Sarah L. Burns

Lovely, interesting, and scary. A mix of paintings well known and well-loved (American Gothic, Hopper's movie usher, Thomas Hart Benton's pastorals) and artists less familiar and terrific (Joe Jones, Aaron Douglas). Some brilliant comparisons that had never occurred to me that felt spot on when someone points them out (Grant Wood and Memling, for example). Scary because of the common socioeconomic threads and threats between the 1930s and now... excerpts from Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" took my breath away. The layout could be frustrating - a lot of flipping back and forth between essay mentions and the reproductions, but overall a very profitable couple of evenings of reading and looking.… (altro)

Being an exploration of how nineteenth-century painters, writers, and illustrators dealt with the dark side of American life. The topic is eclectic and lends itself to very sprawling generalizations, of which the author provides plenty. The paintings are reproduced in little end-of-chapter clumps, which necessitates a lot of flipping around, especially annoying because the reproductions are always too small to demonstrate the ultra-minute points she is making (my favorite was when she said to look at the expression on the Indian's face and I couldn't find an Indian). And, as usual, art criticism and literary criticism mix together like nachos and creme brulee.… (altro)