Theater's materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by costumes, settings, props, and spoken dialogue. Examining work by Ibsen, Wilde, Strindberg, Genet, Kopit, and Beckett, the book takes up the apparent deadness of characters whose selves are made of other people, whose thoughts become exteriorized communication technologies, and whose bodies merge with walls and furniture. The ghostly, vampiric, and telepathic qualities of these characters, Sarah Balkin argues, mark a new relationship between the material and the imaginary in modern theater. By considering characters whose bodies respond to language, whose attempts to realize their individuality collapse into inanimacy, and who sometimes don't appear at all, the book posits a new genealogy of modernist drama that emphasizes its continuities with nineteenth-century melodrama and realism.

Randall Griffin's book examines the ways in which artists and critics sought to construct a new identity for America during the era dubbed the Gilded Age because of its leaders' taste for opulence. Artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas Anshutz explored alternative "American" themes and styles, but widespread belief in the superiority of European art led them and their audiences to look to the Old World for legitimacy. This rich, never-resolved contradiction between the native and autonomous, on the one hand, and, on the other, the European and borrowed serves as the armature of Griffin's innovative look at how and why the world of art became a key site in the American struggle for identity.

Not only does Griffin trace the interplay of issues of nationalism, class, and gender in American culture, but he also offers insightful readings of key paintings by Eakins and other canonical artists. Further, Griffin shows that by 1900 the nationalist project in art and criticism had helped open the way for the formulation of American modernism.

Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz will be of importance to all those interested in American culture as well as to specialists in art history and art criticism.

This is a brief history of and investigation into the collecting of sacred art. When works of art created for religious purposes outlive their original function, they often take on new meanings as they move from sacred spaces to secular collections. Focusing on the centuries in which the phenomenon of collecting came powerfully into its own, the fourteen essays presented here analyze the radical recontextualization of celebrated paintings by Raphael, Caravaggio, and Rubens; brings to light a lost holy tower from fifteenth-century Bavaria; and offers new insights into the meaning of 'sacred' and 'profane'. Collecting represents the primary mechanism by which a sacred work of art survives when it is alienated from its original context. In the field of art history, the consequences of such collecting - its tendency to reframe an object, metaphorically and physically - have only begun to be investigated. "Sacred Possessions" charts the contours of a fertile terrain for further inquiry.

Art historians have in the past narrowly defined primitivism, limiting their inquiry to examples of direct stylistic borrowing from African, Oceanic, or Native American imagery. The drawbacks of such an approach have become increasingly apparent, the most problematic being its perpetuation of the notion that certain traditions are indeed "primitive." Frances Connelly argues that "primitive" art was not a style at all, but a cultural construction by modern Europeans, a cluster of concepts principally forged during the Enlightenment concerning the nature of the origins of artistic expression. She contends that, instead of the paintings of Gauguin, the publication of Vico's New Science in 1725 lies much closer to the origins of primitivism because it first articulated the essential framework of ideas through which Europeans would understand "primitive" expression.

Based upon a close reading of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, including voyage accounts, ethnographies, aesthetic theories, and popular journals, The Sleep of Reason establishes that the term "primitive" art did not refer so much to actual stylistic traditions but to a collection of visual attributes that Europeans construed to be universal characteristics of "primitive" expression, specifically the hieroglyph, the grotesque, and the ornamental. Connelly provides case studies of artists and aestheticians who advocated, attempted, or realized the assimilation of these "primitive" characteristics, including some artists never before associated with primitivism as well as significant re-evaluations of Gauguin and Picasso.

Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an unprecedented explosion of visual print culture and a simultaneous rise in literacy across social classes. New printing technologies facilitated quick and cheap dissemination of images—illustrated books, periodicals, cartoons, comics, and ephemera—to a mass readership. This Victorian visual turn prefigured the present-day impact of the Internet on how images are produced and shared, both driving and reflecting the visual culture of its time. From this starting point, Drawing on the Victorians sets out to explore the relationship between Victorian graphic texts and today’s steampunk, manga, and other neo-Victorian genres that emulate and reinterpret their predecessors. Neo-Victorianism is a flourishing worldwide phenomenon, but one whose relationship with the texts from which it takes its inspiration remains underexplored. In this collection, scholars from literary studies, cultural studies, and art history consider contemporary works—Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moto Naoko’s Lady Victorian, and Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies, among others—alongside their antecedents, from Punch’s 1897 Jubilee issue to Alice in Wonderland and more. They build on previous work on neo-Victorianism to affirm that the past not only influences but converses with the present. Contributors: Christine Ferguson, Kate Flint, Anna Maria Jones, Linda K. Hughes, Heidi Kaufman, Brian Maidment, Rebecca N. Mitchell, Jennifer Phegley, Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Peter W. Sinnema, Jessica Straley

