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Search - American Picturesque

American Picturesque
Author: John Conron

"Conron has produced an indispensable guide—an ‘anatomy’ in the Renaissance sense, really—to the picturesque in America. Never before have we had so detailed and incisive a consideration of the variety of ways in which this term impinged on American consciousness and influenced a whole range of arts. This is strong scholarshi... more »p which grows and grows on one until the reader understands that she has before her decades' worth of cogitation on the cultural import of picturesque." —Philip Gura, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "Majestic in scope and masterful in analysis, this truly interdisciplinary work offers the first serious treatment of the importance of the picturesque as a way of seeing landscape, and of understanding self. Conron's analysis moves deftly between landscape gardens and urban architecture, topographic scenes and literary treatises, making American Picturesque essential reading for all those in history, geography, and cultural studies aspiring to understand how nineteenth-century Americans imagined their land." —Mona Domosh, Dartmouth "This is American cultural history at its most stimulating. Conron broadly explicates the concept of the picturesque in all of its permutations in American landscape and genre painting, architecture and landscape planning, as well as literature. He combines intelligible articulation of theory with sensitive readings of key paintings and texts. Even familiar works, from Fitz Hugh Lane's Gloucester views to Thoreau’s Walden, are revealed afresh, for both the most informed historian and the general reader." —John Wilmerding, Princeton University "Enlightening, informative and instructive, John Conron’s American Picturesque gives historical substance to the pervasive nature of picturesque energies throughout our culture. This book greatly clarifies the art in life, and art as life. Conron vividly brings to light the seeds that grow into what we have come to understand as picturesque. His mining of American history for the emergence, blending, coalescing, and dispersion of the picturesque throughout American life will become a fundamental part of every environmental designer's awareness of his or her professional roots." —Bob Scarfo, Washington State University American picturesque, as defined by John Conron, is America’s first aesthetic, and one that permeated all aspects of American culture in the nineteenth century. Twenty years in the making, this book presents the picturesque aesthetic as the common thread holding together American literature, art, and landscape architecture. Focusing on the peak years of the aesthetic, 1830–1880, Conron describes how the picturesque transformed not only American perception but also American space. American Picturesque demonstrates the sweeping breadth of the concept and the specific aesthetics of the picturesque in many aspects of nineteenth-century American culture. Conron traces the picturesque theory through landscape, topographical, and genre painting; rural cottages and villas in styles ranging from Gothic and Italian Revival to Queen Anne; a landscape garden (Montgomery Place); a rural cemetery (Mount Auburn); a picturesque suburb (Llewellyn Park); Central Park and urban architecture; and prose narratives by James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others. Ultimately, Conron ably defines the elusive idea of the picturesque and proves its influence on nineteenth-century writers and artists in various media. He also shows how the picturesque aesthetic influenced people from all walks of life in the way they observed a painting, a woodland scene, a public park, a house, or even one another. This book will appeal to anyone interested in nineteenth-century American art, literature, or culture in general.

ISBN-13: 9780271019208
ISBN-10: 0271019204
Publication Date: 10/31/2000
Pages: 363
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Arts & Photography >> History & Criticism >> Schools, Periods & Styles >> Modern
Arts & Photography >> History & Criticism >> Regional >> United States
History >> Americas >> United States >> 19th Century >> General
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Popular Culture

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