Visions of Belonging: New England Art and the Making of
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Rosenbaum, Julia B., PUBLISHER: Cornell University Press, In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depictions ong>ofong> New England flooded the American art scene. Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Theodore Robinson, and Julian Weir, and other well-known artists produced images ong>ofong> quaint villages, agricultural labor, scenic rural churches, and the distinctive New England landscape. Julia B. Rosenbaum asks why and how a range ong>ofong> artists-including Impressionist and Modernist painters and sculptors-and exhibitors fashioned this particular vision ong>ofong> New England in their work. Against the backdrop ong>ofong> industrialization, immigration, and persistent post-Civil War sectionalism, many Americans yearned for national unity and identity. As Rosenbaum finds, New England emerged as symbolic ong>ofong> cultural and spiritual achievement and democratic values that served as an example for the nation. By addressing the struggles for national unity, the book ong>ofong>fers a new interpretation ong>ofong> turn-ong>ofong>-the-century American art. Ultimately, Visions ong>ofong> Belonging demonstrates how the local became so important to the national; how art was crucial to the formation ong>ofong> national identity; and how internal nation building takes place within the realm ong>ofong> culture, as well as politics. And even as later artists, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, challenged New England's cultural hegemony, the appeal ong>ofong> linking regional identity to national ideals continued in distinctive ways.Beautifully illustrated with color plates and almost sixty halftones, Visions ong>ofong> Belonging explores the interplay between art objects and the shaping ong>ofong> loyalties and identities in a formative phase ong>ofong> American culture. It will appeal not only to art historians but also to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century studies, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American studies, New England history and culture, and American cultural and intellectual history.