We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,565,525.42 | Books Available: 796,129 | Members Online: 62

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Hidden in Plain Sight: An Examination of the American Arts

Hidden in Plain Sight An Examination of the American Arts
Author: Martin Williams

When Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the United States in 1974, he announced that his hero as a dancer was Fred Astaire. Many Americans were surprised that a highly popular figure from the movies could inspire a classically trained European dancer, just as they would be surprised to hear Duke Ellington called a great composer in the same breath... more » with Ravel. But these artists and others, writes Martin Williams, deserve such praise. Twentieth century America, he argues, has produced a rich and innovative culture whose best artists should be a source of national pride.

In Hidden in Plain Sight, acclaimed critic Martin Williams offers an eloquent celebration of the achievements of American culture. Americans, Williams writes, have labored under the sense that the art forms created on our shores are less valid than the traditional art forms of Europe. In these lucid essays, he shows how certain American artists have achieved a range and power of their own. Specifically, rejecting such terms as "popular culture," Williams looks at such great, innovative artists as D.W. Griffith and Fred Astaire and shows how they virtually created their own genrers of art with a uniquely American outlook and temperament. He offers a brilliant look at Duke Ellington, exploring the range and enormous volume of his work and describing how he worked with his orchestra in the same way great dramatists (Shakespeare among them) have worked with the specific talents of their actors. Williams looks at comic strips and finds in E.C. Segar's original "Popeye" a perceptive and prophetic comic comment on dictatorship done in 1936. He sees Walt Kelly as a kind of American Father Goose. He discusses the aesthetics of TV by looking at "Bullwinkle and Rocky." He provides freshly revealing accounts of the detective story, the gangster thriller, and the radio satire of Fred Allen, and more. On the other hand, Williams seriously questions whether the United States has a folk music in the traditional sense.

In 1924, Gilbert Seldes published The Seven Lively Arts, a landmark account of the originality and value of American culture. Hidden in Plain Sight will be considered a Seldes for the 1990s--and yet it goes further, offering a celebratory critique by the writer Gary Giddins of the Village Voice called "one of the most distinguished critics (of anything) this country has produced."

ISBN-13: 9780195075007
ISBN-10: 0195075005
Publication Date: 6/11/1992
Pages: 160
Edition: First Edition
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Hidden in Plain Sight: An Examination of the American Arts

Loading...