Arthur Dove
Always Connect
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 did not stop with 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 gallery director 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, machine culture, meteorology, mathematics, aviation, and World War II, just to name a few".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 an unprecedented 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.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Circles
2. Weather
3. Sound
4. Things
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
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 co-editor of "Landscape Theory".
Reviews
"Through its focus on a single artist, the American modernist painter Arthur Dove, DeLue's book increasingly widens its scope to take in everything from weather science to jazz improvisation, from the study of Gregg's shorthand to the structure of the radium atom. DeLue follows where Dove's work and life lead, and the results are no less dazzling than the paintings that appear in full color in this splendid book" – Richard Meyer, author of "What Was Contemporary Art?"
"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
