num_pages: 402
description: Colonial America is generally considered to have been a “cultural desert” whose pioneering occupants were too involved in mere survival to be concerned with the “finer things” of life. Not until the mid-nineteenth century, it is assumed, did the American renaissance begin to produce a body of fine arts distinctively American in taste. J. Meredith Neil suggests, in this scholarly study of American attitudes toward the arts in the early national period, that this popular “pioneer fiction” has obfuscated what was actually taking place – a clear shift from European neoclassical traditions of “good taste” toward a proto-romanticism more supportive of American nationalism and in accord with the demonstrated American determination to be fully independent in all areas. Approaching art history from the American viewpoint, Neil has thoroughly examined contemporary periodicals as well as the writings and unpublished papers of selected national leaders, such as John Adams and Tho
language: English
title: Toward a National Taste: Americas Quest for Aesthetic Independence
titlecomplete: Toward a National Taste: Americas Quest for Aesthetic Independence
publisher: University Press of Hawaii