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Prown, Jules David; Anderson, Nancy K.; Cronon, William

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Photo Credits

Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, William Cronon, Brian W. Dippie, Martha A. Sandweiss, Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, Howard R. Lamar

Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West

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Author

Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, William Cronon, Brian W. Dippie, Martha A. Sandweiss, Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, Howard R. Lamar

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00038.012

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15739

Photo Credits

Fig. 8: Jenks Studio, St. Johnsbury, Vermont; fig. 34: Richard Caspole, Yale Center for British Art; figs. 48, 72, 89, 128: Joseph Szaszfai, Yale University Art Gallery; fig. 52: Bob McCormack, Tulsa; fig. 69: Geraldine T. Mancini, Yale University Art Gallery; fig. 84: Michael Agee, Yale University Art Gallery; fig. 85, Robert Wallace, Indianapolis

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Book details

BOOKDiscovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West

Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, William Cronon, Brian W. Dippie, Martha A. Sandweiss, Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, Howard R. Lamar

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00038

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15727

A common theme of western American art—from the depictions of Indians by early explorers to the monumental landscapes of Albert Bierstadt to the vibrant images of Georgia O’Keeffe—is the transformation of the land through European-American exploration and resettlement. In this book, leading authorities look at western American art of the past three centuries, reevaluating it from the perspectives of history, art history, and American studies.

Jules David Prown begins the book by discussing the need for interdisciplinary approaches to broaden the study of western American art. Nancy K. Anderson then calls for a reconsideration of western art as art rather than documentation and for the adoption of new methods to probe its aesthetic, historical, political, and cultural complexities. William Cronon explores what an environmental historian might learn from American landscape art, concluding that each image must be read as a multilayered view intertwining past, present, and future within a larger context of progress and expansionism. Examining representations of American Indians, Brian W. Dippie finds that early works pictured them caught in a process of dramatic change while later artists showed them frozen outside of time: when the frontier ended, western art made nostalgia its defining characteristic. Martha A. Sandweiss argues that the ways in which views of the American west and its peoples reached nineteenth-century audiences—through large-edition prints, book illustrations, or theatrical exhibitions—significantly affected both the images and the meanings attached to them. Susan Prendergast Schoelwer challenges popular perceptions of the frontier as a womanless domain, discovering abundant pictures of Native American women in the art of the western fur trade. Howard R. Lamar concludes by discussing the changing perceptions of western artists and inhabitants of their region’s landscape in the twentieth century.

Author

Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, William Cronon, Brian W. Dippie, Martha A. Sandweiss, Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, Howard R. Lamar

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

Yale University Press

Print publication date May 1992 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300057225

EISBN 9780300234312

Illustrations 132 illus.

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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