Dr. Niko Tinbergen was well known as a naturalist and a student of animal behaviour in England, on the Continent and in the United States. Ever since he was a young student in Holland he had been curious about nature, and in this book he sets out some of the facts that 25 years of curiosity gave him. As a biologist, anything living was his province-the bee-killing wasps and the digger wasps of the Dutch sand dunes; the Snow Bruntings and Phalaropes of Greenland; Hobbies and other hawks; moths and butterflies in various parts of England and Holland; Black-headed Gulls of the Ravenglass nature reserve, Cumberland, the Kittiwakes and Eider Ducks of the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland. Readers cannot fail to be struck-and possibly sometimes amused-by the patience and ingenuity shown in the field studies undertaken by Dr. Tinbergen and his fellow naturalists-and which are now passed on for the benefit and interest of his readers. The studies were always undertaken seriously, but this did not prevent Dr. Tinbergen from writing about them in the liveliest way; he realised that quite often he and his friends must have seemed to onlookers to be very curious naturalists indeed.

Struggling to create an identity distinct from the European tradition but lacking an established system of support, early painting in America received little cultural acceptance in its own country or abroad. Yet despite the initial indifference with which it was first met, American art flourished against the odds and founded the aesthetic consciousness that we equate with American art today.

In this exhilarating study David Rosand shows how early American painters transformed themselves from provincial followers of the established traditions of Europe into some of the most innovative and influential artists in the world. Moving beyond simple descriptions of what distinguishes American art from other movements and forms, "The Invention of Painting in America" explores not only the status of artists and their personal relationship to their work but also the larger dialogue between the artist and society. Rosand looks to the intensely studied portraits of America's early painters -- especially Copley and Eakins and the landscapes of Homer and Inness, among others -- each of whom grappled with conflicting cultural attitudes and different expressive styles in order to reinvent the art of painting. He discusses the work of Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, and Motherwell and the subjects and themes that engaged them. While our current understanding of America's place in art is largely based on the astonishing success of a handful of mid-twentieth-century painters, Rosand unearths the historical and artistic conditions that both shaped and inspired the phenomenon of Abstract Expressionism.

The definitive biography of J.M.W. Turner. 'A pleasure to read'.' A.S. BYATT 'With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.' MIKE LEIGH In 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain. In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.

A major new biography of James McNeill Whistler, one of most complex, intriguing, and important of America's artists This engaging personal history dispels the popular notion of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) as merely a combative, eccentric, and unrelenting publicity seeker. The Whistler revealed in these beautifully illustrated pages is an intense, introspective, and complex man, plagued by self-doubt and haunted by an endless pursuit of perfection in his painting and drawing. "[Sutherland] seeks to get behind the public Whistler . . . never judging or condescending to his subject. . . . The portrait of Whistler that emerges is complex and mysterious . . . a measured and scholarly account of an extraordinary life."-Ruth Scurr, Wall Street Journal "The first comprehensive biography of Whistler in at least a generation. . . . Sutherland skillfully captures Whistler's ambition, tenacity, and insecurity and presents his life in a narrative that does justice to both his triumphs and his failures."-Eleanor Jones Harvey, American Scholar

The monograph on Egon Schiele edited by Rudolf Leopold in 1972 forms the basis for Egon Schiele's world fame. This important document of art-historical literature has long been out of print, but it is now available once more in a revised edition with an updated catalogue raisonne. At the same time this magnificent volume provides an insight into the artist's life through letters, sketches and documents. Rudolf Leopold recognised back in the 1950s Schiele's outstanding significance for art. He was largely responsible for ensuring that the artist received the place he deserved in art history and public awareness. The monograph presented Schiele's paintings, watercolours and drawings chronologically in large-format colour plates. It is complemented by a profound examination of his motifs, studies, sketches and documents and provides a comprehensive overview. The current edition pays tribute to Leopold's achievement.

