One of the most enduringly popular American artists, Frederic Remington created romantic images of the Old West that inspire a nostalgic longing for a simpler era. Despite his popularity - or perhaps because of it - Remington's work is rarely treated seriously by art critics: it has been both dismissed as cliched and condemned for its frank and unrepentant racist themes. This engrossing book by Alexander Nemerov will change perceptions of Remington and open new fields of investigation in the study of American art. Nemerov treats Remington's paintings and sculptures not as mere illustrations of the frontier experience but as complex, imaginative inventions, and he argues that Remington's politics and aesthetics are intrinsically related. Drawing on the methods of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and material culture studies, as well as art history, Nemerov places Remington's art in the context of the cultural and ideological currents of his times: social evolution; imperialism (specifically the Spanish-American War); widespread immigration and the resulting crisis of Anglo-Saxon identity; concerns about memory, telepathy, and the recovery of the past; and doubts about the mimetic powers of painting and writing. Nemerov neither celebrates Remington nor debunks him; rather, he succeeds in restoring his art to its centrally important place, largely forgotten now, in turn-of-the-century American culture.

Frederic Remington and Turn-of-the-Century America (Yale Publications in the History of Art)

Nemerov, Alexander

Biographies & Memoirs

Yale University Press

An American painter usually associated with the Precisionist movement, George Copeland Ault (1891-1948) created works that provide a unique window onto the uncertainty and despair of the Second World War. Despite early commercial success in the 1920s, Ault eventually withdrew from both artistic and political worlds in 1937 and set up his studio in a tiny house in Woodstock, New York, where he produced evocative scenes of barns, telephone wires, and streetlights that utilize precise alignments and geometries to impose a symbolic order on a world in crisis. 
To Make a World is the first publication on Ault in more than two decades, and it features nearly twenty of Ault's paintings alongside those of his contemporaries, including Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, and Andrew Wyeth. Author Alexander Nemerov explains that despite Ault's remote location and reclusive lifestyle, his paintings represent his fear for the precarious state of the world and reflect an emotional response shared by many artists and the nation at large.

To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The story of a bittersweet, impromptu art exhibition for President and Mrs. Kennedy The events associated with John F. Kennedy’s death are etched into our nation’s memory. This fascinating book tells a less familiar part of the story, about a special art exhibition organized by a group of Fort Worth citizens. On November 21, 1963, the Kennedys arrived in Fort Worth around midnight, making their way to Suite 850 of the Hotel Texas. There, installed in their honor, was an intimate exhibition that included works by Monet, Van Gogh, Marin, Eakins, Feininger, and Picasso. Due to the late hour, it was not until the following morning that the couple viewed the exhibition and phoned one of the principal organizers, Ruth Carter Johnson, to offer thanks. Mrs. Kennedy indicated that she wished she could stay longer to admire the beautiful works. The couple was due to depart for Dallas, and the rest is history.
This volume reunites the works in this exhibition for the first time and features some previously unpublished images of the hotel room. Essays examine this exhibition from several angles: anecdotal, analytical, cultural, and historical, and include discussions of what the local citizens wished to convey to their distinguished viewers.

Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy

Lubin, David M.

Barker, Scott

Meslay, Olivier

Longford, Nicola

Dallas Museum of Art

The first comprehensive overview of an influential American photographer and filmmaker whose work is known for its intimacy and social engagement Coming of age in the 1960s, the photographer Danny Lyon (b. 1942) distinguished himself with work that emphasized intimate social engagement. In 1962 Lyon traveled to the segregated South to photograph the civil rights movement. Subsequent projects on biker culture, the demolition and redevelopment of lower Manhattan, and the Texas prison system, and more recently on the Occupy movement and the vanishing culture in China’s booming Shanxi Province, share Lyon’s signature immersive approach and his commitment to social and political issues that concern those on the margins of society. Lyon’s photography is paralleled by his work as a filmmaker and a writer. Danny Lyon: Message to the Future is the first in-depth examination of this leading figure in American photography and film, and the first publication to present his influential bodies of work in all media in their full context. Lead essayists Julian Cox and Elisabeth Sussman provide an account of Lyon’s five-decade career. Alexander Nemerov writes about Lyon’s work in Knoxville, Tennessee; Ed Halter assesses the artist’s films; Danica Willard Sachs evaluates his photomontages; and Julian Cox interviews Alan Rinzler about his role in publishing Lyon’s earliest works. With extensive back matter and illustrations, this publication will be the most comprehensive account of this influential artist’s work.

