The American Art Book

Covering three centuries, this vibrant, fresh overview ranges from Puritan portraits to the American Impressionists to the videos and digital works of today's most intriguing conceptual artists. 500 color illustrations.

[This book is] for American art survey courses. [It] provides a thorough ... chronology of American art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and folk art. [The author] presents art and artists within the context of their times, including insights into the intellectual, spiritual, and political environment. [He] charts the growth of a distinctly American art culture.-Back cover.

"In a new compact and portable format - the accessible, award-winning A-Z guide to the world's great painters and sculptors. The Art Book is a landmark in the world of publishing. Available in a range of different formats and in over 20 different languages, it has received rave reviews since its first publication and can be frequently found on bestseller lists around the world. Now available for the first time in a highly covetable and portable midi format, this second edition is an updated and substantially expanded version of the hugely successful original book. An A-Z guide to 600 great artists from medieval to modern times, it debunks art-historical classifications and pairs brilliant examples of all periods, schools, visions, and techniques. By breaking with traditional classifications, The Art Book represents a fresh and original approach to art: an unparalleled visual sourcebook and a celebration of our rich and multifaceted culture." --Publisher's website.

With the advent of abstract expressionism in the 1940s, America became the white hot center of the artistic universe. Now, in The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists, the first such volume to appear in three decades, Ann Lee Morgan offers an informative, insightful, and long overdue resource on our nation's artistic heritage. Featuring 945 alphabetically arranged entries, here is an indispensable biographical and critical guide to American art from colonial times to contemporary postmodernism. Readers will find a wealth of factual detail and insightful analysis of the leading American painters, ranging from John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, and Mary Cassatt to such modern masters as Jackson Pollack, Romare Bearden, and Andy Warhol. Morgan offers razor-sharp entries on sculptors ranging from Alexander Calder to Louise Nevelson, on photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Ansel Adams, and on contemporary installation artists, including video master Bill Viola. In addition, the dictionary provides entries on important individuals connected to the art scene, including collectors such as Peggy Guggenheim and critics such as Clement Greenberg. Morgan also examines notable American institutions, organizations, schools, techniques, styles, and movements. The range of coverage is indeed impressive, but equally important is the quality of analysis that appears in entry after entry. Morgan gives readers a wealth of trustworthy and authoritative information as well as perceptive, well-informed criticism of artists and their work. In addition, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced, so readers can easily find additional information on any topic of interest. Beautifully written, filled with fascinating historical background and penetrating insight, The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists is an essential one-volume resource for art lovers everywhere.

Celebrating the reopening of the newly restored Smithsonian American Art Museum, a premier collection of American art features more than 250 reproductions of great works of American painting, sculpture, folk art, and photography, by such artists as Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Nam June Paik, and other luminaries.

"What's American about American art? Author Henry Adams examines 60 important works from the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, and comes up with some surprising answers. This prominent art historian finds unexpected diversity in a discussion that ranges from Native American artifacts to the work of Jackson Pollock. Profusely illustrated with more than 80 pages of color plates, many iconic images from this collection of American art are explored, from the works of John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer, to the art of George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, among many others."--Publisher's description.

A to Z dictionary of American art by American artists or those who immigrated in their early years.

In this expansive volume devoted to one of the premier art collections in the U.S., the rich and full picture of Maine's central role in American art from the early nineteenth century to the present is chronicled. Published on the occasion of Maine's bicentennial, the book considers more than 200 major works of American art from the Farnsworth Art Museum's impressive holdings and details how the state has figured prominently in the development of American art. The volume includes artists as diverse as Andrew Wyeth, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Francesco Clemente, Robert Rauschenberg, and Alex Katz, among others. Through their work, a fascinating depiction of the state--and indeed of the development of American art--emerges. The volume will feature two historic sites: the Farnsworth Homestead (the National Register of Historic Places home of founder Lucy Copeland Farnsworth) and the National Historic Landmark Olson House, inspiration for some 300 works by Andrew Wyeth, including Christina's World. The book also considers Lucy Copeland Farnsworth's distinctive vision to create a museum, library, and historic house, placing her among the few and still under-recognized women who created museums throughout the United States in the early twentieth century.