John White Alexander (1856-1915): In search of the decorative. (Volumes I and II).
Item
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Title
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John White Alexander (1856-1915): In search of the decorative. (Volumes I and II).
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Identifier
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AAI9405563
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identifier
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9405563
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Creator
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Moore, Sarah J.
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Contributor
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Adviser: H. Barbara Weinberg
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Biography
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Abstract
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During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, American art's internationalism and cosmopolitanism were perhaps its most characteristic features. During this period, unprecedented numbers of American artists returned from periods of study abroad with new styles and a familiarity with both the great art of the past and internationally current trends. The increased attention to art making and formal issues, in contrast with antebellum concern with native subject matter and narrative, characterized the work of foreign-trained artists, many of whose careers were distinguished by international honors and critical approbation in the foreign and American press. Exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic displayed internationally current styles which emphasized the primacy of formal concerns and decorative aesthetics with little regard to subject matter, realism, or national expression.;John White Alexander (1856-1915) developed and flourished during this period of American art's internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Alexander's decorative figure painting style of the 1890s, his Parisian period, was based on the simplification and flattening of form through surface patterning, elegant linear contours, asymmetrical compositions, and a restricted palette with a single dominant tone. The currency of his decorative style brought him to the forefront of American expatriate artists in the 1890s and assured his international success.;This dissertation on John White Alexander is framed within the context of revisionist activity in American art historical scholarship which, at its best, aims to present the aesthetic, cultural, historical, and critical matrix in which work was produced and discussed. As a monographic study, the dissertation aims to fill the lacuna created by the lack of any rigorous scholarship on Alexander and to provide a coherent narrative of his rich and prolific artistic production. More important, however, the dissertation is designed to stretch the limited and artificial boundaries of a monographic study by locating and interpreting Alexander's Parisian period within the international topography of American art at the end of the nineteenth century. An examination of Alexander's career within this broader context reveals his work at the intersection of some of the most compelling current discourses on decorative aesthetics and their relationship to the advent of modernism, the primacy of formal concerns with little regard to subject matter, and the rise of mural painting. His work after 1901 is considered within the context of the resurgence of nationalism in American art after the turn of the twentieth century.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