"At last, Charles Willson Peale is revealed, compleat and complex: as the familiar and essential artist and scientist, to be sure, but also as the patriot, parent, publicist, and more. David Ward's astute examination of this unique polymath introduces unexpected aspects of the man and, in so doing, sheds new light on the genius of the American Enlightenment. A masterly portrait, and an interpretive tour de force."--Charles C. Eldredge, author of "Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings

"This is an invaluable critical study of Charles Willson Peale--clear, erudite, and imaginative. Ward shows what went wrong as well as right in Peale's lifelong attempts at self-fashioning, giving us a richer picture than ever before of this restless American figure."--Alexander Nemerov, author of "The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812-1824

"One of the hallmarks of public life after the Revolution was the desire of notable Americans to fashion their own enduring reputations. This exquisite book lucidly and compellingly investigates how Charles Willson Peale expressed and controlled his image--in his ostensibly private autobiographical writing as well as in public forums such as self-portraiture and the production of spectacles and events. David C. Ward reassembles the visual and verbal conversations Peale conducted with and within himself over the course of five decades, and in doing so takes us on a remarkable journey through the labyrinth of a major artist's evolving self-consciousness during the early Republic."--Paul Staiti, Professor of Fine Arts on the Alumnae Foundation, Mount Holyoke College

The painter Carl Haag (1820-1915) gained acclaim for his colorful scenes of the Orient and true-to-life portraits, in which Nubian slaves, Arabian camel drivers or Egyptian snake charmers enliven the visual topography. After attending art school in Nuremberg, the son of a baker advanced to become a sought-after portraitist in Munich, and later refined his art with watercolor painting in Brussels and London. As court painter to the duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he worked for Britain's Queen Victoria. His watercolors that portray the life of the royal family in the Scottish Highlands are now part of the royal collection. Always searching for new motifs, Haag traveled extensively through Europe. In 1859 he headed to the Orient, visiting Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Palmyra and Baalbek. In this first biography about the painter, Walter Karbach conveys a vivid impression of society in the Victorian age, discussing Haag's artistic influences, personal preferences, as well as his artist friends and patrons. At the same time, he elicits enthusiasm for Haag's landscape sketches, portraits and drawings of ruins, which oscillate between documentary representations and romantic or idealized scenic views.

For generations, children’s books provided American readers with their first impressions of Japan. Seemingly authoritative, and full of fascinating details about daily life in a distant land, these publications often presented a mixture of facts, stereotypes, and complete fabrications.    This volume takes readers on a journey through nearly 200 years of American children’s books depicting Japanese culture, starting with the illustrated journal of a boy who accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry on his historic voyage in the 1850s. Along the way, it traces the important role that representations of Japan played in the evolution of children’s literature, including the early works of Edward Stratemeyer, who went on to create such iconic characters as Nancy Drew. It also considers how American children’s books about Japan have gradually become more realistic with more Japanese-American authors entering the field, and with texts grappling with such serious subjects as internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   Drawing from the Library of Congress’s massive collection, Sybille A. Jagusch presents long passages from many different types of Japanese-themed children’s books and periodicals—including travelogues, histories, rare picture books, folktale collections, and boys’ adventure stories—to give readers a fascinating look at these striking texts. Published by Rutgers University Press, in association with the Library of Congress.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) is arguably the foremost Swiss artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ignoring artistic conventions of his time he created a vast oeuvre comprising landscapes and portraits, monumental historic scenes and symbolic and allegorical figures, and also drawings and sketches. A number of recent international publications and exhibitions as well as rising prices for his works at auction indicate that Hodler today has secured his place as an important figure in art history. Although Hodler's work has been widely published in recent years, a catalogue raisonne of his work has been lacking. This gap is being closed now by the Swiss Institute for Art Reasearch (SIK-ISEA) in Zurich. The result of years of scholarly work is going to be published in four parts until 2016. The new volume 2 documents Hodler's oeuvre in portraiture and includes all known works. It presents also all works where attribution to Hodler is questioned by recent research, works where attribution has been proven wrong or that are proven forgeries.

Fueled by a flourishing capitalist economy, undergirded by advancements in architectural design and urban infrastructure, and patronized by growing bourgeois and elite classes, New York's built environment was dramatically transformed in the 1870s and 1880s. This book argues that this constituted the formative period of New York's modernization and cosmopolitanism-the product of a vital self-consciousness and a deliberate intent on the part of its elite citizenry to create a world-class cultural metropolis reflecting the city's economic and political preeminence. The interdisciplinary essays in this book examine New York's late nineteenth-century evolution not simply as a question of its physical layout but also in terms of its radically new social composition, comprising the individuals, institutions, and organizations that played determining roles in the city's cultural ascendancy.

