Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America

by Sarah Burns

Burns tells the story of artists in American society during a period of critical transition from Victorian to modern values, examining how culture shaped the artists and how artists shaped their culture. Focusing on such important painters as James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux, Winslow Homer, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, she investigates how artists reacted to the growing power of the media, to an expanding consumer society, to the need for a specifically American artist type, and to the problem of gender.

Genres: History

392 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 1996

Reviews

[jakira · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dive into the emergence of the artist-as-public figure in America at the turn of the 20th century. Burns discusses the influence and impact of mass media (publishing, magazines, illustrations, cartoons) on creating images of the 'modern' artist, focusing on the likes of Whistler, Chase, Homer, Beaux, Sargent, etc.

She focuses on themes of 1) image making, 2) art on the marketplace 3) gender politics and 4) formation of national artistic identity throughout the book, thinking through ideas of aesthetic (and artist as) commodification, what it means to represent (and being represented), tensions of being an 'American' artist, the artist's studio, and more.

Overall, a really fascinating and innovative text that I will definitely return to.

[Carly Hollensbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used this book extensively for my Master's thesis.