Author: Anreus, Alejandro; Diana L. Linden & Jonathan Weinberg.
Title: The Social and the real Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere
Description: University Park : Penn State University Press, 2006. Hardcover. Dustjacket. xxii, 362 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm. (Refiguring modernism, 4). Mailorder only - Alleen verzending mogelijk. Book condition : as new. - During the 1930s, American artists such as Ben Shahn developed a mode of representation generally known as Social Realism. This term is given broad new meaning in the anthology brought together by Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg. They and their collaborators argue that artists of the Depression era believed that their art became 'realistic' by engaging the great economic and political issues of society. Through fresh investigation of the visual culture of the 1930s' painting, sculpture, photography, and the graphic arts—the anthology illuminates the struggle for social justice that led artists to embrace leftist ideologies and fashion an art aimed at revealing the harsh realities of contemporary life. In sharp contrast to earlier studies, The Social and the Real contends that the radical, “realistic” art of the Americas during the 1930s was shaped as much by hemispheric exchange as by emulation of the European avant-garde. Alan Trachtenberg, Mary K. Coffey, and the book’s other essayists consider Canadian art alongside art from the United States, the Caribbean, and as far south as Argentina. Some of the artists they discuss, like Philip Evergood or Dorthea Lange, are well known; others—the Argentinean Antonio Berni or the Canadian Parakeva Clark—deserve wider recognition. Situating such artists within the context of Pan-American exchange transforms the structure of the art-historical field. It also produces major new insights. The rise of Social Realism, for instance, is traced back not to the United States in the 1930s, but instead to the Mexico of the early 1920s. Content : Signifying the real: documentary photography in the 1930s / Alan Trachtenburg -- Social and political commentary in Cuban modernist painting of the 1930s / Juan A. Martinez -- The Mexican problem: nation and native in Mexican muralism and cultural discourse / Mary K. Coffey -- Canadian political art in the 1930s: a form of distancing / Marylin McKay -- Adapting to Argentinean reality: the new realism of Antonio Berni / Alejandro Anreus -- I want muscle: male desire and the image of the worker in American art of the 1930s / Jonathan Weinberg -- Making history: Melvin Gray Johnson's and Earle W. Richardson's studies for Negro achievement / Jacqueline Francis -- Lynching and anti-lynching: art and politics in the 1930s / Marlene Park -- Art and politics in the popular front: the union work and social realism of Philip Evergood / Patricia Hills -- Workers and painters: social realism and race in Diego Rivera's Detroit murals / Anthony W. Lee -- Come out from behind the Pre-Cambrian shield: the politics of memory and identity in the art of Paraskeva Clark / Natalie Luckyj -- Ben Shahn's New deal murals: Jewish identity in the American scene / Diana L. Linden -- Between Zhdanovism and 57th Street: artists and the CPUSA, 1945-1956 / Andrew Hemingway -- The president's two bodies: stagings and restagings of the New deal body politic / Sally Stein. ISBN 9780271026916.

Keywords: ART,