Art & Architecture

Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment

    Contributions by
  • Alan C. Braddock
  • Miranda Belarde-Lewis
  • Rachael Z. DeLue
  • Teddy Cruz
  • Jeffrey Richmond-Moll
  • Mark Dion
  • Fonna Forman
  • Laura Turner Igoe
  • Robin Kelsey
  • Timothy Morton
  • Rob Nixon
  • Kimia Shahi
  • Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

A groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the environment

Hardcover

Price:
$65.00/£55.00
ISBN:
Published:
Nov 27, 2018
2018
Pages:
448
Size:
9.5 x 10.5 in.
Illus:
326 color + b/w illus.
Buy This

Public awareness of environmental issues has never been greater, nor has the need for imagining more sustainable and ethical habits of human action and thought, including environmentally informed ways of understanding art history. This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding.

Far-reaching in its interpretive approach, Nature’s Nation looks at artworks across genres and media—including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, decorative arts, and video—revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas. The book features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

Providing a fascinating and timely reframing of more than three centuries of American art, this volume is a powerful example of how greater ecological consciousness can expand and enrich the discipline of art history.


Awards and Recognition

  • Winner of the Alfred H. Barr Award Jr. Award, College Art Association
  • Winner of the Art Exhibitions PROSE award, Association of American Publishers
  • Winner of the Award for Excellence, Association of Art Museum Curators