Teresa A. Carbone

Lovely, interesting, and scary. A mix of paintings well known and well-loved (American Gothic, Hopper's movie usher, Thomas Hart Benton's pastorals) and artists less familiar and terrific (Joe Jones, Aaron Douglas). Some brilliant comparisons that had never occurred to me that felt spot on when someone points them out (Grant Wood and Memling, for example). Scary because of the common socioeconomic threads and threats between the 1930s and now... excerpts from Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" took my breath away. The layout could be frustrating - a lot of flipping back and forth between essay mentions and the reproductions, but overall a very profitable couple of evenings of reading and looking.… (meer)