The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989

by Vivien Greene, Harry Harootunian, Richard King

The Third American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 illuminates the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literary texts and philosophical concepts on American artistic practices from the late nineteenth century through the present. Released to accompany a major survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Third Mind traces how the classical arts of India, China and Japan and the systems of Hindu, Taoist, Tantric Buddhist and Zen Buddhist thought that were collectively admired as the "East" were known, reconstructed and transformed by American cultural, intellectual and political forces. Featuring 270 objects in an array of media including painting, works on paper, books and ephemera, sculptures, video art and installations, this richly illustrated catalogue also includes scholarly essays by museum curators and academics specializing in art history, intellectual history, Asian studies and Postcolonial religious and cultural studies and representing a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Genres: Art

440 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Vivien Greene has been a Guggenheim curator since 1993 and specializes in late 19th- and early 20th-century European art with concentrations in Italian modernism and international currents in turn-of-the-century art and culture. She most recently organized the exhibitions Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe (2014) and The Avant-Gardes of Fin-de-Siècle Paris: Signac, Bonnard, Redon, and Their Contemporaries (2013). Among her other exhibition projects are The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18 (coorganized with Mark Antliff; 2010–11); Utopia Matters: From Brotherhoods to Bauhaus (2010); and Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism: Arcadia and Anarchy (2007).

In addition to the catalogues associated with her exhibitions, Greene’s latest publications include “John Quinn and Vorticist Painting: The Eye (and Purse) of an American Collector,” in Vorticism: New Perspectives, ed. Mark Antliff and Scott W. Klein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); “Bizantium and Emporium: Fine Secolo Magazines in Rome and Milan,” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, vol. 3, Europe 1880–1940, ed. Peter Brooker, Sascha Bru, Andrew Thacker, and Christian Weikop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); “The ‘Other’ Africa: Giuseppe Pitrè’s Mostra Etnografica Siciliana (1891–92),” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17, no. 3 (June 2012); and “Utopia/Dystopia,” American Art Journal 25, no. 2 (Summer 2011).

Greene was the recipient of a Bogliasco Fellowship in 2009, and in 2003 received a Fulbright Travel Grant to Italy and a predoctoral Rome Prize Fellowship in Modern Italian Studies at the American Academy in Rome. She regularly organizes and presents papers at scholarly symposia, and has cochaired sessions at the annual College Art Association conference and other events. She serves on the Center for Italian Modern Art’s Advisory Committee and the Bogliasco Foundation’s Selection Committee, and was a trustee of the Association of Art Museum Curators (2006–11). She has a Ph.D. in art history, and focused on 19th-century European art.

Reviews

[lagoon]

这本书中有关禅宗与书法在战后

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admire the ambition in this project and was very excited when I started reading this book, because if the authors had proved what they set out to--namely that Asian philosophy and religion became a central influence to American art of all forms--it would have been tres awesome. Unfortunately, I don't think they did that AT ALL, at least with the visual arts. I got a lot of visual influence, but philosophical? For the most part that was a massive fail. The first essay in particular was lame and didn't seem to contain any original ideas.

Still, I've got to give them props for the idea. Maybe someday someone will be able to prove this.

[Susan Ackley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea but poorly conceptualized and rather defensive in tone. While the Guggenheim is to be lauded for its attempt to rid mainstream art history of its Eurocentric bias, I am not at all convinced that going the other direction -- to essentially insinuate Asia as the source of American art -- is productive or historically accurate. A position like this requires some hard thinking as to the kinds of works shown but this book just brings in any and everything to prove its point. The best summary of this exhibition is the review in the .

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review of the exhibition is at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420....