After Many Springs

Regionalism, Modernism, and the Midwest

Debra Bricker Balken author Jeff Fleming editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Yale University Press

Published:27th Mar '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

After Many Springs cover

After Many Springs is the title of a Thomas Hart Benton painting that evokes nostalgia for a fertile, creative time gone by. This bold new book––taking the name of this work by Benton––examines the intersections between Regionalist and Modernist paintings, photography, and film during the Great Depression, a period when the two approaches to art making were perhaps at their zenith.

 

It is commonly believed that Regionalist artists Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood reacted to the economic and social devastation of their era by harking back in tranquil bucolic paintings to a departed utopia. However, this volume compares their work to that of photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn and filmmakers such as Josef von Sternberg—all of whom documented the desolation of the Depression—and finds surprising commonalities. The book also notes intriguing connections between Regionalist artists and Modernists Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, countering prevailing assumptions that Regionalism was an anathema to these New York School painters and showing their shared fascination with the Midwest.



Distributed for the Des Moines Art Center


Exhibition Schedule:

Des Moines Art Center (January 30 – May 17, 2009)

ISBN: 9780300135862

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 635g

208 pages