So Many (Art) Books, So Little Time
The long hours of sitting here at the computer keyboard finally caused my back to go into spasms and my "crab" mode, so I had to take leave from this desk, and stop sitting or walking for awhile. But now I am feeling much better, and I must let you in on something I am really excited about. It is another book. This is not anything but my own enthusiasm here - no paid announcements. But I went up to the mailboxes on Wednesday and had to unlock the large box that is there for parcels. The cardboard box was too heavy for me to lift, so I pulled it out onto the asphalt, and began to kick it so it would slide down the hill to our house. (Dry pavement, no rain or snow the previous night.) All I knew was that it was my order from the store at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
American Painting is a very large book. 11 X 14-1/2 inches, 320 pages, with 305 full-color plates, and it is a hardcover, too! Incredible! This huge and encompassing volume was in the "bargain basement SALE," along with another one that I got, "Van Gogh's Van Goghs." I got that one for less than $10, and haven't even taken it out of its shrink-wrap yet, I am so excited by this big one. It is an immense art history book which will fill in a lot of the gaps in my art library, and I picked up for $19.99! I almost feel guilty! Before anyone else buys these up, I suggest you click on over there and see if there are any left! (post haste!)
This American Painting book was originally listed for $100.00, which is far more than I would ever have paid. But for $20? How could I resist? As far as a review goes: There are thirty-four chapters, set up pretty much chronologically, but sometimes running a couple of movements simultaneously, as, indeed, they occurred. The very first discussion is about the definition: What is American about American art? Another discussion brings up the definition of "painting," which is not so rigid a delineation here as to mean only "colored paint on a flat surface." A bit of collage, some sculptural forms, are lumped in. Although the editor, Donald Goddard, writes about the difficulty of selecting what goes in and what does not, he states that the decisions were based on the visual qualities of the works more than on recognized and labelled movements. To me, just having begun the book, a most interesting observation is that the colonists who came over to this New World came with little "artistic baggage" as Goddard puts it, in the first place, and had no time, training, or urge to do much along artistic lines for about the firstcentury of colonization. They were too busy just trying to deal with the basics of survival! In the West, a continent away, art was primarily religious, being influenced by the missionary padres and the Spanish. What is now the southwest U.S. and California belonged first to Spain, and then to Mexico. When the culturally deprived East Coast colonists began with their art traditions, first they wanted to do the Old World thing of having a portrait painted - in the English tradition, naturally enough. Also, there were not many people here to speak of (other than the mostly ignored Native Americans), and they were stretched out all along the eastern seaboard. (The book says there were about 250,000.) Most painters were itinerants, picking up commissioned portrait jobs as they could. The class distinctions among the white settlers here were blurred or gone, and the main mood of the sitters for portraits seemed to be one of optimism and hope. The requisite European "formula smile" was not used. A more realistic depiction was the usual. And the English tradition began to give way to an American style in the late 18th century, when the wars of independence and revolution were waged, and the United States came into being as an entity, more or less. The unresolved issue of slavery also had a great effect on many artists. I must insert here that the earliest artistic work of women, exemplified by needlework for items used in the home, is not mentioned in this book, as far as I can see. This is typical, however, and shows why the best histories we have of those works is the works themselves, what is left of them. Needlework is another one of my major interests. And the arts practiced by the slaves are only now, at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, being recognized, studied, and exhibited. Primitive, it is called... but it is very narrative visually, and tells many of the stories and histories of the people who were enslaved. The quilts of black women are now receiving their wee-deserved recognition. As more immigrants came here from other countries, and the settlers, particularly students, visited and studied in European countries, the art we now know as "American" began to develop. This heavy tome goes right on up to the artists and works of the late-20th century. The book was published in 1990, so it covers all we know as American Painting up until then. Our American art is unique. Although our history as a nation is short, our art traditions show the properties which make our country so varied in attitudes and ideas. Our "melting pot" reality has made our American art as unusual and varied as our population. I am thrilled I got this book!