Domesticating the invisible : form and environmental anxiety in postwar America / Melissa S. Ragain.

Author
Ragain, Melissa, 1978- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]
Description
viii, 253 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Availability

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Marquand Library - Remote Storage (ReCAP): Marquand Library Use OnlyN346.M42 C36 2021 Browse related items Request

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    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    "This book examines how postwar notions of form developed in response to newly perceived environmental threats, which inspired artists to model plastic composition on natural systems often invisible to the human eye. Melissa S. Ragain focuses on the history of art education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to understand how an environmental approach to form inspired new art programs at Harvard and MIT. As they embraced scientistic theories of composition, these institutions also cultivated young artists as environmental agents who could influence urban design and contribute to an ecologically sensitive public sphere. Ragain combines institutional and intellectual histories to map how the emergency of environmental crisis altered foundational modernist assumptions about form, transforming questions about aesthetic judgment into questions about an ethical relationship to the environment"-- Provided by publisher.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction : domesticating the invisible
    • Visual field theory : nature and composition in twentieth-century Boston
    • Reality's invisible : visual and environmental studies at Harvard
    • The Art of the environment : center for advanced visual studies, MIT
    • Eco-art and Rudolf Arnheim's cellular metaphor
    • Jack Burnham and "The disposable transient environment".
    ISBN
    • 9780520343825 (hardcover)
    • 0520343824 (hardcover)
    LCCN
    2020006811
    OCLC
    1142879069
    Statement on language in description
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