True Grit - American Prints from 1900 to 1950

"""True Grit is an enjoyable and stimulating tour of American realist graphics and social realism of the inter-war era."" -- ""Alexander Adams Art"" ""The essays in True Grit draw out the nuances of black-and-white printmaking, admirably attending to the visual effects of specific techniques, from the ""jagged directness"" of Peggy Bacon's drypoints to the ""frank linearity of etching"" as practiced by John Sloan. Lesser-known figures dazzle as much as the greats in their treatments of the city after dark, and artists better known as painters are shown to have been innovators on paper, too. By redrawing the contours of early 20th-century American culture through the printmaker's eyes, True Grit enriches our views of the period and its art."" --Jennifer Greenhill, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Southern California ""True Gritoffers an altogether fresh roster and interpretation of earlier 20th-century prints from the United States. It should be required reading for all Americanists as well as print specialists. Not only is its roundup of prints punctuated by many unfamiliar examples, the extremely well-written essays by Stephanie Schrader, James Glisson, and Alexander Nemerov offer diverse and innovative perspectives on the assembled artworks. All three authors stress the overarching importance of the largely empathetic perspective of the great artist-teacher Robert Henri, but they otherwise investigate a variety of topics. Schrader excels in assessing the role of gender in driving subject choice, Glisson is excellent on the entanglement of urban experience and print technologies, and Nemerov, brilliant and surprising as always, presents a gripping account of the impact of George Bellows' 1925 death on Edward Hopper's signature work."" --Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University ""The catalogue offers fresh interpretations of favorite artists such as Edward Hopper and Peggy Bacon along with striking works by rediscovered artists who addressed both the collisions and the anomie of American cities in the first decades of the twentieth century. Its essays place these works within innovative contexts from literature and film, while examining aspects of technique, burr, and paper with a curator's eye. Good reproductions and revealing details encourage readers to look closely at a wealth of expression in black and white."" --Rebecca Zurier, University of Michigan"