French Realist Painting and the Critique of American Society, 1865–1900
French Realist Painting and the Critique of American Society, 1865–1900
Out of Print
This book examines public reception of contemporary French painting in post-Civil War American society. Analyzed from class and regional perspectives, popular responses to Realist and Impressionist painting are shown to articulate conflicting attitudes toward equality and doubts about the fate of democracy in an industrialized society. The methods of art history, reception theory, and social history merge in this study to explain how Americans came to see themselves in foreign art, and how the public gave these images meaning independent of official art criticism and their original French contexts.
- Interdisciplinary book with a cross-cultural scope, combining analyses of high and low culture
- Combines methods of art and social history, reception theory, and cultural critique
- Draws on non-traditional sources from the labour press, radical journals, daily newspapers
Reviews & endorsements
"Laura L. Meixner has accomplished an impressive piece of research in this volume that will prove to be a central resource for the student of late-nineteenth-century American culture." Journal of American History
"A valuable addition to undergraduate and graduate collections in art history, government, and sociology." Choice
Product details
June 1995Hardback
9780521461030
336 pages
262 × 209 × 27 mm
1.228kg
67 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print October 2011
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Peasant Images as Critique and Capital
- 3. Peasant Icons for the Conflicted Middle Class
- 4. Courbet, Corot, and democratic poetics
- 5. Impressionism, pathology and progress
- 6. Conclusion
- Notes
- Index.
