Barbara Novak Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University's Books

Voyages of the Self : Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

By: Barbara Novak Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University

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Voyages of the Self : Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

By: Barbara Novak Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University

Barbara Novak is one of America's premier art historians, the author of the seminal books American Painting of the Nineteenth Century and Nature and Culture, the latter of which was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, with Voyages of the Self, this esteemed critic completes the trilogy begun with the two earlier works, offering once again an exhilarating exploration of American art and culture. In this book, Novak explores several inspired pairings of key writers and painters, drawing insightful parallels between such masters as John Singleton Copley and Jonathan Edwards, Winslow Homer and William James, Frederic Edwin Church and Walt Whitman, and Jackson Pollock and Charles Olson. Through these and other groupings, Novak tracks the varied meanings of the self in America, in which the most salient characteristics of each artist or writer is shown to draw from--and in turn influence--the larger map of American life. Two major threads weaving through the book are the American preoccupation with the "object" and our continuing return to pragmatism. Novak notes for instance how Copley's art mirrors the puritan denial of self found in Jonathan Edwards and how as colonial scientists they share an interest in sensation and observation. She sees Winslow Homer and William James as practitioners of a pragmatic self grounded in an immediate experience that looks for concrete results. Through such fruitful comparisons--whether between Copley and Edwards, or Lane and Emerson, or Ryder and Dickinson--Novak sheds unmatched light on our nation's artistic heritage. Wonderfully illustrated with dozens of black-and-white pictures and sixteen full-color plates, here is a stunning work that yields a wealth of insight into American art and culture--and concludes Novak's landmark trilogy.

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233

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0195345657

ISBN 13

9780195345650

American Painting of the Nineteenth Century

Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience

By: Barbara Novak

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American Painting of the Nineteenth Century

Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience

By: Barbara Novak

In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our art works, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the role in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature. Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history.

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352

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0190294876

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9780190294878

Nature and Culture

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

By: Barbara Novak

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Nature and Culture

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

By: Barbara Novak

In this richly illustrated volume, featuring more than fifty black-and-white illustrations and a beautiful eight-page color insert, Barbara Novak describes how for fifty extraordinary years, American society drew from the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875, all kinds of Americans--artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens--believed that God in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, Novak illuminates the range of ideas projected onto the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederich Wilhelm von Schelling. Now with a new preface, this spectacular volume captures a vast cultural panorama. It beautifully demonstrates how the idea of nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form. "An impressive achievement." --Barbara Rose, The New York Times Book Review "An admirable blend of ambition, elan, and hard research. Not just an art book, it bears on some of the deepest fantasies of American culture as a whole." --Robert Hughes, Time Magazine

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0190294256

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9780190294250

Voyages of the Self

Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

By: Barbara Novak

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Voyages of the Self

Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

By: Barbara Novak

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249

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0199728437

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9780199728435

Nature and Culture

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875

By: Barbara Novak

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Nature and Culture

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875

By: Barbara Novak

In this illustrated volume, including a number of stunning color prints, the author explains that for fifty extraordinary years, American society bestowed in the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875 all kinds of Americans, artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens, believed that God in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. During these years Nature, God, and Man converged to become a trinity, and it was through the landscape painters, the leaders of this intellectual movement, that the nation was reminded of divine benevolence "by keeping before their eyes the mountains, trees, forests, and lakes." Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, the author illuminates the range of ideas projected on to the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Theodore Rousseau, and Frederich Wilhelm Schelling. Adding a new dimension to the discussion of nature's influence on the American mind, she explains how religion, philosophy, science, and literatrue served as the support system for the idea of God in Nature. She shows that the idea of nature as a national vested interest was invaluable to a young expanding nation, but ultimately this essentially monolithic view collapsed from within, undermined by the Civil War, Darwinism, and a burgeoning technological landscape. Taking American landscape painting in its golden era as a product of society, she examines the cultural background of paintings as an index to their intrinsic meaning. She explains, for example, how new discoveries in science were made consonant with Deity, how religion itself permeated nature with the idea of Creation, and how the landscape artists were given the task of providing the images of nature that became the national iconography. She goes on to demonstrate how American landscapists, handling rocks, clouds, plants, and other natural elements, paralleled and diverged from scientific developments, and also how the landscapists who accompanied explorers on their westward expeditions related to their scientific colleagues. With a new introduction, this volume encompasses a vast cultural panorama. It demonstrates how the influence of the nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form.

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296

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Oxford University Press, USA

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0195305876

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9780195305876

Book's by Barbara Novak Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University

Voyages of the Self : Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

Voyages of the Self : Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature

American Painting of the Nineteenth Century

American Painting of the Nineteenth Century

Nature and Culture

Nature and Culture

Voyages of the Self

Voyages of the Self

Nature and Culture

Nature and Culture

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