Matthew Baigell – författare

This clear, thorough, and reliable survey of American painting and sculpture from colonial times to the present day covers all the major artists and their works, outlines the social and cultural backgrounds of each period, and includes 409 illustrations integrated with the text. Although some determining factors in American art are considered, Matthew Baigell views the rich and diverse achievements of American art as the result of the efforts and talents of a pluralistic society rather than as fitting into a particular mold.This edition includes corrections and revisions to the text, an updated bibliography, and 13 new illustrations.

This clear, thorough, and reliable survey of American painting and sculpture from colonial times to the present day covers all the major artists and their works, outlines the social and cultural backgrounds of each period, and includes 409 illustrations integrated with the text. Although some determining factors in American art are considered, Matthew Baigell views the rich and diverse achievements of American art as the result of the efforts and talents of a pluralistic society rather than as fitting into a particular mold.This edition includes corrections and revisions to the text, an updated bibliography, and 13 new illustrations.

This volume brings together a selection of essays by one of the leading scholars of American art. Matthew Baigell examines the work of a variety of artists, including Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, Ben Shahn, and Frank Stella, relating their art works closely to the social and cultural contexts in which they were created. Identifying important and recurring themes in this body of art, such as the persistence of Emersonian values, the search for national and regional identity, aspects of alienation, and the loss of individuality, he also explores the personal and religious identities of artists as revealed in their works. Collectively, Baigell's work demonstrates the importance of America as the defining element in American art.

In this first book-length study of Jewish art in America, Matthew Baigell explores works from the early settlers of America to the present. It concentrates on exploring and examining Jewish subject matter employed by artists as they illustrated aspects of their religious and ethnic heritage and as they responded to major events over the decades, including the Great Migration, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel, as well as the dispersal of Jewish artists around the country and the rise of feminism and spiritualism in the late-twentieth century. Subjects include genre scenes of "the Jewish street," religious and spiritual themes derived from the Bible and the Kabbalah, and images that record the artists' participation in and witnessing of major events in their lifetimes. The author also considers the often asked questions: Is there a Jewish art? and, Is there a single Jewish Experience?

As millions of Jews immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe starting in the 1870s, they brought with them not only their religious heritage but also a definitive idea of the place and value of art and aesthetics in society. These ideas, motivated by local customs, morality, and political and social interests, are clear in the work of twentieth-century Jewish artists such as Mark Rothko, Leon Israel, Max Weber, Saul Bernstein, and more. In Heritage: Jewish Artists in America since 1900, Matthew Baigell situates these artists in a uniquely Jewish context. Starting from the shared values and references that informed generations of work, Baigell explores a century of progress through that specific lens. Placing these artists in a focused and continuous history of their own, Baigell shows how Jewish art in America has been informed by national and political trends, how first-generation Jewish artists responded to the works of their predecessors and images from a world away, and how contemporary artists reckon with modern Judaism. A pioneering effort to isolate a Jewish art stream all its own, Heritage challenges traditional assumptions about modern American art history and the connections between generations of Jewish artists.

From the 1870s to the 1930s, American cartoonists devoted much of their ink to outlandish caricatures of immigrants and minority groups, making explicit the derogatory stereotypes that circulated at the time. Members of ethnic groups were depicted as fools, connivers, thieves, and individuals hardly fit for American citizenship, but Jews were especially singled out with visual and verbal abuse. In The Implacable Urge to Defame, Baigell examines more than sixty published cartoons from humor magazines such as Judge, Puck and Life and considers the climate of opinion that allowed such cartoons to be published. In doing so, he traces their impact on the emergence of anti-Semitism in the American Scene movement in the 1920s and 1930s.

From the 1870s to the 1930s, American cartoonists devoted much of their ink to outlandish caricatures of immigrants and minority groups, making explicit the derogatory stereotypes that circulated at the time. Members of ethnic groups were depicted as fools, connivers, thieves, and individuals hardly fit for American citizenship, but Jews were especially singled out with visual and verbal abuse. In The Implacable Urge to Defame, Baigell examines more than sixty published cartoons from humor magazines such as Judge, Puck and Life and considers the climate of opinion that allowed such cartoons to be published. In doing so, he traces their impact on the emergence of anti-Semitism in the American Scene movement in the 1920s and 1930s.