A sumptuous catalogue that traces the evolution of a uniquely American aesthetic identity From the 1850s to the 1950s, American art and culture progressed from provincial status to international prominence, and American art transitioned from figurative depictions of the particular to abstract interpretations of universal ideals. This beautiful book chronicles this complex century of maturation through a selection of paintings from the extraordinary collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art. Coming of Age begins with Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and the Hudson River School landscapes that embody the new nationalism of mid-nineteenth-century America. Their successors, Luminists like Jasper Cropsey and Fitz H. Lane, infused their immediate surroundings with glowing light and crystalline clarity, while contemporary Barbizon-influenced tonalists, such as George Inness, sought to capture the American ethos through an emotional, atmospheric landscape language. In the later 19th century, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Eastman Johnson depicted native subjects through the lens of realism. Childe Hassam and Maurice Prendergast brought Impressionist aesthetics to America, while expatriates including John Singer Sargent and James McNeil Whistler established themselves in European art capitals. In New York, turn-of-the-century Ashcan school painters captured the gritty cityscape that would later host champions of modernism Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, and Marsden Hartley. In the 1930s, European-trained artist Josef Albers introduced a generation of American painters to new theories of color and space from which emerged the breakthrough Abstract Expressionists. By the 1950s, American art had come of age, as Americans securely held the vanguard position in the international art world.

Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s

Arts & Photography

Agee, William C.

Faxon, Susan C.

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Sheila Hicks (born 1934) is a pioneering artist noted for objects and public commissions whose structures are built of color and fiber. This volume accompanies the first major retrospective of Hicks’s work; it documents the remarkable versatility and dramatically divergent scale of her textiles as well as her distinctive use, and surprising range, of materials. Hicks deliberately and provocatively engages what are often considered mutually exclusive domains, rethinking and pushing the limits of generally accepted contexts, conditions, and frameworks. These include distinct objects and temporal, performative actions; studio works and commissions for public buildings; and textiles made in artisanal workshops as well as for industrial production in places as different as Chile, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Sweden, and the United States.
Three essays analyze the progression of Hicks’s art and technique and her many modes of working. Among other topics, they examine the artist’s relationship to the “expanded fields” of the “new sculpture” and the “new tapestry” beginning in the 1960s, the reclamation of craft as subject and technique for artists in many media, the integrated influences of international cultures, and the aesthetic, pedagogical, conceptual, and historical framework from which Hicks’s work has developed. This publication reveals the full extent of Hicks’s work, from exquisite miniature weavings to major sculptural pieces to such large-scale commissions as The Four Seasons of Fuji. Exquisitely designed and lavishly illustrated, this book demonstrates that Hicks’s pioneering work with textiles has embraced yet reinvented tradition, successfully navigating the terrain between art, design, and architecture.

Sheila Hicks: 50 Years

Simon, Joan

Since it opened its doors in 1931, the Addison Gallery of American Art has become renowned for its outstanding collection of works by American artists. This superb volume serves as a general introduction to the collection.

Addison Gallery of American Art 65 Years: A Selective Catalogue

Reynolds, Jock

Berman, Avis

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Distributed Art Pub Inc

Coming of Age: American Art, 1850's to 1950's

Amer Federation of Arts

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