Reviews for Visions of the Susquehanna: 250 Years of Paintings by American Masters

The average rating for Visions of the Susquehanna: 250 Years of Paintings by American Masters based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-12-06 00:00:00 Karen Freimark This is one of those ideal art books with more pictures/paintings than text, which is as it should be. That quaint little buck-toothed Carmelite, or Carnalite, nun, who was probably really Bugs Bunny in disguise and had also probably burrowed out of her Enclosed Convent Walls to break onto the Art Scene, could drive one to distraction with her imaginings about the people, characters in a painting. "Life is Projection" projected Carl Jung and Sister Wendy(?) was super-dooper at it. She could smell the latest garlic pasta dish on the gondalier's breath in that Famous Painting whose name I don't recall if it ever existed...there you are,I've just PROJECTED!!! Bruce Weber, bless his heart and soul, gave himself little space and time for such Fantasies. There are paintings galore of Old New York, even one of its predecessor New Amsterdam, and just enough text to cover the story in art from 1800 up to 1950, and then restricted to Manhattan and its surrounding waters and bridges, streets, parks, skyscrapers and landmarks. (The Indians ? I saw one, a peripheral figure, male, with his squaw and child in a painting about the dismantling of an equestrian statue of King George III for the purpose of making bullets during the War of Independence!) This choice of Manhattan was justified by the overwhelming number of images of this borough. Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island being the other four. Greater New York was not to appear until towards the end of the 19th century. To quote: "Before then, the five boroughs were five politically separate communities. New York was Manhattan. And the many artists ? Like most countries of the New World the population was drawn from vast resources, so consequently these artists were a multicultural crew...France, Canada, Germany spring to mind. There are also apt quotations from writers accompanying some of the works eg., Leon Trotsky, Walt Whitman, Thomas Wolfe, O.Henry, Herman Melville, Edward Hopper, Lewis Mumford are a notable few. This volume was published in 2005. We are promised in the Preface that Pomegranate Communications "will publish a separate volume devoted exclusively to paintings of New York from 1950 to the present." Anybody SEEN it ???

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-30 00:00:00 Ti Turrey Lovely, lovely book. One I will look at again and again. It's so interesting to see what artist's thought of New York in very different eras. The buildings and the people are both fascinating to look at. Can't wait for "Part II" of this book, which the authors promised is in the works.