Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600-1915 [Paperback]

Claire Perry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 1999

Since the arrival of the Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century, California has been thought of as a land of promise and opportunity. This lavishly illustrated catalog, which is to accompany a major exhibit opening in April 1999 at Stanford's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts and traveling subsequently to two other museums, presents a fascinating cultural history of an idyllic vision of California that still figures prominently in the American imagination. Brought together in one show for the first time, this combination of art is unique in its range from high art to popular representations. Currier and Ives lithographs and the work of early European cartographers are juxtaposed with photographs by Carleton E. Watkins, Arnold Genthe, and Eadweard Muybridge, and paintings by Albert Bierstadt, James Walker, and William Hahn, among others. With one hundred and fifty plates--sixty in full color--Pacific Arcadia illuminates the imagery of the California Dream.
Perry investigates how and why this vision of a Pacific paradise was developed and marketed to the public, taking as her subject the images produced by early visitors and residents confronted by the peculiarities of California's landscape, the abundance of its natural resources, and the omnipresence of the vast Pacific. Using paintings, drawings, maps, photographs, newspaper and book illustrations, and printed ephemera dating from the seventeenth century to 1915, Pacific Arcadia examines the ways these images represented California as a place where economic bliss could be attained in a spectacular natural setting.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Since the publication of William Cronon's Changes in the Land, nature has been increasingly interpreted as a socially determined ideology rather than as a pristine, untrammeled wilderness. Claire Perry's Pacific Arcadia continues this tradition, examining how 19th-century representations of California's physical and social ecologies rehabilitated the state's sordid image from one of economic avarice and racial barbarism toward one embracing the refined cosmopolitan tastes of Victorian mass culture.

Pacific Arcadia (coinciding with an exhibition at Stanford University's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Art) amply demonstrates how images of California initially expressed the imperatives of its colonists. Spanish (and later Mexican) engravers, cartographers, and painters celebrated the potential for wealth and the benefits of "civilizing" the native inhabitants, while foreign visitors betrayed their own imperial designs by emphasizing Franciscan brutalities and Californio thriftlessness. To Anglo-Americans, swarming into the region in the 1840s, "California came to represent cultural values at odds with the ideals of hard work, community solidarity, and religious observance on which the nation was founded." In order to combat the resulting Tocquevillean excesses of Gold Rush culture, California's boosters founded an era of European-style genre painting, mission-revival architecture, orange-crate art , and scenic photography, which represented the state's environment and Spanish history in conformity with late-19th-century values of socially edifying consumption.

Perry's research is encyclopedically detailed. While she fully discusses prominent painters, such as Alfred Bierstadt and ranchero pictorialist Charles Christian Nahl, she also pays heed to the role that more mechanical art forms, such as political cartooning and stereoscopic photography, played in reinventing the Golden State's image. Vividly written and bounteously illustrated, Pacific Arcadia provides a long-needed discussion of the links between California's arts movements and the rising hegemony of America's middle class near the turn of the 20th century. --John M. Anderson

From Library Journal

Because of the beauty and variety of its physical geography and climate, California would probably have become a region dominated by powerful mythology even without the Gold Rush, Hollywood, or oranges. The Golden State has nurtured "California dreams" for three centuries through potent images, from explorers' maps, advertisements, wilderness photography, paintings, and, of course, the movies. In this companion to an exhibit at Stanford's Cantor Center for Visual Arts, curator Perry chronicles the iconography of early California. The book, which is the first of its kind, is both breathtaking and frustrating: for example, by ending her study with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, Perry curiously (and perhaps conveniently) avoids having to consider the massive impact of the motion picture industry on the visual history of "California dreamin'." Written in accessible but at times plodding, self-conscious, and understated prose, this is nonetheless a unique contribution to the history of an immensely important region. Highly recommended for all large public and academic libraries.ADouglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195109376
• ISBN-13: 978-0195109375
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,850,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Revisionist History Illustrated, August 13, 1999

By 

Hans Halberstadt "Hans Halberstadt" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600-1915 (Hardcover)

Someday, when the historians and sociologists of the future try to dissect the late 20th Century, they will make snide comments and rude remarks about the rampant "political correctness" and revisionist history that infected so much of the 1990s -- and they will use the text of this book as "Exhibit A." It entirely misses the essence of what actually happened here during three hundred fascinating years.

"Pacific Arcadia : Images of California, 1600-1915" ought to be a wonderful book; the history of California is full of fizz and sizzle, a place where spectacular things happened and superb artists were present to record them. The images in this book are indeed wonderful -- but they are accompanied with a commentary that commits a historian's cardinal sin, applying the manners and morals of the present to a time and place in the past. The author simply can't accept that the artists who recorded their views of California back in the 18th and 19th centuries actually liked the things she abhors today. Here's just one small example:

" . . . The repeated instances of animals under restraint - tethered horses in the field, rearing horses dominated by Spanish riders, cattle corralled by the presidio walls - serve as metaphors for the involuntary servitude of the native laborers and refer to the often unwilling role of Indians in the 'encomienda' system. Furthermore, the pointed wedge [in one painting] of the garrison walls that cuts so imposingly into the fields where the Indians work also hints at the frequently hostile relationship between the settlers and indigenous tribes. ..."

Well, if you like that kind of stuff, there's plenty more of the same. It is really rather tragic, too, because the book includes some really delicious painting, drawing, photography, and engravings that deserve better. The illustrations are generally subordinate to the text; reproductions are often a bit too small to see clearly, and captions provide only minimal information. The author of this book has obviously spent a great deal of time studying the people of California's past; it is unfortunate that she didn't seem to learn much about them.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding book, November 24, 2010

By 

BWL - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600-1915 (Hardcover)

It is rare that one comes across an art historian who is broad enough in their perspective to be accessible to a general audience. Ms. Perry knows her history and is able to place art in a fascinating historical context. As one other reviewer has well stated, anyone interested in the history of California and the United States would be well advised to read this book. The choice and quality of the reproductions are outstanding. Bravo to the author and Stanford University!

0 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, July 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600-1915 (Paperback)

For anyone who is interested in the history of California and art, this is a very interesting book.