A monument! | The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

book: The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) | Ian Kennedy, Julian Treuherz

books:


	• The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) Ian Kennedy, Julian Treuherz Yale University Press, 2008 - 287 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Fascinating! Illustrates the intersection of art, history and technology.

This is a wonderfully illustrated book that documents the profound transformation an amazing technology (steam locomotion) had on all strata of society. It features masterpieces from 19th and 20th century artists and photographers and is highly readable and informative. It appealed to me as both a railway enthusiast, a reader of American and European history and as someone who enjoys art in it's many genres. I highly recommend this book.

A monument!

The quality of exhibition catalogs ranges from poor to excellent. In this case, we have a catalog that fulfills all most important requirements.
For one, although some snobs describe it as "pretty pictures', the reproductions are accurate, and their size is good. Especially when it comes to paintings that belong to private collections, the only hope to be reminded of the emotions one felt in the presence of the real painting, is to enjoy a decent reproduction. So I consider it a very important quality for a catalog to present well sized, good quality reproductions of all the works of art being exhibited.
Although this catalog is not a treatise about the subject of the exhibit (and I don't believe it should be), the texts are very accurate, while at the same time they are short and concise. This is what a catalog should provide, as opposed to being the space to host infinite, boring, and cryptic prolusions by some solipsistic scholar.
Last but not least, the structure of the catalog is very good, with the last few pages providing small reproductions of all the artwork organized by author, with short explanation blurbs that perfectly serve their purpose.
Overall, a very good catalog for a fantastic exhibition that brought together, in some cases for the very first time, some of the most wonderful masterpieces ever created.

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Steam locomotives gripped the imagination when they first appeared in nineteenth-century Europe and America. Aboard these great machines, passengers travelled at faster speeds than ever before while watching the scenery transform itself and take on new forms. Common notions of time and space were forever changed.Through vivid illustrations and engaging texts, "The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam" captures both the fear and excitement of early train travel as it probes the artistic response to steam locomotion within its social setting. Featuring paintings, photography, prints, and posters, the book includes numerous masterpieces by 19th- and 20th-century artists, including J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Hopper.With its wide variety of themes - landscape painting, the conquest of the West, Impressionism, issues of social class, Modernism, the aesthetics of the machine, and environmental concerns - this work promises an exhilarating journey for both train and art enthusiasts and for anyone interested in one of the industrial age's defining achievements.

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