Danny Lyon: Message to the Future

Cox, Julian

Sussman, Elisabeth

Sachs, Danica Willard

Halter, Ed

Rinzler, Alan

Photography & Video

The American painter Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825) left a legacy of vibrantly beautiful still lifes depicting objects such as fruit, vegetables, and meat. In this lively and literate study, the first book-length exploration of the artist, Alexander Nemerov presents a radical new reading of these paintings focusing on the uncanny quality of Raphaelle's still-life objects. Nemerov argues that the physical presence of these objects is not strictly their own but that of the artist's body. This imagery of embodiment, Nemerov argues, relates deeply to Raphaelle's own time. The Body of Raphaelle Peale focuses on not just Raphaelle's paintings but also the visual and intellectual culture of early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia, to which these works intimately relate. More broadly, the book presents a reading of romanticism in the American visual arts. Above all, it is an argument about selfhood in Raphaelle's era. Raphaelle's focus―in paintings both playful and morbid―was the pleasures and horrors of being a mere body, of being less than a self. Nemerov's primary source of evidence in this study is Raphaelle's art itself. After considering its theoretical and historical implications, he returns to the images, deftly guiding us to a fresh understanding of these remarkable paintings. Nemerov's formal analysis is infused with a sophisticated awareness of interdisciplinary issues, and he gracefully balances the formal, the theoretical, and the historical throughout his narrative. This beautifully illustrated study is sure to stimulate renewed appreciation of an exceptional American artist.

The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812–1824 (Ahmanson Murphy Fine Arts Imprint)

University of California Press

This beautifully written study looks at the haunting, melancholy horror films Val Lewton made between 1942 and 1946 and finds them to be powerful commentaries on the American home front during World War II. Alexander Nemerov focuses on the iconic, isolated figures who appear in four of Lewton's small-budget classics—The Curse of the Cat People, The Ghost Ship, I Walked with a Zombie, and Bedlam. These ghosts, outcasts, and other apparitions of sorrow crystallize the anxiety and grief experienced by Americans during the war, emotions decidedly at odds with the official insistence on courage, patriotism, and optimism. In an evocative meditation on Lewton's use of these "icons of grief," Nemerov demonstrates the film-maker's interest in those who found themselves alienated by wartime society and illuminates the dark side of the American psyche in the 1940s. Nemerov's rich study draws from Lewton's letters, novels, and scripts and from a wealth of historical material to shed light on both the visual and literary aspects of the filmmaker's work. Lavishly illustrated with more than fifty photographs, including many rare film stills, Icons of Grief recasts Lewton's horror films as suggestive commentaries on a troubled and hidden side of America during World War II.

Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

This beautifully written study looks at the haunting, melancholy horror films Val Lewton made between 1942 and 1946 and finds them to be powerful commentaries on the American home front during World War II. Alexander Nemerov focuses on the iconic, isolated figures who appear in four of Lewton's small-budget classics―The Curse of the Cat People, The Ghost Ship, I Walked with a Zombie, and Bedlam. These ghosts, outcasts, and other apparitions of sorrow crystallize the anxiety and grief experienced by Americans during the war, emotions decidedly at odds with the official insistence on courage, patriotism, and optimism. In an evocative meditation on Lewton's use of these "icons of grief," Nemerov demonstrates the film-maker's interest in those who found themselves alienated by wartime society and illuminates the dark side of the American psyche in the 1940s. Nemerov's rich study draws from Lewton's letters, novels, and scripts and from a wealth of historical material to shed light on both the visual and literary aspects of the filmmaker's work. Lavishly illustrated with more than fifty photographs, including many rare film stills, Icons of Grief recasts Lewton's horror films as suggestive commentaries on a troubled and hidden side of America during World War II.

Icons of Grief: Val Lewton's Home Front Pictures

What can the performance of a single play on one specific night tell us about the world this event inhabited so briefly? Alexander Nemerov takes a performance of Macbeth in Washington, DC on October 17, 1863―with Abraham Lincoln in attendance―to explore this question and illuminate American art, politics, technology, and life as it was being lived. Nemerov’s inspiration is Wallace Stevens and his poem “Anecdote of the Jar,” in which a single object organizes the wilderness around it in the consciousness of the poet. For Nemerov, that evening’s performance of Macbeth reached across the tragedy of civil war to acknowledge the horrors and emptiness of a world it tried and ultimately failed to change.

Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War

Literature & Fiction

At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: travelling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew - and left her mark on - the city in which she had been raised in privilege as the daughter of a judge, even as she left the security of that world to pursue her artistic ambitions. Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, these defining moments - from her first awed encounter with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to her first solo gallery show to her tumultuous breakup with eminent art critic Clement Greenberg - comprise a portr

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York

Penguin Press

A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman- traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew--and left her mark on--the city in which she had been raised in privilege as the daughter of a judge, even as she left the security of that world to pursue her artistic ambitions. Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, these defining moments--from her first awed encounter with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to her first solo gallery show to her tumultuous breakup with eminent art critic Clement Greenberg--comprise a portrait as bold and distinctive as the painter herself. Inspired by Pollock and the other male titans of abstract expressionism but committed to charting her own course, Frankenthaler was an artist whose talent was matched only by her unapologetic determination to distinguish herself in a man's world. Fierce Poise is an exhilarating ride through New York's 1950s art scene and a brilliant portrait of a young artist through the moments that shaped her.

Penguin??Books

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Books by Nemerov, Alexander

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

Frederic Remington and Turn-of-the-Century America (Yale Publications in the History of Art)

To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America

Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy

Danny Lyon: Message to the Future

The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812–1824 (Ahmanson Murphy Fine Arts Imprint)

Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures

Icons of Grief: Val Lewton's Home Front Pictures

Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York