Published to accompany the exhibition "America's cool modernism : O'Keeffe to Hopper" at the Ashmolean Museum, 23 March to 22 July 2018. Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-179) and index.
Contents:
Catalogue. Cool modernism in America, 1915-45 / Lauren Kroiz -- Modern, cool and cold / Leo G. Mazow -- Leaving the body: the empty spaces of American Modernism / Lauren Kroiz -- Works in focus -- Exhibitions in focus -- Catalogue.
Summary:
"As some American artists began to eliminate people and remove extraneous details from their compositions, they often employed neat, orderly brushwork or close-up, unemotional photography. Artists as diverse as Patrick Henry Bruce, John Covert, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand and Arthur Dove navigated European and American avant-garde circles, picking and choosing new ideas and methods. Inspiration ranged from Cubism and machine parts to new technologies, and they found ways to bring order to the modern world through extreme simplification. For them, abstraction involved absence and presence - the evacuation of human beings but also the desire to depict something that would not otherwise be visible or to render visible unseen natural processes like the passage of time, sound waves, or weather patterns. Their artworks provide a new context for the precisionist works in the subsequent sections and point to modern ideas about what art could be"--Publisher's description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.