George Baxter (1804-1867) was a pioneer in advancing the art of colour printing. A perfectionist, Baxter not only engraved but also examined the prints as they were produced, often providing touch-ups by hand. Baxter's process was, in the end, uneconomical, and he died bankrupt, but no one did more to bring vivid artworks within financial reach of every household, or leave a more colourful legacy for generations of admiring collectors of Victoriana. His oil-coloured prints have given viewers pleasure since they began appearing in the 1830s. Thanks to Donald and Barbara Cameron's generous donation of their Baxter collection in 2010, the Bruce Peel Special Collections & Archives was able to mount a remarkable exhibition.

This is volume 2: E-K, of a four-volume set. The complete four-volume set presents the careers of 320 women artists working in California, with more than 2,000 images, over the course of a century. Their work encompasses a broad range of styles-from the realism of the nineteenth century to the modernism of the twentieth-and of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, illustration and print-making. While some of the profiled artists are already well known, others have been previously ignored or largely forgotten. Yet all had serious careers as artists: they studied, exhibited, and won awards. These women were trailblazers, each one essential to the momentum of a movement that opened the door for heartfelt expression and equality. Much of the information and many of the images in the book have never before been published. Artists are presented alphabetically; also included are additional primary sources that put the artists' work in context.

A new look at George Caleb Bingham's iconic river paintings and his creative process in making them George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) moved to Missouri as a child and began painting the scenes of Missouri life for which he is now famous in the 1840s. Navigating the West explores how Bingham's iconic river paintings reveal the cultural and economic significance of the massive Mississippi and Missouri waterways to mid-19th-century society. Focusing on the artist's working methods and preparatory drawings, the book also explores Bingham's representations of people and places and situates these images in a dialogue with other contemporary depictions of the region. Of particular note are two landmark essays investigating Bingham's creative process through comparisons of infrared images of 17 of his paintings with both his preparatory drawings and the completed works, casting new light on his previously understudied process. Technical analysis of the artist's lauded masterpiece, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, reveals Bingham's considerable revisions to the painting. In the concluding essay, the 20th-century revival of the artist's work is discussed within the context of American Regionalism and in light of a shifting sequence of narratives about the nation's past and future. Distributed for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Amon Carter Museum of American Art (10/04/14-01/04/15) Saint Louis Art Museum (02/22/15-05/17/15) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (06/22/15-09/20/15)

Frederic Church, the acclaimed Hudson River School artist, first traveled to Maine in 1850. Over the next decades Church ventured repeatedly from his New York State home, Olana, to explore the Maine coast and its rocky islands. He also frequently trekked inland to visit Mount Katahdin. Maine provided sensational sunsets, robust waves crashing on rocky shores, and an abundance of wilderness well suited to Church's artistic vision.

Maine Sublime brings together all of the artwork in the Olana collection resulting from and inspired by Church s travels, from finished oil sketches that Church selected to mount, frame, and display at his home to pencil sketches and cartoons that he stored in portfolios. The subjects include such specific locations as Sunset Bar Harbor (1854) and works like Sunset (ca. 1852 65) and Twilight a Sketch (1858), which were inspired by dramatic Maine skies and are evocative of the region as a whole. Throughout his life, Church would continue to visit Maine, sketching, fishing, and hiking. In 1878 he bought land on Lake Millinocket with a view of Katahdin and built a simple cabin. After Church s marriage in 1860, his wife Isabel often joined his excursions to Maine. In a witty cartoon included in this catalog, Frederic and Isabel Church on Mount Desert Island, Church captures his wife s admiration of the scenery.

Maine Sublime accompanies an exhibit of Church s Maine artwork that will be displayed at the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine) from June to September, 2012; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from February to May 2013; and the Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery at Olana (Hudson, New York) from July to October, 2013."

Bringing together fourteen original essays, this collection opens up new perspectives on the architectural history of the nineteenth century by examining the buildings of the period through the lens of 'experience'. With a focus on the experience of the ordinary building user - rather than simply on the intentions of the designer - the book shows that new and important insights can be brought to our understanding of Victorian architecture. The chapters present a range of ideas and new research - some examining individual building case studies (from grand hotels and clubhouses in New York to the parliament buildings of Westminster), and others exploring conceptual questions about the nature of architectural experience, whether sensory or otherwise. Yet they share the premise that the idea of the 'experience of architecture' took on a new and particular significance with the rise of industrial modernity, and they examine what contemporary people - both architects and non-architects - understood by this idea. The insights in this volume extend beyond the study of Victorian architecture. Together they suggest how 'experience' might be used as a framework to produce a more convincingly historical account of the artefacts of architectural history.

