A collection of essays by twelve scholars and museum curators examining the allure of Flemish painting to Americans over the past centuries, chronicling the roles played by determined individuals in forming private and public collections.

Robert Hughes begins where American art itself began, with the Native Americans and the first Spanish invaders in the Southwest; he ends with the art of today. In between, in a scholarly text that crackles with wit, intelligence and insight, he tells the story of how American art developed. Hughes investigates the changing tastes of the American public; he explores the effects on art of America's landscape of unparalleled variety and richness; he examines the impact of the melting-pot of cultures that America has always been. Most of all he concentrates on the paintings and art objects themselves and on the men and women - from Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins to Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, from Arthur Dove and George Bellows to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko -awho created them. This is an uncompromising and refreshingly opinionated exploration of America, told through the lens of its art.

Explores how one group of Latin American artists express their relationship to American art, history and culture.

Experience the creative explosion that transformed American art—in the words of the artists, writers, and critics who were there In the quarter century after the end of World War II, a new generation of painters, sculptors, and photographers transformed the face of American art and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Signaled by the triumph of abstraction and the ascendancy of painters such as Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Kline, this revolution generated an exuberant and contentious body of writing without parallel in our cultural history. In the words of editor, art critic, and historian Jed Perl, “there has never been a period when the visual arts have been written about with more mongrel energy—with more unexpected mixtures of reportage, rhapsody, analysis, advocacy, editorializing, and philosophy.” In this Library of America volume, Perl gathers for the first time the most vibrant contemporary accounts of this momentous period—by artists, critics, poets, gallery owners, and other observers—conveying the sweep and energy of a cultural scene dominated (in the poet James Schuyler’s words) by “the floods of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble.” Here are statements by the most significant artists, and major critical essays by Clement Greenberg, Susan Sontag, Hilton Kramer, and other influential figures. Here too is an electrifying array of responses by poets and novelists, reflecting the free interplay between different art forms: John Ashbery on Andy Warhol; James Agee on Helen Levitt; James Baldwin on Beauford Delaney; Truman Capote on Richard Avedon; Tennessee Williams on Hans Hofmann; and Jack Kerouac on Robert Frank. The atmosphere of the time comes to vivid life in memoirs, diaries, and journalism by Peggy Guggenheim, Dwight Macdonald, Calvin Tomkins, and others. Lavishly illustrated with scores of black-and-white images and a 32-page color insert, this is a book that every art lover will treasure.

A tour of America's most notable museums is also a history of the nation's art that highlights each location's top works while discussing the backgrounds of each building and featured piece of art.

A radical re-evaluation of American modernism through four generations of artists and their work – now in paperback. "That rarity of rarities, an opinionated but not eccentric scholarly history by a veteran museum curator whose every page crackles with original thinking and bears the stamp of a preternaturally sharp eye? Excellent reproductions and crisp typography complement the lucid prose." —Wall Street Journal Twentieth-century art in America has long been understood in two very separate distinct halves: pre-World War II, often considered as inferior and provincial; and the triumphant, international post-war work that made a complete break with everything that went before. Agee discovers exciting new connections between artists and artworks, which strongly suggest that 1945 was not such a dividing line in art history after all. His fresh research offers an innovative approach and a brilliant take on art history.

"McLarty's storytelling skills shine in this ribald, riotously funny, but also poignant novel." —David Baldacci With his first two novels, Ron McLarty won acclaim for fashioning authentic characters that hook readers from the first page. With Art in America, McLarty has invented another unforgettable protagonist in one failed writer, Steven Kearney. Hired by the Creedemore Historical Society to write and direct a play about the rural Southern Colorado town, he unwittingly stumbles into a range war over property rights, a media circus, a diabolical plan that threatens the very safety of the town-and, with the help of a little romance, newfound self-confidence. With its sprawling cast of vivid characters and spellbinding pace, Art in America confirms Ron McLarty's enormous talent.

Celebrating the reopening of the newly restored Smithsonian American Art Museum, a premier collection of American art features more than 250 reproductions of great works of American painting, sculpture, folk art, and photography, by such artists as Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Nam June Paik, and other luminaries.

A classic reference to the rise in popularity of folk artists in America, this book presents 258 photos of early folk art pieces, including decoys, whirligigs and carvings, and tells the history of the folk art movement from the early 20th century and the founding of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York. Anecdote is blended with history as pioneer collector Earnest shares her experiences and folk art treasures with readers.

Essays by American and Dutch scholars and museum curators explore the collecting and reception of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in America, from the colonial era through the Gilded Age to today.