George Inness and the Science of Landscape

George Inness and the Science of Landscape
Author: Rachael Z. DeLue
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226142310

George Inness (1825-94), long considered one of America's greatest landscape painters, has yet to receive his full due from scholars and critics. A complicated artist and thinker, Inness painted stunningly beautiful, evocative views of the American countryside. Less interested in representing the details of a particular place than in rendering the "subjective mystery of nature," Inness believed that capturing the spirit or essence of a natural scene could point to a reality beyond the physical or, as Inness put it, "the reality of the unseen." Throughout his career, Inness struggled to make visible what was invisible to the human eye by combining a deep interest in nineteenth-century scientific inquiry—including optics, psychology, physiology, and mathematics—with an idiosyncratic brand of mysticism. Rachael Ziady DeLue's George Inness and the Science of Landscape—the first in-depth examination of Inness's career to appear in several decades—demonstrates how the artistic, spiritual, and scientific aspects of Inness's art found expression in his masterful landscapes. In fact, Inness's practice was not merely shaped by his preoccupation with the nature and limits of human perception; he conceived of his labor as a science in its own right. This lavishly illustrated work reveals Inness as profoundly invested in the science and philosophy of his time and illuminates the complex manner in which the fields of art and science intersected in nineteenth-century America. Long-awaited, this reevaluation of one of the major figures of nineteenth-century American art will prove to be a seminal text in the fields of art history and American studies.

Haunted Visions

Haunted Visions
Author: Charles Colbert
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812204999

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.

The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art

The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art
Author: Joan M. Marter
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 3140
Release: 2011
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0195335791

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

The Smith College Museum of Art

The Smith College Museum of Art
Author: Smith College. Museum of Art
Publisher: Hudson Hills
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2000
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781555951948

Smith College art professors Davis and Leshko showcase 100 paintings and sculptures from their institution's vaunted collection, encompassing Americans from Gilbert Stuart to Louise Nevelson and Europeans from Corot to Henry Moore. In the introduction, how and why Smith became steward of such a fine body of work is ascribed to the school's high-minded mission and its generous alumni donors. The rest of the book is divided into two sections, one American and the other European. Each individual full-color reproduction is accompanied by an informative one-page essay and a brief reading list. During several years of renovations at Smith, the items featured in this book are traveling to diverse sites, which should increase the book's appeal. 118 colour & 1 b/w illustrations

An American View

An American View
Author: Brooklyn Museum
Publisher: Giles
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN:

"This new volume accompanies and complements the publication of the two-volume authoritative catalogue of the Brooklyn Museum's collection of American paintings by artists born by 1876. It provides a richly illustrated general survey of American painting from the late colonial era to the early years of the twentieth century, as presented in sixty-four of the Museum's most significant paintings by American artists. Each painting is illustrated in color, and the selected works are arranged in four broad chronological sections: early American art; art of the 1830s to 1850s; American painting in the Civil War era; and cosmopolitan painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Extended captions present the key features of each painting and artist, and of the wider artistic context of the work and the period in which it was produced."--BOOK JACKET.