America Art and the West: Feat. Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Clifford Steel

Top of dust jacket has a curl. Fitted with archive quality dust jacket protector. Presentation copy including signed compliments slip from The American-Australian Foundation for the Arts.

America, less than fifty ears from declaration of national independence, turned its persistent gaze away from Europe in the East toward the expanse of its native unsettled West. All that was purely America shone in the late-day sun, untouched and untroubled by the shadow of European culture. The westward explorations launched at the beginning of the nineteenth century piqued the curiosity of eastern seaboard residents seeking information about the peculiar character of a remote frontier. Early enthusiasm for the Indian portraits and documentary renderings of the western trails by painter-explorers gave way to changing attitudes by mid century. Inspired by a new spirit of national idealism, America's first school of formally trained artists created grand and monumental landscape paintings of the West. A land of rugged primordial beauty, untapped resources, and unlimited space crystallized in the collective American consciousness as an abiding image of the native land. The promise of the West became the promise of America itself as waves of settlers crossed the Great Plains and braved the treacherous Rockies in search of prosperity and a better life. To define the character of American art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West must be considered not only as the subject of art, but also as a physical and psychological reality of the American experience that continues to influence the outlook of American artists and to endow their works with distinct characteristics. The visual impact of the West and the assimilation of its spirit and substance into the mainstream of American art forms the premise of this exhibition. The works selected span 150 years of an evolving national art and pose some of the complex issues encountered in a nation's journey toward self definition.

Celeste Marie Adams

Curator