Designs on the Heart: The Homemade Art of Grandma Moses

Name: The unknown Grandma Moses.
Item: Designs on the Heart: The Homemade Art of Grandma Moses
Rating: 5
Author: Thriftbooks.com User

by Karal Ann Marling

It is a story that has gone down in the annals of American art history: a New Yorker visiting upstate Hoosick Falls is entranced by four pictures hanging in the window of a drugstore. Investigating further, he learns they are the handiwork of a 78-year-old widow. Thus begins the rise to fame of Grandma Moses--farmwife, painter, and unlikely celebrity.

In this book Karal Ann Marling, distinguished observer of American visual culture, looks at Grandma Moses as a cultural phenomenon of the postwar period and explores the meaning of her subject matter--and her astonishing fame. What did the Greatest Generation see in her simple renderings of people, young and old, tapping maple trees for syrup, making apple butter, gliding across snowy fields on sleighs? Why did Bob Hope, Irving Berlin, and Harry Truman all love her--and the art czars of New York openly despise her? Through the flood of Moses merchandise--splashed across Christmas cards, dishware, yard goods, and gewgaws of every kind--Marling traces the resonances that these primitive images struck in an America awkwardly adjusting to a new era of technology, suburbia, and Cold War tensions.

Between the cultural ephemera, folklore, song, and history embedded in Moses' paintings and the potent advertising shorthand for Americana that her images rapidly became, this book reveals the widespread longing for the memories, comforts, and small victories of a mythic, intimate American past tapped by the phenomenon--in art and commerce alike--of Grandma Moses.

Format:Hardcover

Language:English

ISBN:0674022262

ISBN13:9780674022263

Release Date:May 2006

Publisher:Harvard University Press

Length:304 Pages

Weight:2.52 lbs.

Dimensions:0.9" x 8.4" x 9.3"

Related Subjects

20th Century Art Artists, Architects & Photographers Arts & Literature Arts, Music & Photography History & Criticism Individual Artists

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The unknown Grandma Moses.

Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago

This is a well written biographical book containing information about Grandma Moses that anyone who loves her and her art will get many hours of enjoyment from reading. Many reasons not to let any grass grow under your rocking chair are contained with in this book. Enjoy!