Follow @yaleARTbooks Follow @Caroline_Hayes_ Art historians are just beginning to uncover the influence of Mexico on American modernism. In looking beyond Europe’s effect on American modernism in the 20th century, Ellen G. Landau’s important new book, Mexico and American Modernism brings forth a piece of history long in shadow. She
Evelyn Toynton’s forthcoming Icons of America biography, Jackson Pollock, explores how Pollock’s tortured and conflicted character transformed popular culture. Against a backdrop of criticism that found American art inferior to its European counterpart (Marcel Duchamp wrote that “The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”), Pollock’s controversial, even rebellious, work was provocative for generations old and new.
Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art, will air on PBS this Wednesday, December 28, 2005, from 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET. The film is a journey through the transformations that took place in 20th-century America, told through the words and work of some of the century’s most significant artists. “Anybody