Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, and Laurie Anderson are just some of the major American artists of the twentieth century. From the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a rapid succession of art movements and different styles reflected the extreme changes in American culture and society, as well as America's position within the international art world. This exciting new look at twentieth century American art explores the relationships between American art, museums, and audiences in the century that came to be called the 'American century'. Extending beyond New York, it covers the emergence of Feminist art in Los Angeles in the 1970s; the Black art movement; the expansion of galleries and art schools; and the highly political public controversies surrounding arts funding. All the key movements are fully discussed, including early American Modernism, the New Negro movement, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Neo-Expressionism.

Robert Lehman (1891-1969), one of the foremost art collectors of his generation, embraced the work of both traditional and modern masters. This volume catalogues 130 nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings that are now part of the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The majority of the works are by artists based in France, but there are also examples from the United States, Latin America, and India, reflecting Lehman's global interests. The catalogue opens with outstanding paintings by Ingres, Théodore Rousseau, and Corot, among other early nineteenth-century artists. They are joined by an exemplary selection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin. Twentieth-century masters represented here include Bonnard, Matisse, Rouault, Dalí, and Balthus. There are also newly researched modern works by Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Kees van Dongen, Dietz Edzard, and D.G. Kulkarni (dizi). Robert Lehman's cultivated taste for nineteenth-century French academic practitioners and his intuitive eye for emerging young artists of his own time are documented and discussed. Three hundred comparative illustrations supplement the catalogue entries, as do extensively researched provenance information, exhibition histories, and references. The volume also includes a bibliography and indexes.

Color woodcut printmaking was not new to Britain, America, or Japan in the late eighteenth century. Yet after Japan was opened to the West in 1854 and deeper cultural exchange began, Japanese prints captured the European and American imagination. The fresh colors, simplicity of materials, and departure from traditional compositions entranced western artists and the public alike. Likewise, Japanese audiences and artists were intrigued by the styles and techniques of western art, which was broadly available in Japan by the end of the nineteenth century. Artists there created images of the strange foreigners and imagined what American cities looked like. By the beginning of the twentieth century, artists were not content to merely imagine what the other side of the world looked like. As prints traveled around the globe for study so did artists, and with them spread the tricks and techniques of color woodblock printmaking as well as appreciation for the prints. Woodblock printmakers in the West started to investigate Japanese processes, and Japanese publishers began to seriously seek out the print market outside of Japan. Important themes began to emerge; scenes of nature and old-fashioned architecture outnumbered modern city views, and images of animals were nearly as popular as those of human figures. Imagery was often idyllic and beautiful, attractive to an international audience. Twentieth-century art, however, moves at a furious pace, and the ferment of the international woodcut style quickly ran its course. Artists appropriated what they needed from the color woodcut, then developed techniques, subjects, and styles in their own ways. An ever-expanding range of prints became indebted to the artists of the previous generation who had reinvigorated woodblock printmaking styles and practices around the world. This full-color catalogue includes many prints from this colorful exhibition and shows how the progression of styles became more similar as international artists learned from and competed with each other, then stylistically diverged as artists of each country took what they learned in new directions. The three essays each focus on the influences and contributions made to the international style by three countries: Japan, Britain, and America.

Illustrations created in France to celebrate the turn of the century, show scenes depicting the future of air travel, helicopters, undersea colonies, agriculture and the radio