Hold That Pose explores the role of visual images in Spain's transition to a fully modern illustrated press by the first decade of the twentieth century. It examines both the ideological impact and the technological transformation of image production in Spanish magazines during the Restoration. In the brief period of forty years, 1870 to 1910, technological and manufacturing advances revolutionized Spain's illustrated press and consequently Europeanized the tastes and the expectations of its elite urban readership. By 1900, once subscription prices fell and magazines began to apply modern photojournalistic techniques, the middle classes became inured to illustrated magazines. Advancements in photomechanical reproduction allowed periodicals to focus more extensively on the vicissitudes and pleasures of everyday life in urban Spain along with world events in increasingly remote locales. Hold That Pose explores this period of transition through an analysis of the images that spoke for and to the burgeoning numbers of subscribers who purchased the most popular weeklies of the period.

In the stunning, new interior of the Ashmolean Museum, a wall extending three levels high' illuminates' the works of one of Britain's major sculptors, Francis Chantrey (1781-1841). This book explores the pieces that comprise the Chantrey Wall and the remarkable career of an artist whose sculptures were noted for their naturalism and simplicity of style (the sculptor has been compared to Michelangelo). Chantrey sculptor produced statues of such luminaries as George Washington (housed in the Boston state house), of kings George III and IV, of William Pitt the Younger, of the Duke of Wellington, of Lord Melville and many others, including sculptures of children, perhaps his most beloved. This publication charts the progress of his art from workshop to Victorian national treasure. Chantrey's was the first monographic collection of British sculpture to become a part of a permanent museum collection in the Ashmolean. The author, who also curated the Chantrey Wall, conducted a three-year research project on Chantrey's works.

A vivid and engaging exploration of California's debt to the ancient world. Discussing the influence of the classics on America is nothing new; indeed, classical antiquity could be considered second only to Christianity as a force in modeling America's national identity. What has never been explored until now is how, from the beginning, Californians in particular chose to visually and culturally craft their new world using the rhetoric of classical antiquity. Through a lively exploration of material culture, literature, and architecture, American Arcadia offers a tour through California's development as a Mediterranean haven from the late nineteenth century to the present. In its earliest days, California was touted as the last opportunity for alienated Yankees to establish the refined gentleman-farmer culture envisioned by Jefferson and build new cities free of the filth and corruption of those they left back East. Through architecture and landscape design Californians fashioned an Arcadian setting evocative of ancient Greece and Rome.Later, as Arcadia gave way to urban sprawl, entire city plans were drafted to conjure classical antiquity, self-styled villas dotted the hills, and utopian communities began to shape the state's social atmosphere. Art historian Peter J. Holliday traces the classical influence primarily through the evidence of material culture, yet the book emphasizes the stories and people, famous and forgotten, behind the works, such as Florence Yoch, the renowned landscape designer and set designer for Gone with the Wind, and "Sister Aimee" Semple McPherson, the most publicized Christian evangelist of her day, whose sermons filled the Pantheon-like Angelus Temple. Telling stories from the creation of the famed aqueducts that turned the semi-arid landscape to a cornucopia of almonds, alfalfa, and oranges to the birth of the body-sculpting movement, American Arcadia offers readers a new way of seeing our past and ourselves.

Views of Albion is the first comprehensive study of the reception of British art and design in Central Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. The author proposes a new map of European Art Nouveau, where direct contacts between peripheral cultures were more significant than the influence of Paris. These new patterns of artistic exchange, often without historic precedence, gave art during this period its unique character and dynamism. Beginning with an analysis of the concept of Central Europe, the book examines knowledge about British art and design in the region. In subsequent chapters the author looks at the reception of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting and graphic arts as well as analysing diverse responses to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Germany, Austria, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Hungary and Southern Slavic countries. The epilogue reveals the British interest in Central Europe, echoed in the designs Walter Crane, Charles Robert Ashbee and publications of The Studio. The book questions the insularity of British culture and offers new insights into art and design of Central Europe at the fin de siècle. It presents the region as a vital part of the international Art Nouveau, but also shows its specific features, visible in the works of artists such as Alfons Mucha, Gustav Klimt and Stanisław Wyspiański.