The Civil War and American Art

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Released alongside an extensive exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this latest from Harvey (The Painted Sketch) provides a nuanced, sensitive, and deeply informed accounting of a major period in the history of American art. Harvey sees with fresh attention the "war-infected layer of meaning" that permeates the period around the Civil War, gracefully navigating the political and aesthetic complexities that altered the literal and metaphoric landscapes of the time. She balances the broader world of military campaigns with detailed examinations of prominent artists, turning her attention to topics such as the rumbling skies of landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church and the subtleties of Winslow Homer's attitudes regarding race. Her sustained exploration is accompanied by striking reproductions of the images, with the gruesome photography of ravaged bodies and landscapes affecting enough to invigorate interest in the historical topics. Paired alongside these studies are considerations of popular poetry and journalism, highlighting the ways that visual art both altered the broader culture while remaining inseparable from it. The comprehensive study manages to remain engaging across its redolent academic and historical interests, creating a sincere excitement appropriate to Harvey's always insightful and vital reckoning with America's scarred past. Color illus.
 Publishers Weekly (01/21/2013):

Zentangle Untangled: Inspiration and Prompts for Meditative Drawing

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In "Zentangle Untangled," Kass Hall introduces you to the fun and relaxing doodling" process of Zentangle(c)--an engaging art form that uses repetitive patterns to create striking works of art that anyone can achieve regardless of age or artistic ability.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Her Houses: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu

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In flight from her hectic New York life with her avidly sociable husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and in pursuit of quiet and isolation, O'Keeffe found the perfect refuge in New Mexico. Her passion for the land and sky and her profound attachment to her homes at Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu shape and vitalize all of her best-known paintings, yet the full story of how she acquired and lived and worked in these sanctuaries has never been told before. Lynes (Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections, 2007), curator of the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, and Lopez, director of Abiquiu Historic Properties, thoroughly and thoughtfully chronicle the ways the artist turned her cherished homes and studios into veritable works of art. With information on adobe construction and the Pueblo Revival style, striking black-and-white photographs of the artist in her homes by such famous photographers as Ansel Adams, O'Keeffe's paintings of Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, and new color photographs that capture the enduring beauty and serenity of O'Keeffe's gracefully pristine sanctuaries, this is a gorgeous and enriching addition to the O'Keeffe collection. Booklist (11/01/2012):

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall

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The British artist known as Banksy creates illegal street paintings with superhero daring and political conviction. But his most impressive feat is his anonymity, which is zealously protected by his cultish followers and ace organization, Pest Control. Ellsworth-Jones had no intention of revealing Banksy's identity when he sought an interview with the artist, but he was refused. So be it. Secrecy feeds the flame of this thought-provoking, irony-steeped, unauthorized investigation into how a regular guy from Bristol elevated graffiti to a fine art only to find himself trapped in the paradox of becoming a commercially successful, anticapitalist guerrilla artist. While he gamely searches for extant street paintings, Ellsworth-Jones chronicles ludicrous battles over wall removal, the tagging of Banksy's work by rival street artists, pop-up exhibits, and the lengths to whichfans go to purchase Banksy prints. Formerly chief reporter for the Sunday Times of London, Ellsworth-Jones redresses his lack of an art historian's fully dimensional perspective by candidly sharing his learn-on-the-go adventures and discoveries in a thoroughly ensnaring, eye-popping account of the paradigm-shifting innovations of a bold and brilliant masked artist.
Booklist (01/01/2013)

The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine--Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary

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This elegant biography of a little-known Cumbrian landowner, builder and local daughter captures the rural and industrial changes in Georgian England. Accomplished British historian Uglow (A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, 2010, etc.) ably depicts the picturesque landscape of Carlisle, just south of the Scottish border. As the eldest daughter of deep descendants of the Wreay landed gentry, who pioneered the iron and alkali works feeding the Industrial Revolution, Sarah Losh (1785-1853) and her beloved younger sister, Katharine, did not feel compelled to marry and relinquish their independence. Rich from their father's and uncles' early industriousness, well-educated, strong-willed and bookish, the daughters were able to travel to Italy and elsewhere to study art and architecture, and they brought their ideas home to "improve" their estate and local structures such as the Carlisle school and church. After the death of her sister in 1834, Sarah threw herself into the work of building, combining her love of poetry, antiquities and her ancient land into a distinct, original style that was not Gothic, but that melded simple, rustic elements of the old Saxon and Norman, what she considered Lombard Romanesque. Employing in the woodwork designs of available flora and fauna like eagles and pine cones, Sarah embarked on work as a sculptor herself. With a light touch, Uglow integrates greater historical developments--e.g., the Napoleonic wars and the development of Romanticism--within an intimate bucolic story of people whose life was the land. A writer who knows her subject intimately creates a fully fleshed portrait of an England that would soon vanish with the advent of the railroads. COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.