Customer Reviews

Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though I didn't see the show for which this book serves as a kind of catalogue, my enjoyment of it isn't limited to that. I don't know much about the Colonial revival in American culture, and this book is a splendid introduction to the ways in which our present-day culture have been modelled and molded by a series of cultural enterpreneurs like Nutting, for history is invidious and in the post-modern condition we can no longer distinguish between what is "real" and what is the simulacrum. Nutting saw clearly how through mass production he could disseminate his own vision of what colonial New England history was like, in ways that would reinforce his own prejudices towards nationalism, etc., while gibing with his genuinely moving and democratic feelings towards beauty akin to the Arts and Crafts movement of the UK and the USA of a slightly earlier date. Thomas Denenberg has all the facts and figures at his fingertips--he's a wonderful companion and never allows the readers to lose sight of the overall picture amid the myriad pleasues of Nutting minutiae. I'll have to find out more about American historiography, especially if it's this deliciously presented.