chicano Visions PDF Author: Cheech Marin
Publisher: Bulfinch
ISBN: 9780821228067
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Originating in the early seventies, Chicano art long remained unrecognised by the art and gallery world. This text features the work of 26 Chicano artists and marks the transition of this unique and exciting movement into the critical fold of contemporary art.

Natural Visions

Natural Visions PDF Author: Finis Dunaway
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022645424X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement. In Natural Visions, Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery—such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books—shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture—the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth—to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation. Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.

American Visions of Europe

American Visions of Europe PDF Author: John Lamberton Harper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521566285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This book is a biographical study of three American statesmen, concentrating on their distinct approaches to the problem of Europe.

Strong Hearts

Strong Hearts PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In Strong Hearts, popular visions of American Indians are challenged by artists and writers for whom self-representation is often as much a political as an artistic statement. For example: the darkly emotional scenes staged by Carm Little Turtle; Larry McNeil's metaphorical images of eagle feathers; Zig Jackson's satirical pictures of tourists photographing Indians; Maggie Steber's intimate portrayal of the Wildcat family; images of joy and pain captured by the children in the "Shooting Back from the Reservation" project; and Jeffrey Thomas's close-up portraits of traditional powwow dancers. Three distinguished authors write about the struggle to overcome stereotyped perceptions of Native Americans. Paul Chaat Smith, cultural critic and writer, compares the nineteenth-century arms race that nearly wiped out his Comanche ancestors to the way in which the camera has been used to form unyielding perceptions of Native people. Theresa Harlan, curator at the C. N. Gorman Museum, tells how constructed mythologies about Native people threaten not only their cultures but their very survival. Photographer and educator Jolene Rickard regards contemporary Native image-making as "documents of our sovereignty, both politically and spiritually". In their essays, all three show how the photographers in Strong Hearts use the camera to represent Native American people today. One hundred twenty-five images by thirty-four Native American photographers are complemented by poetry that echoes ancient story-telling traditions.

Haunted Visions

Haunted Visions PDF Author: Charles Colbert
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Spiritualism emerged in western New York in 1848 and soon achieved a wide following due to its claim that the living could commune with the dead. In Haunted Visions: Spiritualism and American Art, Charles Colbert focuses on the ways Spiritualism imbued the making and viewing of art with religious meaning and, in doing so, draws fascinating connections between art and faith in the Victorian age. Examining the work of such well-known American artists as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William Sydney Mount, and Robert Henri, Colbert demonstrates that Spiritualism played a critical role in the evolution of modern attitudes toward creativity. He argues that Spiritualism made a singular contribution to the sanctification of art that occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The faith maintained that spiritual energies could reside in objects, and thus works of art could be appreciated not only for what they illustrated but also as vessels of the psychic vibrations their creators impressed into them. Such beliefs sanctified both the making and collecting of art in an era when Darwinism and Positivism were increasingly disenchanting the world and the efforts to represent it. In this context, Spiritualism endowed the artist's profession with the prestige of a religious calling; in doing so, it sought not to replace religion with art, but to make art a site where religion happened.

Harker's Barns

Harker's Barns PDF Author: Jim Heynen
Publisher: Bureau Oak Book
ISBN:
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
"Complementing Harker's photographs are vignettes by poet and writer Jim Heynen. Both whimsical and endearing, each vignette treats barns as organic and intelligent entities, reflecting the living history that can be found inside each rural structure."--BOOK JACKET.

Black Visions

Black Visions PDF Author: Michael C. Dawson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226138619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This comprehensive analysis of the complex relationship of black political thought identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion.