Art History - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Rookwood and the American Indian

Tue, 23 Oct 2007

Rookwood and the American Indian (2007)
Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection

By Anita J. Ellis and Susan Labry Meyn

The nation’s premier private collection of Rookwood art pottery featuring American Indian portraiture is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 2007 to January 2008. Rookwood and the American Indian: Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection is a remarkable exhibition catalogue that will be of interest well beyond the exhibition because of its unique subject matter. Fifty-two pieces produced by the Rookwood Pottery Company are showcased, many accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the American Indians portrayed by the ceramic artist. In addition, the catalogue includes a brief biography of each artist as well as curators’ comments about the Rookwood pottery and the Indian apparel seen in the portraits.

The catalogue also presents two essays. The first, “Enduring Encounters: Cincinnatians and American Indians to 1900,” by ethnologist and co-curator Susan Labry Meyn, describes American Indian activities in Cincinnati from the time of the first settlers to 1900 and relates these events to national policy, such as the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Rookwood and the American Indian, by art historian Anita J. Ellis, concentrates on Rookwood’s fascination with the American Indian and the economic implications of producing that line.

Rookwood and the American Indian blends anthropology with art history to reveal the relationships between the white settlers and the Native Americans in general, between Cincinnati and the American Indian in particular, and ultimately between Rookwood artists and their Indian friends.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Rookwood+and+the+American+Indian.
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Paris on the Potomac

Fri, 19 Oct 2007

Paris on the Potomac (2007)
The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.

Edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay and Thomas P. Somma

In 1910 John Merven Carrère, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, “Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities.” The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.C., which continued long after the well-known contributions of Peter Charles L’Enfant, the transplanted French military officer who designed the city’s plan.

Isabelle Gournay’s introductory essay provides an overview and examines the context and issues involved in three distinct periods of French influence: the classical and Enlightenment principles that prevailed from the 1790s through the 1820s, the Second Empire style of the 1850s through the 1870s, and the Beaux-Arts movement of the early twentieth century. William C. Allen and Thomas P. Somma present two case studies: Allen on the influence of French architecture, especially the Halle aux Blés, on Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the U.S. Capitol; and Somma on David d’Angers’s busts of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Liana Paredes offers a richly detailed examination of French-inspired interior decoration in the homes of Washington’s elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cynthia R. Field concludes the volume with a consideration of the influence of Paris on city planning in Washington, D.C., including the efforts of the McMillan Commission and the later development of the Federal Triangle complex.

The essays in this collection, the latest addition to the series Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol, originated in a conference held by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society in 2002 at the French Embassy’s Maison Française.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Paris+on+the+Potomac.
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The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin

Mon, 21 Jul 2003

The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin (2003)

By Anita J. Ellis

In 1877 the thirty-year-old artist Mary Louise McLaughlin wrote China Painting, the first manual on the subject in the United States written by a woman for women. Extremely successful, it is now accepted as the book that launched the china painting movement in America.

When in 1898 McLaughlin decided to produce porcelain, the most difficult of ceramics, she showed the determination and exactitude that were her trademarks. Already renowned as a ceramicist, she became the first to produce studio porcelain in America and the first to discover the technique for decorating under the glaze. Her work was welcomed with enthusiasm in New York and Paris.

Despite the enormous influence of Mary Louise McLaughlin on the history of American ceramics, Anita Ellis's The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin is the first definitive study dedicated to her accomplishments.

Anita Ellis depicts the many challenges McLaughlin encountered in pursuit of her ultimately successful career. Not the least of these was her rivalry with the formidable Maria Longworth Nichols, fellow Cincinnatian and founder of the Rookwood Pottery Company. Another was that of being a woman in the arts: her primary goal had been to paint portraits on canvas, but Victorian society did not afford opportunities in what was considered a male sphere.

Replete with historic photos and color illustrations of many of McLaughlin's works, The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin is a tribute to a woman artist who rose to one of the most esteemed positions in her field.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Ceramic+Career+of+M.+Louise+McLaughlin.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Art As Image

Sat, 15 Dec 2001

Art As Image (2001)
Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Ohio

Edited by Alice M. Cornell

Cincinnati was a major printing and publishing center from the earliest days of the Old Northwest Territory. The spectacular technological and artistic developments in the 19th-century printing trade nationally were reflected in the Cincinnati printmakers' achievements, many of which were promotional in nature.

Highlights of Cincinnati prints, printing, and graphic design are the focus of this book, which includes examinations of the work of The Strobridge Lithographing Company and its circus posters, the participation of the Smithsonian Institution in the Cincinnati Centennial Exhibition, a survey of Cincinnati printing and graphic design, an examination of early engraved Cincinnati views, Emil Klauprecht and the German-American influence in Cincinnati printing, lithographic portraits by Ehrgott & Forbriger, and the unique contributions of The United States Playing Card Company of Cincinnati.

