Today, Acadia National Park is one of the nation's most popular national parks, visited by over three million people annually. But in the mid-1800s, Mount Desert Island was a remote and inhospitable wilderness. Its discovery by visiting artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Sanford Gifford, and its promotion through their paintings and in prints, travel books, and photographs, began a transformation of its landscape into scenic representations that became symbols of national identity. A visual culture created by these and other artists of the period established new picturesque travel destinations, resulting in the emergence of a new tourist class stimulated by a belief in the transcendent value of the wilderness experience and an appreciation of landscape. Pamela Belanger traces the island's visual discovery by New York artists, interpreting the artistic, social, and historical context of paintings, sketches, and other cultural artifacts. Scholar and long-time island resident John Wilmerding offers an appreciation of the island. J. Gray Sweeney examines how art, cultural politics, and the emerging field of visual arts production in New York led to the invention of national parks for purely aesthetic reasons.

Inventing Acadia: Artists & Tourists at Mount Desert

Belangr, Pamela J.

Arts & Photography

W A Farnsworth Library & Art museum

Painter James Wyeth first met Rudolf Nureyev in New York City in 1974. He was instantly intrigued with the dancer, so much so that Nureyev has continued to inspire him artistically for 24 years. Nureyev was one of the most photographed dancers in history. His image, as it was presented to the public, was very important to him, and he was notorious among photographers for tearing up images of himself that he considered unflattering. Wyeth recognized that the photographs of the dancer only revealed a small portion of Nureyev's complex character. Their growing rapport and friendship enabled Wyeth to capture in the portraits aspects of the dancer not seen through the photographer's lens. Rarely in art history has a model and artist relationship continued and evolved years after the model's death. Beginning in 1977, Wyeth created over 30 finely rendered, small-scale portraits of Nureyev. These intimate studies primarily focus on the subtleties of Nureyev's expressive face and physical presence. In 1993, following the dancer's death, Wyeth returned to several earlier large scale, three-quarter figure studies and reworked them with an energy and vitality that recalled Nureyev in life. The 2001 portraits show Wyeth's evolution as a painter and also reflect on Nureyev as a performer. Capturing Nureyev: James Wyeth Paints the Dancer features introductions to Nureyev and his illustrious career written by two noted experts in the dance field. Clive Barnes, former New York Times dance critic and author of the biography entitled Nureyev, gives a brief but poetic overview of the dancer's professional history. Lynn Seymour, one of Nureyev's former partners in London's Royal Ballet writes a personal account of her experiences dancing with Nureyev. Phyllis M. Wyeth, wife of James Wyeth and close friend of the dancer, shares her memories of Nureyev through personal photographs and memoirs. In her essay entitled, "Presenting Nureyev: Visual Cues in Promotional Dance Photography," Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Curator of Exhibitions at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, discusses promotional dance photography, illustrated with images of Nureyev used for promotional purposes. Lauren Raye Smith, Conservator and Assistant Curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum, explores Wyeth's artistic view of Nureyev in her essay entitled, "Nureyev Revisited: James Wyeth's Portraits." Wyeth's fascination with Nureyev has lead him to create more than 35 portraits of the dancer over a span of 24 years. Wyeth explains, "What's exciting is the continuity. You're getting closer and closer. Doing a series allows me to concentrate on how a subject evolved and how it affects me . . . At times I could work on a painting for the rest of my life."

Capturing Nureyev: James Wyeth Paints the Dancer

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Factory Work examines Andy Warhol's (1928-1987) role as a mentor for two younger artists from opposite corners of the art world. Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) were young, independent artists with their own substantial reputations when Andy Warhol invited each of them to paint in his "Factory" on 860 Broadway, New York City. In 1976 Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth painted each other's portraits. They jointly attended openings from 1976 to 1980; the exhibitions were known informally as "The Patriarch of Pop Paints the Prince of Realism," and Warhol visited Wyeth's farm in Pennsylvania. Basquiat rented a studio on Great Jones Street from Warhol beginning in August 1983 and collaborated with Warhol (first as part of a trio including Francesco Clemente) later the same year and in 1984 began joint projects with Warhol alone and exhibited in 1985. Warhol influenced these younger artists, and they enabled him to stay connected to new audiences of an evolving art world. At the same time, Warhol's paintings demonstrably changed due to his contact with Wyeth and Basquiat. The works illustrated provide clues toward further investigation of these two unique partnerships, also documented in Warhol's published diary entries, Interview magazines, and Warhol's tape-recorded conversations. There are four catalogue essays: Robert Rosenblum, Professor of Fine Arts at New York University and internationally known curator of 20th-century art at the Guggenheim Museum, examines Warhol as mentor for Jamie Wyeth, "a card-carrying member of a Yankee dynasty of three generations of ultra-WASP artists," as well as for Basquiat, the "dark-skinned crazy kid from Brooklyn who began his meteoric career by raucously embracing a counter-cultural life"; Christine Daulton, consultant conservator for the Warhol Museum, describes and provides recreations of the unusual techniques used by Warhol to create his oxidation portraits in the 1970s and 1980s; Joyce Hill Stoner, conservator, art historian, and Director of the University of Delaware Preservation Studies Program, writes about Wyeth's influence on Warhol that can be seen in Warhol's 1976 cat and dog paintings, his 1979 pig photographs and print, and his 1976-1977 skull paintings and self-portraits with skull; Margaret Rose Vendryes of the City University of New York discusses Basquiat's work and his "tagging" of Warhol's commercial images on their collaborative paintings and collages. The text and illustrations also offer insights into the celebrity-obsessed culture of the '70s and the drug- and money-mad art market of the '80s.

Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth, Basquiat

Vendryes, Margaret Rose

Stoner, Joyce Hill

Rosenblum, Robert

History & Criticism

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the W A Farnsworth Library & Art museum publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by W A Farnsworth Library & Art museum