Online Book Display: American Artist Appreciation Month

Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, and Laurie Anderson are just some of the major American artists of the twentieth century. From the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a rapid succession of art movements and different styles reflected the extreme changes in American culture and society, as well as America's position within the international art world. All the key movements are fully discussed, including early American Modernism, the New Negro movement, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Neo-Expressionism.

On its publication in 1999, The American Art Book immediately filled a critical gap in accessible yet authoritative surveys on American artists of the past three centuries. With an A to Z format that departs from the usual emphasis on genres and time periods, it offers an unparalleled overview of the most influential and best-loved American artists from Colonial times to the present. The American Art Book presents 500 artists and their works, ranging from Puritan portraits to the luminous paintings of the Hudson River School and the American Impressionists, to the videos and digital works of today's most intriguing conceptual artists.

A landmark work of art history: lavishly illustrated and extraordinary for its thoroughness, A History of African-American Artists gives a conspectus of African-American art from the late eighteenth century to the present. It examines the lives and careers of more than fifty signal African-American artists, and the relation of their work to prevailing artistic, social, and political trends both in America and throughout the world.

Indigenous North Americans have continuously made important contributions to the field of art in the U.S. and Canada, yet have been severely under-recognized and under-represented. Native artists work in diverse media, some of which are considered art (sculpture, painting, photography), while others have been considered craft (works on cloth, basketry, ceramics).Some artists feel strongly about working from a position as a Native artist, while others prefer to produce art not connected to a particular cultural tradition. This volume examines the lives and works of approximately 70 Native American artists, demonstrating the range of media, themes, and experiences of Native artists, and their influences on and by western culture.

Etching Our Own Image: Voices From Within the Arab American Art Movement is a celebration of Arab American art and identity. In the wake of 9/11, the need for Arab Americans to define themselves, rather than be defined by others has galvanized an artistic movement. This collection of writers includes poets, musicians, playwrights, creative writers, painters, conceptual artists, comedians and scholars of the arts who have gathered to assert for themselves what it means to be Arab American.

The Highwaymen introduces a group of young black artists who painted their way out of the despair awaiting them in citrus groves and packing houses of 1950s Florida. As their story recaptures the imagination of Floridians and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their freshly conceived landscapes exerts a new and powerful influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State. While the value of Highwaymen paintings has soared in recent years, until now no authoritative account of the lives and work of these black Florida artists has existed.

Jewish themes in American art were not very visible until the last two decades, although many famous twentieth-century artists and critics were and are Jewish. Few artists responded openly to the Holocaust until the 1960s, when it finally began to act as a galvanizing force, allowing Jewish-American artists to express their Jewish identity in their work. Baigell describes how artists initially deflected their responses into abstract forms or by invoking biblical and traditional figures and then in more recent decades confronted directly Holocaust imagery and memory. He traces the development of artistic work from the late 1930s to the present in a moving study of a long overlooked topic in the history of American art.

In 1970, Judy Chicago and fifteen students founded the groundbreaking Feminist Art Program (FAP) at Fresno State. Drawing upon the consciousness-raising techniques of the women's liberation movement, they created shocking new art forms depicting female experiences. Collaborative work and performance art - including the famous "Cunt Cheerleaders" - were program hallmarks. Moving to Los Angeles, the FAP produced the first major feminist art installation, Womanhouse (1972). Augmented by thirty-seven illustrations and color plates, this interdisciplinary collection of essays by artists and scholars, many of whom were eye witnesses to landmark events, relates how feminists produced vibrant bodies of art in Fresno and other locales where similar collaborations flourished.

In the decades preceding the Stonewall riots--in the wake of the 1948 publication of Alfred Kinsey's controversial report on male sexuality and in the midst of a cold war culture of suspicion and paranoia--discussions of homosexuality within the New York art world necessarily circulated via gossip and rumor. Between You and Me explores this informal, everyday talk and how it shaped artists' lives, their work, and its reception.

The first appearances of graffiti 'tags' (signatures) on New York City subway trains in the early 1970s were discarded as incidents of vandalism or the rough, violent cries of the ignorant and impoverished. However, as the graffiti movement progressed and tags became more elaborate and ubiquitous, genuine artists emerged whose unique creativity and unconventional media captured the attention of the world. Featuring gallery and street works by several contributors to the graffiti scene, this book offers insight into the lives of urban artists (including Jean-Michel Basquiat), describes their relationship with the bourgeois art world, and discusses their artistic motivation with unprecedented sensitivity.

Cheech Marin, best known as a comedian and actor as well as a director and musician, here showcases his monumental collection of Chicano art in a landmark book that will be accompanied by a blockbuster exhibition currently touring the U.S. Featuring over 30 artists' work, including Gronk, Patssi Valdex and Carlos Almaraz, these paintings depict Hispanic culture, religion and politics with brilliant color and emotion. With incisive essays by leading scholars that describe the origins of Chicano art, this is work that is on the cutting edge of contemporary art.

For generations, men have left their homes and families to defend their country while their wives, mothers and daughters remained safely at home, outwardly unaffected. A closer examination reveals that women have always been directly impacted by war. In the last few years, they have actively participated on the front lines. This book tells the story of the women who documented the impact of war on their lives through their art. It includes works by professional artists and photographers, combat artists, ordinary women who documented their military experiences, and women who worked in a variety of types of needlework. Taken together, these images explore the female consciousness in wartime.