Window on the West :: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890-1940 :: Judith A. Barter, Andrew J. Walker

Native American & Southwestern Art

September 2003
hardback
ISBN 13: 9780865591998
ISBN: 0865591997
224 pages
9 1/2 x 12 in.
305 x 229 mm.
200 color plates
US $ 50
UK £ 35

Window on the West

Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890-1940
Judith A. Barter, Andrew J. Walker

The Indian caught my fancy as it had with many a young sculptor.

hermon atkins macneil

This handsome volume provides a focused social and cultural history of the role played by Chicago artists and patrons in the evolution of a visual language for depicting the landscape and people of the American West.

Between 1890 and 1940, Chicago experienced tremendous growth, pioneered technological advances, and contributed to the development of artistic modernism. A group of Chicago patrons sought to shape the city’s identity and foster a uniquely American style by supporting artists who featured motifs found in the West and Southwest and who looked back at an imagined, idyllic past with romantic Native American heroes.

The art they commissioned and collected took many forms, as documented by this volume. Objects included range from the naturalistic sculpture of Frederick Remington and Hermon Atkins MacNeil, through the colorful Taos paintings of Walter Ufer and Victor Higgins, to the modernist abstractions of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Judith A. Barter has been Field-McCormick Curator of American Arts at the Arts Institute of Chicago since 1992.