Nature's Nation

About this book

"Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment offers a compelling new vision of American art, examining for the first time how artists have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding while contributing to the development of modern ecological thought. Reframing more than three centuries of diverse artistic practice in North America, this timely volume traces evolving ideas about the environment - and our place in it - from colonial encounters between Indigenous beliefs and European natural theology through nineteenth-century notions of progress and Manifest Destiny to the emergence of contemporary ecological ethics. Far-reaching and multidisciplinary in its interpretive approach, Nature's Nation looks at works of art across genres and media - including painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography, decorative arts, and video - revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas, With essays and commentary by both scholars and artists, the book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith"--Book jacket flap. Public awareness of environmental issues has never been greater, nor has the need for imagining more sustainable and ethical habits of human action and thought, including environmentally informed ways of understanding art history. This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding. Far-reaching in its interpretive approach, Nature's Nation looks at artworks across genres and media--including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, decorative arts, and video--revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas. The book features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.