Critical Issues In American Art: A Book Of Readings

This anthology of essays on different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists is designed for students and teachers in American art history and American studies programs. It contains twenty selections from academic journals on American art from colonial times to 1940. Mary Ann Calo provides an introduction to the anthology, explaining its purpose and organization, and each selection has a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach. These case studies show the diversity of scholarly thinking about interpreting American works of art, which should be useful for teachers and comprehensible and interesting for students. This anthology contains twenty articles on American art from colonial times to 1940. The selections are mainly from academic journals and aim to provide the student and teacher with different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists. Mary Ann Calos preface to the anthology explains its purpose and organization, and each article will have a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach. This text meets the need in American art history studies for an anthology of essays on critical approaches and methodologies.

Table of Contents:
* Coming of Age: Historical Scholarship in American Art Wanda M. Corn. * Reading Eighteenth-Century American Family Portraits: Social Images and Self-Images Margaretta M. Lovell. * Ariadne and the Indians: Vanderlyns Neoclassical Princess, Racial Seduction, and the Melodrama of Abandonment David M. Lubin. * Thomas Cole and Jacksonian America: The Course of Empire as Political Allegory Angela Miller. * George Caleb Binghams The County Election: Whig Tribute to the Will of the People Gail E. Husch. * Two Sculptures for the Capitol: Horatio Greenoughs Rescue and Luigi Persicos Discovery of America Vivien Green Fryd. * American Folk Art: Questions and Quandaries John Michael Vlach. * New Mexican Santos and the Preservation of Religious Traditions William Wroth. * Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs Alan Trachtenberg. * Trapper, Hunter, and Woodsman: Winslow Homers Adirondack Figure David Tatham. * Thomas Eakins and Pure Art Education Elizabeth Johns. * The Earnest, Untiring Worker and the Magician of the Brush: Gender Politics in the Criticism of Cecilia Beaux and John Singer Sargent Sarah Burns. * Lifting the Veil: Henry O. Tanners The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor Judith Wilson. * Columbus and Columbia in Chicago, 1893: Man of Genius Meets Generic Woman Judy Sund. * George Bellows Stag at Sharkeys: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity Robert E. Haywood. * American Art and National Identity: The 1920s Matthew Baigell. * Who Will Paint New York? The Worlds Art Center and the New York Paintings of Georgia OKeeffe Anna C. Chave. * In My Family of Primitiveness and Tradition: William H. Johnsons Jesus and the Three Marys Richard J. Powell. * Images of American Women in the 1930s: Reginald Marsh and Paramount Picture Erika L. Doss. * Florine Stettheimer: Rococo Subversive Linda Nochlin.

About the Author :
Mary Ann Calo