Product Description

This lavishly illustrated volume offers a stunning new view of Yosemite's visual history by presenting two hundred works of art together with provocative essays that explore the rich intersections between art and nature in this incomparable Sierra Nevada wilderness. Integrating the work of Native peoples, it provides the first inclusive view of the artists who helped create an icon of the American wilderness by featuring painting, photography, basketry, and other artworks from both well-known and little-studied artists from the nineteenth century to the present. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon pursues several evocative themes, including the relationship between environment and aesthetics in Yosemite; the various ways in which artists have shaped how we see and use the park; and the dynamic intersections between art, nature, and commerce that have played out during its history. In addition to offering a wide-ranging view of Yosemite's art over the past two centuries, the volume provides intriguing insights into the complexities and contradictions inherent in its enduring image as both an unspoiled natural wonder and a must-see spot for sightseers.
With Essays by Amy Scott, William Deverell, Kate Nearpass Ogden, Gary F. Kurutz, Brian Bibby, Jennifer A. Watts, and Jonathan Spaulding
Copub: Museum of the American West

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #639505 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

From Booklist
The Yosemite Valley has accumulated a body of work ranging from Edenic to camp. Yosemite artwork is on generous display in this album, which includes color reproductions encompassing Albert Bierstadt paintings, Ansel Adams photographs, and numerous works by less-famed artists, all organized according to era and medium. Associated with a current exhibition on tour to Los Angeles, Oakland, Reno, and Indianapolis, this book features eight art-history specialists uniformly wrestling with the paradox that confronts any artist setting up in Yosemite: the inner response to its spectacular scenery versus awareness of the gigantic tourist attraction it has become. The human presence is furtive in the romantic landscapes captured by Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and their wet-plate photography contemporaries but becomes inescapable in the work of their successors, some of whom seemingly vie for the most satirical image possible. Half Dome yet rises above the parking lots, recalling its summons to John Muir and the native Miwoks, chapters about whom contribute to this beautiful, comprehensive display of the sublime and the ridiculous, as inspired by Yosemite. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
"For Americans of the nineteenth century, Yosemite, like Niagara Falls, offered a defining natural symbol of American possibilities. Here, in image and text, is the record of how the painters and photographers of that era-poised on California peaks in silent awe-celebrated the Yosemite as place and icon."--Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California

"For 150 years Yosemite Valley has captured the American imagination through literary description, the photographer's lens, and the artist's palate. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon is a wonderful, multilayered cultural history of a spectacular American landscape. This is a story of the beauty of Nature melded with human perceptions, which tells us much about ourselves as well as the 'incomparable valley.' It is a spectacular, entertaining read."--Robert Righter, author of The Battle over Hetch Hetchy

"Tracing the dynamic interconnections between art, nature, and commerce that transformed Yosemite into one of the most powerful and popular icons of wilderness in American culture, Yosemite: Art of an American Icon is a one-of-a-kind volume that graphically probes and exposes our ambivalent cultural love affair with pristine wilderness. Not only does it provide a nuanced and comprehensive survey of the art of Yosemite, but it also encourages us to critically examine our contradictory desire for Yosemite to be both untouched natural preserve and sought-after tourist destination."--Marguerite S. Shaffer, Director of American Studies, Associate Professor of American Studies and History, Miami University, Oxford Ohio

"As Amy Scott puts it in her introduction: "In Yosemite, visitors encounter nature but see a work of art." For us to see nature it must be turned into a landscape, a work of art, but always then what we see is the work of art. It is this paradox that the book so skillfully elucidates, in a major contribution that places the visual creation of Yosemite at the heart of western studies, American art, and the role of wilderness in modern urban society. Scott and her colleagues do a magnificent job of capturing Yosemite's significance and its hard realities and complexities, synthesizing current research on the development of Yosemite, and extending that research in many fruitful directions. And the book is beautifully written and illustrated."--Bruce Robertson, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

About the Author
Amy Scott is Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry National Center's Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California. William Deverell is Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. Kate Nearpass Ogden is Associate Professor of Art History at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Gary Kurutz is Curator of Special Collections at the California State Library. Brian Bibby is an independent scholar and author. Jennifer Watts is curator of photography at the Huntington Library. Jonathan Spaulding is executive director and chief curator at the Autry National Center's Museum of the American West.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Look at American Icon
This a an excellent compilation of the history and beauty of Yosemite and it's art. Amy Scott is a bright voice in the art world. I highly recommend it.

Certain Yosemite Native American people are misidentified. Not Miwoks, but Paiute.
The problem that many Yosemite, Bridgeport, Bishop and Mono Lake Paiutes have with this book is that many of the Yosemite Indians are misidentified tribally. Before the book was published some of our Paiute historians contacted the Autry and Amy Scott with documentation concerning the ancestry of important Mono Lake Paiute people. We adivsed the Autry and gave them the Charlie family's 1928 California Indian Applications. Instead of identifying them correctly they went with Craig Bates book Tradition and Innovation as the source of the Indian ancestry in the Yosemite area. The problem with using Craig D. Bates book, Tradition and Innovation, is that it is full of errors. The book, in the Yosemite American Indian biography section, has Young Charlie as a son of a "Yosemite Miwok chief". In know as a fact this is incorrect. I know many of the Charlies and they are NOT Yosemite Miwoks, but full blooded Paiutes. We Paiutes who are descendant of the Charlie family would like to know where is the original source that states that Young Charlie was a the son of a Yosemite Miwok chief. Every piece of documentation, probates, land sales and 1928 California Indian Applications of the whole family the Charlies are documented as full blooded Mono Lake Paiutes. Daisy Mallory was a full blooded Yosemite Mono Lake Paiute, yet her baskets are not identified on page 109. The George Wharton photo of woman sitting with a gambling tray, page 95, is not identified. She is a Paiute. Helen Coats grandmother is not Lucy Telles, her mother Hazel, was an orphan adopted by Lucy Telles. Where and when was it identified that was a "Miwok family" by Martin Mason Hazeltine on page 93. Who identified it and when was ever noted that this grouping was a Miwok family? No one should ever use Tradition and Innovation as reference material for any type of genealogy of the Yosemite Indians because many of the Yosemite Indians in that book have incorrect tribal identification or they are implied. All of Young Charlie's and his families tribal governmental documentation states they were Mono Lake Paiutes and NOT Miwoks. We have done an extensive family research and there is no evidence that before the non-profit Southern Seirra Miwuks went federal recognition there is any proof that Young Charlie was a ever a son of a Miwok chief. Edwin Charles is not from the same family as the Charlies.