Speculative Landscapes
American Art and Real Estate in the Nineteenth Century
Ross Barrett
- 256 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Speculative Landscapes
American Art and Real Estate in the Nineteenth Century
Ross Barrett
About This Book
Speculative Landscapes offers the first comprehensive account of American artists' financial involvements in and creative responses to the nineteenth-century real estate economy. Examining the dealings of five painters who participated actively in this economyâDaniel Huntington, John Quidor, Eastman Johnson, Martin Johnson Heade, and Winslow HomerâRoss Barrett argues that the experience of property investment exposed artists to new ways of seeing and representing land, inspiring them to develop innovative figural, landscape, and marine paintings that radically reworked visual conventions. This approach moved beyond just aesthetics, however, and the book traces how artists creatively interrogated the economic, environmental, and cultural dynamics of American real estate capitalism. In doing so, Speculative Landscape s reveals how the provocative experience of land investment spurred painters to produce uniquely insightful critiques of the emerging real estate economy, critiques that uncovered its fiscal perils and social costs and imagined spaces outside the regime of private property.