Pacific Parallels: Artists and the Landscape in New Zealand

Arts & Photography

Barr, Mary

Eldredge, Charles C.

Barr, Jim

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

San Diego Museum of Art

Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern

Rich reproductions of Georgia O'Keefe's works highlight this in-depth examination of the artist's life, including her place in the American tradition and her return to the rural subjects of her childhood.

Individual Artists

Yale University Press

Reproductions of O'Keeffe's works highlight this examination of the artist's life, including her place in the American tradition and her return to the rural subjects of her childhood

From the Back Cover "Full of interesting stories, We Gather Together is a very entertaining read. It is also quietly subversive. Beneath the veil of gentle humor and the perceptive readings of paintings, the book carries an important message: at a time when global warming is endangering life on this planet, the book implores us to think more deeply about our fundamental relationship with the earth."—Henry Adams, author of Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock "Wide-ranging and wonderfully illustrated, Eldredge’s book examines how farming once defined America’s sense of self and collective purpose."—Erika Doss, author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America Product Description The mutual history of art, agriculture, and American identity as told through the theme of the harvest.The harvest has traditionally been a productive season, both on American farms and in its artists’ studios. Before the early nineteenth century, the ideal of the Jeffersonian yeoman, singly cultivating a subsistence plot for family use, dominated the American imagination; after World War II, the advent of big agribusiness proved less immediately attractive for artists. In We Gather Together, Charles C. Eldredge examines the period in between—when many Americans were farmers and much of America was farmland. Organized in a series of case studies each devoted to a single crop, We Gather Together initially focuses on familiar commodity crops such as corn, wheat, and potatoes, and then expands to other yields by Native American harvesters and California floriculturists, as well as winter ice cutters and coastal seaweed gatherers. This novel history of agriculture and art traces parallel developments on land and canvas, highlighting breakthroughs in each field. Artists such as Winslow Homer, Doris Lee, and Georgia O’Keeffe are joined by innovators in agriculture, whether mechanical inventors such as Eli Whitney, John Deere, and Cyrus McCormick or genetic hybridizers such as Luther Burbank, W. Atlee Burpee, and Theodosia Shepherd. Surveying an astonishing amount of material and a wide range of paintings, prints, and other artworks from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, We Gather Together gorgeously demonstrates how the use of agricultural metaphors permeated American visual culture. The harvest, we see here, came to signify and dominate politics, poetry, and popular culture, ultimately representing a primary facet of American identity and nationhood. About the Author Charles C. Eldredge is an American art historian. He has served as director of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and as Hall Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, where he taught and published widely in the field of American art and culture.

We Gather Together: American Artists and the Harvest

History & Criticism

University of California Press

In 1940, John Steuart Curry painted a scene of Herbert Hoover directing relief efforts after the Mississippi River flood of 1927 as part of a series of paintings depicting modern American history commissioned by Life magazine. In this in-depth case study, Charles Eldredge examines the story of the artist and his painting as well as the American cultural and political era in which it was made. Eldredge asks several provocative questions. Why did Curry, an artist associated with his native Kansas, choose to depict a subject from the Mississippi Delta? As a painter of nineteenth-century or contemporary agrarian scenes, what prompted Curry to select a specific historical event rather than a more generalized statement of American life? Who was the presumed audience, and what role did it have in the painting's creation? Because of its position in the artist's career, its role in a notable publishing venture, and its appearance at a crucial political moment, Hoover and the Flood provides a revealing look at American art and culture--both political and journalistic--of 1940.

John Steuart Currys Hoover and the Flood: Painting Modern History

The University of North Carolina Press

Tales from the Easel features seventy full-color reproductions that convey the expressive, allusive powers of narrative painting. Though they range widely in subject and setting, all of the paintings gathered here are rendered in a representational, or realistic, style. Carrying moral, social, or patriotic messages, the paintings are meant to teach, enlighten, or inspire. Then again, the paintings can also tweak the very conventions that define them, with results that range from the delightfully idiosyncratic to the visionary.
Thomas Hart Benton, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, and Jacob Lawrence are just some of the household names whose work appears in Tales from the Easel. Others, like Elihu Vedder and Lilly Martin Spencer, are less well known, but still vital to the development of narrative painting. While some of the artists, including George Caleb Bingham and Paul Cadmus, were classically trained, self-taught painters such as Carlos "Shiney" Moon and Thomas Waterman Wood are also represented.
American rivers, cities, and battlefields are among the native surroundings shown in many of the paintings. However, artists also looked elsewhere for settings--to Europe, the Holy Land, or even some imagined realm. Charles C. Eldredge's essay discusses the rich and varied sources of American narrative painting--from literature and history to childhood and domestic life--and an essay by William Underwood Eiland provides a discussion of the southern tale-telling tradition. Artist biographies by Reed Anderson and Stephanie J. Fox appear opposite the paintings, adding further context.
Tales from the Easel, a companion volume to the national touring exhibit of the same name is a stunning reminder of a tradition in American painting that has endured across two centuries and numerous art movements.

Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800-1950

University of Georgia Press

Traces the history of the art of New Mexico and examines the works of Hispanic and Indian artists of the region

Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe

Abbeville Press

John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West

This long-awaited volume marks the centennial of an important and controversial artist, one of the great American Regionalists. Essays cover every aspect of his life and work, and reproduce his finest paintings and drawings of farm life in Kansas, the circus, and the American scene in general.

Junker, Patricia

Hudson Hills

Unmasking the realities of human nature and the contemporary society in which we live, Irving Norman aimed only ''to tell the truth of our time.''
 Norman's massive canvases abound with teeming figures, drone-like and mechanical in their repetition, yet stubbornly and hauntingly human. The combination of jewel-tone colors, transcendent messages, and technical virtuosity make his work unique in the history of American art.
 Dark Metropolis, a book of compelling vision, is produced in conjunction with the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento to accompany an ambitious retrospective of the art of this important painter.

Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman's Social Surrealism

Duncan, MIchael

Heyday Books

Arthur Dove's pursuit of an original language of expression made him a pioneer of American abstraction and a source for later painters. Reflections on Nature: Small Paintings by Arthur Dove, 1942-1943 features twenty-eight mixed media works on paper from the collection of the Wichita Art Museum, to whom the works were given in 1989 by the artist's son. Representing a group of more than three hundred similar sketches executed late in life, these small paintings are meditations on the natural environs of Dove's Long Island home. The freshness and authority in this selection of Dove's late work is evidence of his lifelong interest in the distillation of natural forms as well as his enduring commitment to technical experimentation.

Reflections on Nature: Small Paintings by Arthur Dove, 1942-1943

Dove, Arthur Garfield

New Britain Museum of American Art

Amer Federation of Arts

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eldredge, Charles C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eldredge, Charles C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eldredge, Charles C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Pacific Parallels: Artists and the Landscape in New Zealand

Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern

Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern

We Gather Together: American Artists and the Harvest

John Steuart Currys Hoover and the Flood: Painting Modern History

Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800-1950

Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe

John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West

Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman's Social Surrealism

Reflections on Nature: Small Paintings by Arthur Dove, 1942-1943