The FIgure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity presents American modernist sculpture in its larger cultural and social context. With the example of Auguste Rodin for inspiration, Americans at the turn of the century began to thinkof sculpture as a personal mode of expression, abandoning the commemorative function of late nineteenth-century art. During the first four decades of this century sculptors documented ordinary activities, often attacking the social ills of the day, and found escape from the technological ...
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The FIgure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity presents American modernist sculpture in its larger cultural and social context. With the example of Auguste Rodin for inspiration, Americans at the turn of the century began to thinkof sculpture as a personal mode of expression, abandoning the commemorative function of late nineteenth-century art. During the first four decades of this century sculptors documented ordinary activities, often attacking the social ills of the day, and found escape from the technological advancements and materialism of American society by turning to cultures historically or geographically distant. As the works in The Figure in American Sculpture demonstrate, the result was that genre, classicism, archaism, and the search for the exotic became popular themes, enticing a greater number of progressive artists than did pure abstraction. Sculpture in general became less elitist. Many more women, African Americans, and member of other previously marginalized groups became active in the sculpture community. While past studies have isolated artists according to race, ethnic group, and gender, The Figure in American Sculpture is the first to place minorities in the mainstream. Consequently, the names of many of the sculptors represented here will be unfamiliar but in their own day they all received critical attention for their willingness to experiment with new concepts, styles, techniques, materials, and themes.
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Seller's Description:
VG+/VG. Black cloth, gilt lettering, black DJ. 248 pp. Numerous color and bw plates. Text essays by Ilene Susan Fort, with contributions by other authors. A wonderful publication! Exhibition held at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 26 to Apr. 30, 1995, three other dates. Although most modern art historians viewed the figure as regressive, early-20th-century American sculptors embraced the human form. Curator of American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fort presents a wide selection of works from this period, not as a movement from the naturalistic to the abstract but as a reflection of a rapidly changing American society. While she sees much modern American sculpture as rooted in the works of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), she shows how the figure? whether represented in genre, primitive, folk, archaic, or classical styles? allowed artists to criticize or praise modern society. Fort's selection of minority and female artists for the work is especially refreshing, and the biographies at the end of the book are useful because several are not well known. Unfortunately, the mostly black-and-white plates are small and cannot properly represent the lines and textures of the pieces. Regardless of the quality of the photographs, this highly original work complements Donald Martin Reynold's Masters of American Sculpture (LJ 4/1/94) and is recommended for fine arts collections and academic libraries. --Review by Julie C. Boehning from Library Journal. Contents as follows: Introduction / Ilene Susan Fort--The cult of Rodin and the birth of modernism in America / Ilene Susan Fort--"Sculpture has never been thought a medium particularly feminine" / Marlene Park--"Mere beauty no longer suffices": the response of genre sculpture / Ilene Susan Fort--Primitivism, folk art, and the exotic / Roberta K. Tarbell--Creating the new black image / Mary L. Lenihan--Avant-garde or kitsch? : modern and modernistic in American sculpture between the wars / Susan Rather.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in fine jacket. Profusely illustrated in color and black & white. 247 pages. 4to, black cloth, dust wrapper. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (1995). Fine.
