Kenyon Cox was among the best-know cultural figures in the United States during the first two decades of this century; thanks to his reputation as a mural painter and especially as a critic. In this first biography; H. Wayne Morgan focuses on Cox?s development and personality; treating his art as an expression of his idealism. Cox was born in Warren; Ohio grew up in the Cincinnati area; and attended the McMicken School of Design there. His art training continued in Paris; where he studied for five years in the academic setting of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as well as in private ateliers; such as those of Emile Carolus-Duran; Rodolphe Julian; and Jean-Leon Gerome. An academic; Cox was committed to learning traditional drawing and composition before establishing his own artistic identity. Cox became well known as a muralist during the prosperous years from 1897 to the 1920s; providing works for the new state capitols of Wisconsin; Iowa; and Minnesota; the Library of Congress; and several public buildings in New York City. His large allegorical decorations rested on a thorough knowledge of Italian renaissance masters; many of whose works he had seen as an impressionable student. In addition; Coxs gift for pithy phrases and his obvious knowledge gained him considerable prominence as a critic and reviewer. Throughout his career; he emphasized the values of craftsmanship and of attachments to ongoing traditional ideals that emphasized harmony; order; and unity of artist and public. He became famous; or notorious; and an outspoken opponent of the trend toward modernism; which he believed glorified individual expression at the expense of communicating with an audience. Cox saw this as culturally divisive; destroying the power of art to expand the viewers imagination and consciousness. Eventually; however; modernism overcame the traditional ideals and styles that Cox and many of his contemporaries had represented. Morgan?s sources include the Cox papers at the Avery Library of Columbia University as well as his voluminous published writings on criticism and art history. Old Masters and New: Essays in Art Criticism (1905); Painters and Sculptors (1907); The Classic Point of View (1911); Artist and Public (1914); and Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical (1917). His re-evaluation of Kenyon Cox and his classical/idealistic style contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the non-modern art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
2013-07-02 2013-07-02File Name: B00DR8E83M
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. this original research on Stranges Men circa early 1590s has a great deal of new material on the Stanley family as ...By Mike HydeAs a needed sequel to their study of the Queens Men acting company of the 1580s; this original research on Stranges Men circa early 1590s has a great deal of new material on the Stanley family as both patrons and possibly contributors to what became the Henry VI plays of Shakespeare and other early Shakespeare dramas--above all the continuity of the players themselves from Stranges Men who formed the nexus and core of the Lord Chamberlains Men after 1594. It suffers as did the study of the Queens Men from willful blindness as to the authorship question and likewise invents or imagines old Will of Stratford somehow being involved without any evidence to justify his participation in either Queens or Stranges Men. Both studies however point unrelentingly to the same obvious conclusion--that the early Shakespeare plays usually dated around 1590-1591 were conceived and written by a courtier poet/dramatist connected to both the Court and noble families such as the Stanleys. These inconvenient facts make it unlikely that Will of Stratford was the true Bard--we simply have no evidence for his Lost Years (1585-1592) during which the Queens Men became in the 1580s the leading players to the Royal Household followed immediately after 1590 by Stranges Men.11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. A Masterpiece of Elizabethan Historical ScholarshipBy Ld8t@virginia.eduI think this book will stand as one of the four or five great works about the Elizabethan stage within its historical and biographical contexts. Its scope is much more limited than the most magisterial of these; E.K. