Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century American Art [Hardcover]

Donna Gustafson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

Images from the World Between is an engaging survey of circus imagery in twentieth-century American art. In her introductory essay, curator Donna Gustafson chronicles the history of the American circus, showing how and why it came to be an important subject for American art. Through a discussion of a wide range of paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs, Gustafson examines how the circus has been represented both as a microcosm of society and as an alternative reality. Some artists have been drawn to the abstract beauty of the circus ring, tent, and performances. Others have immortalized individual performers such as trapeze artist Alfredo Codona, animal trainer Clyde Beatty, and aerialist Lillian Lietzel for their physical prowess, grace, and courage. Still others have focused on the darker aspects of circus life, such as the danger inherent in many of the performances and the appeal of the grotesque.The book accompanies an exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts. Among the artists discussed are Diane Arbus, George Bellows, Rhona Bitner, Alexander Calder, John Stuart Curry, Charles Demeuth, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Lisette Model, and Bruce Nauman. In addition to Gustafson's, the book contains essays by Karal Ann Marling on the postwar revival of interest in circus motifs and on the clown in popular culture, by Ellen Handy on the circus in twentieth-century photography, by Lee Siegel on the circus in twentieth-century literature, and by Eugene R. Gaddis on A. Everett "Chick" Austin's collection and exhibition of paintings with circus themes. As director of the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Ringling Museum of Art, and as a performing magician, Austin united the worlds of art and the circus.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The ethereal chink between reality and fantasy, prosaic and performed, and mundane and metaphorical once again reveals itself in this perceptive work, another entry in the swelling list of circus titles. This visually splashy tome accompanies an eponymous traveling art exhibition curated by Gustafson, director of exhibitions at the Hunterdon Museum of Art and former chief curator of exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts. Gustafson's trenchant text illuminates the history of the American circus using over 90 paintings, prints, photographs, and other more contemporary media such as video and installations. The rest of the volume is given to four essays by noted curators and academics that examine specific aspects (e.g., Karal Ann Marling's "Clowns with Bad Attitudes") of the intersection between art and the circus. More than 100 other images are used in conjunction with these subsequent essays. Though this visual high-wire act tilts more to academic institutions, the copious and beautifully presented illustrations make it appropriate for more advanced art, theater, circus, pop culture, and performance art collections in public libraries. Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A stunning collection.... A lush, vibrant contribution to the gorgeous and the grotesque 'literature of the circus.'" LA Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262072289
• ISBN-13: 978-0262072281
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #864,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some rare and compelling images and art, but not the best book on the subject, October 9, 2010

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Whitt Patrick Pond "Whitt" (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century American Art (Paperback)

Donna Gustafson's Images From The World Between: The Circus in 20th Century American Art is something of a mixed bag. On the one hand it does offer a number of images of rare artistic works depicting or inspired by the world of the circus, from the straightforward to the surreal, from impressionist to abstract. Many of these I had never seen before, and so the book does merit consideration for anyone interested in the imagery of circus life and how it is seen by various artists. There are also some purely photographic works, but they seemed out of place here and there are definitely better and more comprehensive books for purely photographic images of the circus.

On the definite plus side, for me anyway, was the discovery of some works and artists with which I was not previously familiar. Reginald Marsh's paintings from the 1930's were quite compelling, capturing the rowdy atmosphere of the crowds and the sideshow and the raw muscularity of trapeze artists in mid-flight. Robert Riggs' lithographs, also from the 1930's, vividly capture acts in the ring, one of tumblers being watched not only by the crowds but by their fellow circus performers with the band playing in accompaniment, and another of an elephant act with five elephants, one bearing a female rider aloft, playing to the crowd as the handlers on the ground put the animals through their paces, with clowns on the sidelines carrying on, a frenzied moment all perfectly caught in time.

That said, however, I was expecting more from this book than I found in it. The text sections are mildly informative but with an academic bent that lacked appeal, more commentary than narration, and I found myself wishing that more space had been allocated to the art than to the text. The book would have, I feel, been better off leaving the photographic sections to other books and including more paintings, drawings and sculptures to give a broader selection both in breadth and depth of those works and artists. I kept looking for, hoping for, more depictions of other of the many varied aspects of circus life, and I felt that the book came up short of what it could have been.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the circus and in how circus life and performances have been portrayed by artists over the years, though with the qualifier that is of only limited value and that there are likely to be other better books on the subject.