Wilson, Richard Guy et al. — The American Renaissance, 1876-1917

New York, The Brooklyn Museum / Pantheon, 1979. Softcover. Yellow wraps pictorial wraps, 232 pp. 15 color, 231 bw plates. Underlying the American Renaissance was a desire to take selected elements of American and Western history and recombine them in new, eclectic ways in order to create a new American heritage that would provide a backdrop against which the pageant of a great civilization of the future could be staged. One of the intents of the American Renaissance was the unification of all the arts into one creative amalgamation that would encompass painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, architecture, and the setting, whether the garden or an urban landscape, as a unit. This book examines the various elements that went to make such a coherent aesthetic statement. Extensive illustrated essays organized as follows: Part 1 titled The Great Civilization, with chapters titled: Expressions of Identity; Cultural Conditions; Presence of the Pat; Scientific Eclecticism; and Periods and Organizations. Part II is titled Statements of Culture and has chapter titles as follows: Architecture, Landscape, and City Planning; Decorative Art: The Domestic Environment; and Painting and Sculpture. These essays are contributed by Richard Guy Wilson, Dianne H. Pilgrim and Richard N. Murray. Index follows the essays, and this is followed by the catalogue listing of 301 works included in the exhibition, 90 of which are illustrated in small bw plates. Includes 38 paintings, 43 sculptures, and assorted works on paper. An amazing exhibit. Published to accompany the exhibition held in NY: Brooklyn Museum, Oct. 13 to Dec. 30, 1979, three other locations. VG (some shelf wear at corners and crease in spine, small tear at bottom of spine, otherwise all pages clear and intact. Stamp from previous gallery inside cover) .