Overview

Arthur Dove, often credited as America’s first abstract painter, created dynamic and evocative images inspired by his surroundings, from the farmland of upstate New York to the North Shore of Long Island. But his interests were not limited to nature. Challenging earlier accounts that view him as simply a landscape painter, Arthur Dove: Always Connect reveals for the first time the artist’s intense engagement with language, the nature of social interaction, and scientific and technological advances. Rachael Z. DeLue rejects the traditional assumption that Dove can only be understood in terms of his nature paintings and association with photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz and his circle. Instead, she uncovers deep and complex connections between Dove’s work and his world, including avant-garde literature, popular music, meteorology, mathematics, aviation, and World War II. Arthur Dove also offers the first sustained account of Dove’s Dadaesque multimedia projects and the first explorations of his animal imagery and the role of humor in his art. Beautifully illustrated with works from all periods of Dove’s career, this book presents a new vision of one of America’s most innovative and captivating artists—and reimagines how the story of modern art in the United States might be told.

Full Product Details

9780226142197

Table of Contents

Reviews

Rachael Z. DeLue is associate professor of art history and archaeology at Princeton University. She is the author of George Inness and the Science of Landscape, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of Landscape Theory.

DeLue presents a Dove just waiting to be revisited, a Dove so much more interesting and beguiling than previously assumed. This is a Dove who engages the most vernacular things--maps, letters, numbers, weather, metal, natural and manmade sounds, hair, elemental shapes--to arrive at a refreshingly prosaic and often literal sense of connectedness. This is the boldest, the most illuminating, the most persuasive, and frankly the most interesting study of pre-1945 American modernism I have ever read. --Leo Mazow, University of Arkansas

Author Information

Rachael Z. DeLue is associate professor of art history and archaeology at Princeton University. She is the author of George Inness and the Science of Landscape, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of Landscape Theory.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available