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Packaged by Walking Stick Press (San Francisco) and published
by Harry N. Abrams (New York), Art of the State is a series of small-format
art books telling the story of each state through its visual, literary,
and performing arts. Publication began in February 1998 and will continue
through the next decade. For each volume, which was written in about eight
months, I researched and wrote all the text, covering themes as diverse
as commerce, politics, architecture, and public works |
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Art of the State:
Washington
copyright ©1999
A distinctly Northwestern art first captured national attention in the
1940s and early 50s when a group of artists in Edmonds began creating
paintings tinged with Asian spiritualism and imbued with a symbolic sense
of landscape. The dean of the Northwest School, as it came to be called,
was Mark Tobey, a Wisconsin native who began as a catalog illustrator
and society portraitist. A move to Seattle and an encounter with Chinese
calligraphy led to Tobey's "white writing" paintings, which
vibrate subtly with gray-on-gray lines that convey both the urban pulse
and the misty Puget Sound light. Three younger members of the Northwest
School—Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, and Morris Graves—grew
up near Seattle, where they drew inspiration from the local Asian communities
and the rugged yet fog-softened Cascades. In the works of all four artists,
imagery from nature is overlain with a metaphysical language that elevates
it from the regional to the universal.
Art of the
State: Louisiana
copyright ©1998
Blessed by climate and unburdened by the Puritan work ethic, early Louisianians
embraced the pleasure principle to a degree unimaginable in other American
colonies. The French and Spanish colonizers took their cue from the Native
Americans, who indulged in elaborate dances, spirited gambling, and stickball
games. The Europeans enthusiastically adopted all of these, and added
their own traditions such as billiards, duels, promenades, and horse racing.
And drinking: by 1791, New Orleans boasted one tavernkeeper for every
71 residents; the ratio in Philadelphia was 1 to 479. The pursuit of pleasure
became so fevered that at various times colonial governors--and, once,
the French court--tried to ban gambling, but failed utterly.
Art of the State:
California
copyright ©1998
Of all the states in the Union, only California takes its name from fiction
and its identity from dreams. But the real, tangible California with its
diverse geography and weather and politics is even more interesting. The
art of the state nurtures the dream, proclaims the reality, and—at
its most successful—builds a bridge between them.
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