Jennifer A. Greenhill - Böcker

A Companion to American Art presents 35 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history. Features contributions from a balance of established and emerging scholars, art and architectural historians, and other specialistsIncludes several paired essays to emphasize dialogue and debate between scholars on important contemporary issues in American art historyExamines topics such as the methodological stakes in the writing of American art history, changing ideas about what constitutes “Americanness,” and the relationship of art to public cultureOffers a fascinating portrait of the evolution and current state of the field of American art history and suggests future directions of scholarship

"Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age" offers a stunning new look at late-nineteenth-century American art, and demonstrates the profound role humor played in determining the course of culture in the Gilded Age. By showing how complex humorous strategies such as deadpan and burlesque operate in a range of media - from painting and sculpture to chromolithography and architectural schemes - Greenhill examines how ambitious artists like Winslow Homer and Augustus Saint-Gaudens rethought the place of humor in their work and devised strategies to both conform to and slyly undermine developing senses of "serious" culture. Exhibiting an awareness of the emerging requirements of serious art but maintaining an investment in humor, they played it straight.