This book is a unique collaboration between two of Ohio's university presses in providing a hardcover version of this important study along with access to the accompanying website devoted to faithful reproduction of the color images discussed within the book.

The total package is an illuminating and eclectic introduction to the varied and colorful history of Cincinnati printing.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Art+As+Image.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Rookwood and the Industry of Art

Thu, 15 Mar 2001

Rookwood and the Industry of Art (2001)
Women, Culture, and Commerce, 1880-1913

By Nancy E. Owen

Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati--the largest, longest-lasting, and arguably most important American Art Pottery--reflected the country's cultural and commercial milieux in the production, marketing, and consumption of its own products.

Rookwood and the Industry of Art is a critical appreciation of Rookwood's rise to its commercial pinnacle, assessing the labor practices and production of ceramic ware as a way to explore anxiety about women's roles outside the home as well as about industrialization, immigration, and urbanization.

In this illustrated study, Nancy Owen analyzes the discrepancies between the concepts of fine art and culture and the managerial positioning of the firm as "an artist's studio, not a factory." Owen also looks at the meaning of Americanness as portrayed in the choices of decoration and in the marketing campaigns that sought to elevate the ceramic ware to an artform.

For the collector as well as the cultural historian, Rookwood and the Industry of Art is a revealing and sensitive treatment of this uniquely American commercial and artistic phenomenon.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Rookwood+and+the+Industry+of+Art.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers

Wed, 01 Nov 2000

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers (2000)
Echoes from the Hills

By Fawn Valentine

A treasury of Mountain State heirlooms.

Tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts are windows into the past. In 1983, three West Virginia county extension agents discussed the need to locate and document their state's historic quilts. Mary Nell Godbey, Margaret Meador, and Mary Lou Schmidt joined with other concerned women to found the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search.

The search focused on documenting quilts made in West Virginia before 1940, which marked the end of a fertile period in American quilt history and the beginning of a decline in quiltmaking that would continue until the 1970s. Ultimately, the search registered more than 4,000 quilts.

This effort has culminated in West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers: Echoes from the Hills, published by Ohio University Press on November 1, 2000, in association with the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search, Inc. The book includes 159 color photographs of selected quilts, with maps showing where they were made, a database analysis of the statewide survey, and the oral histories of descendants of quiltmakers.

"Quilts warm the body and the soul," says Valentine. "A quilt can wrap the psyche in a loving embrace. Family quilts are symbols of bloodlines reaching across decades and generations."

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/West+Virginia+Quilts+and+Quiltmakers.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Art and the Reformation in Germany

Mon, 01 Jan 1979

Art and the Reformation in Germany (1979)

By Carl C. Christensen

The Reformation had considerable impact upon the world of art in sixteenth-century Germany, but that impact was not everywhere a uniform one. Some early Protestant leaders reacted to what they viewed as the idolatrous misuse of visual imagery in late medieval Catholicism with a demand for total abolition of paintings and figurative sculpture from the churches. Others, most notably Martin Luther, not only gave a qualified approval to much of the existing ecclesiastical art but actually encouraged the development of a new, specifically Protestant, religious iconography.

The sixteenth-century debate over images was formally inaugurated in Wittenberg, where Luther’s university faculty colleague, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, in 1522 published the first major iconoclastic treatise of the Reformation period. It also was in Wittenberg that the first documented destruction of religious art in the Reformation occurred. In addition to a discussion of these events, Carl Christensen presents a series of case studies showing how the problem of ecclesiastical art was resolved in three other German-speaking cities, Nuernberg, Strasbourg, and Basel, and he assesses the broader historical and cultural significance of Reformation iconoclasm in Germany.

One of Luther’s responses to the iconoclastic disturbances in Wittenberg was to begin to develop a positive theological rationale for the retention and use of religious art. He especially emphasized its educational or pedagogical value, but also affirmed that it had a legitimate place in Christian worship. Working closely with Luther, artists such as Lucas Cranach created an interesting body of new panel paintings, altarpieces, and epitaph monuments. Considerable attention is devoted her to a description of the early Lutheran art works and to an iconographical analysis of their subject matter.

The last chapter examines in detail the question of whether or not the Reformation should be considered a major cause of that decline of art which occurred in sixteenth-century Germany. Also included, in the form of an excursus or technical appendix, is an extended essay on the controversial topic of Albrecht Dürer’s Four Apostles painting and its relationship to the Reformation in Nuernberg.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Art+and+the+Reformation+in+Germany.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.