Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875with a New Preface

Nature and Culture is one of those breakthrough books that makes you wonder how a field could possibly have missed the obvious for so long. Ms. Novak looks at American landscape painting from 1825-1875 from the perspective of what those landscapes meant to contemporaries, by drawing on nonpainting sources.This is a critical step forward because landscape painting for this group had a theological and philosphical context that is remote to us in these post-Darwinian days. The intent of the artists and the perceptions of the first viewers are in many ways as remote from us in the 21st century as the cave dwellers in Lescaux. I found this work to be exceptionally well balanced and provocative. I will never again be satisfied to understand a work only from my own perspective and time. Ms. Novak has opened up a whole new world for me that I should have been able to open for myself, as someone trained as a social historian. I humbly thank her for helping me extend my understanding of art beyond where it would otherwise have gone. Well done! Enjoy!