American Art and Architecture (World of Art)

by Michael J. Lewis
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Editorial Reviews

An accessible, concise, and beautifully written survey of American art and architecture from 1600 to the present.

This new survey provides a complete history of American art and architecture from its seventeenth-century colonial beginnings to the latest installation and video work. Structured chronologically, the book defines the characteristics of the different periods and highlights the consistent forms, techniques, and styles that mark the art and architecture as distinctively American. Michael J. Lewis charts the ways in which American artists and architects both adopted and diverged from earlier European models to create an original visual language of their own. He also shows how that language in turn came to influence and eventually dominate art and architecture around the world.

Professor Lewis integrates discussions of both buildings and works of visual art, revealing the shared social and aesthetic concerns that underlie the two. Vernacular, religious, secular, and corporate architecture appears alongside paintings, sculpture, photography, and new-media art. All the major American artists and works from the seventeenth century to today are included, such as epic history paintings by Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley; sublime landscapes by Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederick Church; society portraits by John Singer Sargent; groundbreaking abstract expressionist and pop art by Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Andy Warhol; and challenging sculptural, installation, and video works from more recent years by Robert Gober, Fred Wilson, and Matthew Barney.

In architecture, dozens of different building types are illustrated and discussed, from the earliest colonial houses and churches to the most spectacular modernist and postmodernist houses, stations, museums, and iconic skyscrapers. 275 illustrations, 175 in color.

Customer Reviews

A thoughtful and comprehensive review, 2007-03-05
by J. Mohrer (New York City)
Professor Lewis has undertaken a very ambitious project and has accomplished his mission with an astonishingly clear, easy to read and engaging review.
The study of American art and architecture is a hobby for me and I have read several texts on this subject prior to this one. I say this to frame my comments as coming not from a professional or scholarly point of view but not from a novice, either. I am not certain that this would be a good entry point for this subject if only because the author covers so much ground in the space alotted . For the reader who is familiar with well known works and the lives of the characters discussed here,the book provides a flowing narrative that connects the developments in both art and architecture to the historical events of the times. There is little attempt to dig into the psychological or political underpinnings in any great detail, a trait of some of the other reviews in the field that can often make the going a bit tough. (I find this to be a problem with some of the Oxford series books).
The illustrations are not the high point of this book. They are adequate and serve to reinforce the text, which I think is the point here.
The brief glossary and comprehensive index were helpful when trying to return to a point discussed in brief detail which returns later in the text.