Visual Shock
A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece The Gross Clinic, (considered “too big, bold, and gory” when first exhibited) to the bitter disputes about Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, this is an eye-opening account of American art and the battles and controversies that it has ignited.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the Washington Monument to the 1913 Armory show to 9/11 memorials, controversies over art exhibitions, memorials and public art have abounded in the U.S. In this expansively researched history of major and lesser-known disputes from the 1830s to the 21st century, Pulitzer Prize winner Kammen (A Time to Every Purpose) argues that the "disturbations" roused by artworks and monuments are often both "destabilizing" and "enlightening and educational," indicative of healthy social change and increasing democratization. Structured chronologically, the book balances scholarly investigation and insightful analysis in its fascinating discussion of monuments, memorials and American national identity, and in its probing of modernism's threat to American concepts of morality, pluralism and art itself. While this is a work of meticulous scholarship with remarkable depth and range, Kammen's dry writing style sharply contrasts with the vigor of the controversies he so painstakingly details. Yet for scholars and students of cultural history and art history, Kammen's highly informed analysis will prove an invaluable contribution to American cultural history.
