New Books in Art

By: Marshall Poe
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with Scholars of Art about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
    New Books Network
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Art
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Episodes
  • Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
    Mar 14 2025
    Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters’ complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
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    43 mins
  • Michael J. Hatch, "Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840" (Penn State UP, 2023)

    Michael J. Hatch, "Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840" (Penn State UP, 2023)
    Mar 13 2025
    In early nineteenth-century China, a remarkable transformation took place in the art world: artists among China's educated elites began to use touch to forge a more authentic relationship to the past, to challenge stagnant artistic canons, and to foster deeper human connections. Networks of Touch is an engaging exploration of this sensory turn. In Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840 (Penn State UP, 2023), Michael J. Hatch examines the artistic network of Ruan Yuan (1764-1849), a scholar-official whose patronage supported a generation of artists and learned people who prioritized epigraphic research as a means of truing the warped contours of Confucian heritage. Their work instigated an "epigraphic aesthetic"--an appropriation of the stylistic, material, and tactile features of ancient inscribed objects and their reproductive technologies--in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century artwork. Rubbings, a reduplicative technology, challenged the dominance of brushwork as the bearer of artistic authority. While brushwork represented the artist's physical presence through ink and paper, rubbings were direct facsimiles of tactile experiences with objects. This shift empowered artists and scholars to transcend traditional conventions and explore new mediums, uniting previously separate image-making practices while engaging audiences through the senses. Centering on touch and presenting a fresh perspective on early nineteenth-century literati art in China, this volume sheds light on a period often dismissed as lacking innovation and calls into question optical realism's perceived supremacy in reshaping the sensory experience of the modern Chinese viewer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Harriet Atkinson, "Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53" (Manchester UP, 2024)

    Harriet Atkinson, "Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53" (Manchester UP, 2024)
    Mar 12 2025
    How did exhibitions become a vital tool for public communication in early twentieth century Britain? Showing resistance reveals how exhibitions were taken up by activists and politicians from 1933 to 1953, becoming manifestos, weapons of war and a means of signalling political solidarities. Drawing on dozens of examples mounted in empty shops, workers’ canteens, station ticket halls and beyond, this richly illustrated book shows how this overlooked form was created by significant makers including artists Paul Nash, John Heartfield and Oskar Kokoschka, architect Erno Goldfinger and photographer Edith Tudor-Hart. Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53 (Manchester UP, 2024) is the first study of exhibitions as communications in mid-twentieth century Britain Harriet Atkinson is AHRC Leadership Fellow and Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at University of Brighton Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
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    38 mins

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