The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies

The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies PDF

Author: Bennard B. Perlman

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1999-03-11

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 1438415877

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This is the first full-length biography of the American artist Arthur B. Davies, who played a major role in twentieth-century American art's coming-of-age. It was Davies who made possible the landmark exhibitions of The Eight and The Rockwell Kent Independent, and in 1913 he emerged as the mastermind behind the Armory Show, the first large-scale display of European modern art in the United States. Dozens of the country's best-known collectors purchased their initial avant-garde acquisitions at this show, and U.S. artists, in turn, could no longer be kept in check by the conservative National Academy after viewing works by Duchamp, Matisse, Picasso, and others. Drawing on extensive archival research, including previously unavailable letters and diaries, this book covers the breadth and depth of the artist's life and career, from his boyhood in Utica in the 1860s; through his close association with such artists and collectors as Robert Henri, John Sloan, Alfred Stieglitz, Lizzie Bliss, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller; to his death in Italy in 1928 in the company of his mistress, with whom he had lived a secret double life as "David A. Owen" for more than twenty years. Included are 101 color and black-and-white illustrations of Davies's own work, ranging from romantic dream visions to fragmented cubist forms, as well as photographs depicting his family and friends. Davies, who worked in over twenty different media, was called "one of the foremost artists in this country" and "one of the greatest artists of our time," and his work is represented in major collections throughout the United States. The illustrations alone, many of works in private collections and available here to the public for the first time, as well as the appended chronology, exhibition checklist, and list of addresses, make this a valuable addition to the library of every art dealer, curator, and student of American art. But equally fascinating is the story of the forces, personalities, and relationships that helped shape the course of twentieth-century American art.

The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art

The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art PDF

Author: Joan M. Marter

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 3140

ISBN-13: 0195335791

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

The Living Line

The Living Line PDF

Author: Robin Veder

Publisher: Dartmouth College Press

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 161168725X

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Robin Veder's The Living Line is a radical reconceptualization of the development of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American modernism. The author illuminates connections among the histories of modern art, body cultures, and physiological aesthetics in early-twentieth-century American culture, fundamentally altering our perceptions about art and the physical, and the degree of cross-pollination in the arts. The Living Line shows that American producers and consumers of modernist visual art repeatedly characterized their aesthetic experience in terms of kinesthesia, the sense of bodily movement. They explored abstraction with kinesthetic sensibilities and used abstraction to achieve kinesthetic goals. In fact, the formalist approach to art was galvanized by theories of bodily response derived from experimental physiological psychology and facilitated by contemporary body cultures such as modern dance, rhythmic gymnastics, physical education, and physical therapy. Situating these complementary ideas and exercises in relation to enduring fears of neurasthenia, Veder contends that aesthetic modernism shared industrial modernity's objective of efficiently managing neuromuscular energy. In a series of finely grained and interconnected case studies, Veder demonstrates that diverse modernists associated with the Armory Show, the SociŽtŽ Anonyme, the Stieglitz circle (especially O'Keeffe), and the Barnes Foundation participated in these discourses and practices and that "kin-aesthetic modernism" greatly influenced the formation of modern art in America and beyond. This daring and completely original work will appeal to a broad audience of art historians, historians of the body, and American culture in general.

American Artists, Authors, and Collectors

American Artists, Authors, and Collectors PDF

Author: Bennard B. Perlman

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 0791489086

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Sharing for the first time the life-long correspondence between Walter Pach—artist, author, art critic, art consultant, teacher, museum lecturer—and many of the most influential members of the literary and art worlds of his day, this book reveals Pach to be one of the unsung heroes who promoted European and American modern art during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Eight and American Modernisms

The Eight and American Modernisms PDF

Author: Peter John Brownlee

Publisher: Terra Foundation for the Arts

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13:

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Frustrated by the art world’s elitism and the snobbish exclusivity of the academy’s juries, eight American painters united in 1908 to upend the establish norms and stage their own exhibition of modernist art. Led by the charismatic Robert Henri, they came to be known as "The Eight," and their two-week show at New York’s Macbeth Galleries drew a multitude of visitors, who crowded into the galleries to critique the much-publicized work of these "revolutionary" artists. Their paintings of urban scenes marked a significant departure from the prevailing style—which emphasized physical and natural beauty—and met with critical success. The established chronicle maintains that the Eight were rendered dysfunctional and artistically irrelevant after European modernism arrived in the United States at the 1913 Armory Show. The Eight and American Modernisms revises this account and reevaluates these respected artists’ careers, including their late works. Accompanying a traveling exhibition, this lushly illustrated volume challenges the accepted wisdom about the evolution of the modernist style. In addition to Henri, "The Eight" included William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John French Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast.