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American Genre Painting Elizabeth Johns

American Genre Painting By Elizabeth Johns

American Genre Painting by Elizabeth Johns


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Condition - Very Good
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Summary

Probing beneath the "everyday blissfulness" of American genre painting, Johns analyzes various works and reveals that these paintings did not reflect faith in the common man but served rather to reinforce feelings of superiority among political and social leaders of antebellum America.

American Genre Painting Summary

American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life by Elizabeth Johns

American genre painting flourished in the thirty years before the Civil War, a period of rapid social change that followed the election of President Andrew Jackson. It has long been assumed that these paintingsof farmers, western boatmen and trappers, blacks both slave and free, middle-class women, urban urchins, and other everyday folkserved as records of an innocent age, reflecting a Jacksonian optimism and faith in the common man. In this enlightening book Elizabeth Johns presents a different interpretationarguing that genre paintings had a social function that related in a more significant and less idealistic way to the political and cultural life of the time.

Analyzing works by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, David Gilmore Blythe, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others, Johns reveals the humor and cynicism in the paintings and places them in the context of stories about the American character that appeared in sources ranging from almanacs and newspapers to joke books and political caricature. She compares the productions of American painters with those of earlier Dutch, English, and French genre artists, showing the distinctive interests of American viewers. Arguing that art is socially constructed to meet the interests of its patrons and viewers, she demonstrates that the audience for American genre paintings consisted of New Yorkers with a highly developed ambition for political and social leadership, who enjoyed setting up citizens of the new democracy as targets of satire or condescension to satisfy their need for superiority. It was this network of social hierarchies and prejudicesand not a blissful celebration of American democracythat informed the look and the richly ambiguous content of genre painting.

Additional information

GOR009602875
9780300057546
0300057547
American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life by Elizabeth Johns
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Yale University Press
1993-07-28
272
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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