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Angels of art : women and art in American society, 1876-1914
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Angels of art : women and art in American society, 1876-1914

Author: Bailey Van Hook
Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1996.
Edition/Format:   Book : State or province government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
Images of women were ubiquitous in America at the turn of the last century. In painting and sculpture, they took on a bewildering variety of identities, from Venus, Ariadne, and Diana to Law, Justice, the Arts, and Commerce. Bailey Van Hook argues here that the artists' concept of art coincided with the construction of gender in American culture. She finds that certain characteristics such as "ideal," beautiful,"
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Van Hook, Bailey, 1953-
Angels of art.
University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, c1996
(OCoLC)605634368
Material Type: Government publication, State or province government publication
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Bailey Van Hook
ISBN: 0271015578 9780271015576 0271015586 9780271015583
OCLC Number: 33045699
Description: xvi, 287 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
Contents: Ideal women as the international language of art --
The return home : what to paint? --
Ideal women in late nineteenth century American art : modes of representation --
Modes of representation continued : mural painting --
Ideal and real --
Beautiful and decorative --
Pure and American.
Responsibility: Bailey Van Hook.

Abstract:

Images of women were ubiquitous in America at the turn of the last century. In painting and sculpture, they took on a bewildering variety of identities, from Venus, Ariadne, and Diana to Law, Justice, the Arts, and Commerce. Bailey Van Hook argues here that the artists' concept of art coincided with the construction of gender in American culture. She finds that certain characteristics such as "ideal," beautiful," "decorative," and "pure" both describe this art and define the perceived role of women in American society at the time.

Van Hook first places the American artists in an international context by discussing the works of their French teachers, including Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. She goes on to explore why they soon had to distance themselves from that context, primarily because their art was perceived as either openly sensual or too obliquely foreign by American audiences. Van Hook delineates the modes of representation the American painters chose, which ranged from the more traditional allegorical or mythological subjects to a decorative figure painting indebted to Whistler. Changing American culture ultimately rejected these idealized female images as too genteel and, eventually, too academic and European.

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