Domesticating the invisible : form and environmental anxiety in postwar America /
"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, Massac...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Oakland, California :
University of California Press,
[2021]
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| Summary: | "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"-- |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 253 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780520343825 0520343824 |