BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

Asher Brown Durand was a man who practices what he preached - "Go first to nature to learn to paint landscapes." The revolutionary aspect of that statement can only be understood in historical context. Coming at a time when American nature painting was dominated by European esthetics, he may well have been the first to advocate a direct response to nature, placing highest value on seeing and feeling for oneself. he urged painters to be influenced by weather, by atmosphere and light. And he took to the hills  and return with fresh, moisture-filled pictures. In 1855 he painted In the Woods, large and refined, and no doubt based on sketches completed in the field. From North Conway, New Hampshire, that year he wrote a letter describing in great detail the scene he found. In the Woods , 1855 Asher B. Durand (American, 1796–1886) The region of the White Mountains is justly famed for its impressive scenery: passages of the sublime and beautiful are not infrequent, and for th...

By Alexandra A. Jopp Modernism was the “cultural outcome of modernity, the social experience of living in the modern world.” [1] Many artists and critics, starting in the 1940s, abandoned traditional historicism and art forms in favor of a search for new standards, leading to an abundance of original writings, actions, reactions and artistic developments. When reflecting on how Modernism influenced art in the 1960s, it is important to note the role of American art critic and formalist Clement Greenberg, who had great influence as an arbiter of artistic quality, taste and value. His “Greenbergian Modernism” linked “high modern” art with artists who worked to refine a medium-specific approach to their work, and he preferred, above all, painterly Abstract Expressionism, especially Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. For Greenberg, the highest form of art was that which concerned itself so strictly with its medium and essential materials that the work was about the medium and noth...