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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Iconography, subjects depicted in art > Nature in art, still life, landscapes & seascapes
Unattainable North Korean Art curates a collection of paintings
from fifty-eight artists from the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea ("DPRK"). Centring on the theme of nature, the paintings
portray geographical sites and citizens of DPRK. Art and literature
feature as a poignant role in inspiring the DPRK people to
contribute to the development of DPRK, the collection not only
exhibits the artistic skills of the artists, but offers an
opportunity to discover DPRK from the people's perspective.
"A fascinating and indispensable book."-Christopher Knight, Los
Angeles Times Best Books of 2018-The Guardian Gold Medal for
Contribution to Publishing, 2018 California Book Awards Carleton
Watkins (1829-1916) is widely considered the greatest American
photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most
influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of
Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.
Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove
in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of
Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as
news of the Union's disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing
in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio's horrific
photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins's work tied the West
to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging
the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins's pictures,
Congress would pass legislation, later signed by Abraham Lincoln,
that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical "national park," the
first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton
Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the
birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental
historian Hans Huth's landmark 1948 "Yosemite: The Story of an
Idea." Watkins's photographs helped shape America's idea of the
West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation.
His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as
modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced
entire landscapes to America but were important to the development
of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and
science. Watkins's clients, customers, and friends were a veritable
"who's who" of America's Gilded Age, and his connections with
notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie
Benton Fremont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir,
Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped
make today's America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh
archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn't just
reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling
of Watkins's story will fascinate anyone interested in American
history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development
of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.
Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of
nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery
reflected the national character. In this new work, color
reproductions of more than 115 paintings capture the beauty and
illuminate the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the Hudson
River School painters. The pieces included in this volume reflect a
period (1825-1875) when American landscape painting was most
thoroughly explored and formalized with personal, artistic,
cultural, and national identifications. Judith Hansen O'Toole
reveals the subtleties and quiet majesty of the works and discusses
their shared iconography, the ways in which artists responded to
one another's paintings, and how the paintings reflected
nineteenth-century American cultural, intellectual, and social
milieus. Different Views is also the first major study to examine
closely the Hudson River School artists' practice of creating
thematically related pairs and series of paintings. O'Toole
considers painters' use of this method to express different moods
and philosophical concepts. She observes artists' representations
of landscape and their nuanced depictions of weather, light, and
season. By comparing and contrasting Hudson River School paintings,
O'Toole reveals differences in meaning, emotion, and cultural
connotation. Different Views in Hudson River School Painting
contains reproductions of works from a range of prominent and
lesser-known artists, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford
Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert
Bierstadt, John Frederic Kensett, and John William Casilear. The
works come from a leading private collection and were recently
exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
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