'Paint should not be applied thick', James McNeill Whistler once famously stated. 'It should be like breath on the surface of a pane of glass.' Through an innovative manner of handling paint, a group of American artists around 1900 created deceptively simple canvases that convey images of shimmering transience, visions suggested rather than delineated. Focusing on this singular aesthetic characteristic - softness - "Like Breath on Glass" explores this painterly phenomenon through works by fifteen important artists, including Whistler, George Inness, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, John Twachtman, and Eduard Steichen.Leading scholars in American art consider a wide variety of topics: the very different motives - technical, social, religious, and scientific - that prompted these artists in their experimentation; their materials; their techniques for creating the appearance of effortlessness; period notions of 'the vague' through art and writing; and the revival of 'painting softly' in the 1950s and 1960s. This beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated catalogue highlights a surprisingly understudied yet important aspect of American cultural and painterly achievement.
- ISBN10 0300134061
- ISBN13 9780300134063
- Publish Date 28 July 2008
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 November 2010
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English