Cosmos

by Clair, Jean; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Centre De Cultura Contemporania De Barcelona

• ISBN13: 9783791320892
• ISBN10: 3791320890
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Prestel Pub

Summary

As European settlers in America explored the strange landscapes of the New World, their artistic vocabulary drew on the painterly traditions of the Old World, in particular the works of John Martin, J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, C.G. Carus, Gustave Courbet, and Gustave Dore Romantic evocations of the sublime were transplanted into scenes of the uninhabited West, as well as into the late 19th-century conquest of the arctic regions, by painters such as F.E. Church, and the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. With contributions by internationally acclaimed historians of art and science, this beautifully illustrated book will be essential reading for students of 19th- and 20th-century art, photography, and architecture, as well as for all those interested in the history of representation in the modern world.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 15
Preface	p. 17
Nature and the Cosmos
From Humboldt to Hubble	p. 20
The Scales of the Universe: From the Finite to the Infinite	p. 44
The Promised Land
Heart of the Andes: Humboldt's Cosmos and Frederic Edwin Church	p. 60
Nineteenth-century America: The New Frontiers	p. 68
First Images of Yosemite, First Icons of the American West	p. 80
Geological Views as Social Art: Explorers and Photographers in the American West, 1859-1879	p. 86
The Voyage to the Poles
The Artistic Conquest of the Far North	p. 108
Icebergs, Polar Bears and the Aurora Borealis	p. 114
Beyond the Earth: The Moon
"Magnificent Desolation": The Moon Photographed	p. 144
Imaginary Cosmologies
The New Astronomy and the Expanding Cosmos: The View from France at the End of the Nineteenth Century	p. 168
The Cosmos as Finitude: From Boccioni's Chromogony to Fontana's Spatial Art	p. 180
The Idea of Cosmic Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde of the Early Twentieth Century	p. 194
Cosmic Imaginings, from Symbolism to Abstract Art	p. 218
To Infinity and Back
Contemporary Cosmologies	p. 282
List of Exhibited Works	p. 323
List of Figures	p. 348
Biographies of the Artists	p. 351
Select Bibliography	p. 391
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.