Overview

Fifty graphic masterpieces representing the American artistic tradition from 1880 to the present day are showcased in Eye Contact. Reproduced as full-page color images, they range from portraits of Theodore Roosevelt by Charles Dana Gibson and W. C. Fields by Thomas Hart Benton, to Robert F. Kennedy by Roy Lichtenstein, and self-portraits by artists Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella, and Jacob Lawrence. Among the other subjects of portraits are Alice B. Toklas, Paul Robeson, Igor Stravinsky, and James Baldwin. Essays discuss the nature and change of portrait drawings in the twentieth century and the external cultural changes that influenced artists' conceptualization of the figure. Wendy Wick Reaves is curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Bernard F. Reilly Jr. is former director of research and access at the Chicago Historical Society.

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9780295982670

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Reviews

Jane Lydon's meticulous investigation of the role of photography in the cross-cultural engagement that took place at Coraderrk from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century unfolds with a narrative drive. The community at Coranderrk comes alive. We care about the residents, how they have been represented in successive periods, and how their descendants now use the photographs to reclaim the past and construct their own narratives. --Roslyn Poignant, author of Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle What makes this study especially rich and important is the way Jane Lydon takes full advantage of photographic theory without imposing it reductively or simplistically. This is particularly impressive because she shows in very nuanced ways that different photographs were produced for different reasons at different times and that these photos embody various ideas about Aboriginality and science. --David Prochaska, co-author of Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists Jane Lydon's critical history, Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians, examines a charged period of cross-cultural encounter through an analysis of the most substantial body of nineteenth and early-twentieth century photographs from an Australian site '--Times Literary Supplement, 12 May 2006 Jane Lydon's critical history, Eye Contact, examines a charged period of cross-cultural encounter through an analysis of the most substantial body of nineteenth and early-twentieth century photographs from an Australian site . --Times Literary Supplement, 12 May 2006

Author Information

Wendy Wick Reaves is curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Bernard F. Reilly Jr. is former director of research and access at the Chicago Historical Society.

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