The End of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century America examines the dissolution of landscape painting in the late nineteenth-century United States. Maggie M. Cao explores the pictorial practices that challenged, mourned, or revised the conventions of landscape painting, a major cultural project for nineteenth-century Americans. Through rich analysis of artworks at the genre's unsettling limits-landscapes that self-destruct, masquerade as currency, or even take flight-Cao shows that experiments in landscape played a crucial role in the American encounter with modernity. Landscape is the genre through which American art most urgently sought to come to terms with the modern world.

About the Author
Maggie M. Cao is David G. Frey Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews
"The case Cao makes is too complicated to reproduce here; one detail will have to suffice: the decorative butterfly unexpectedly echoes the apparition of the steamboat Ancon as it lists off the shores of Alaska, reminding the artist of his own artistic dead end. Imaginative leaps such as this abound in this brilliant book; Cao makes them with breathtaking historical sophistication." * Journal of American History *
"It must be said that [Cao's] arguments are frequently highly creative and imaginative." * Winterthur Portfolio *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520291423
Author Maggie M. Cao
Format Hardback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 23mm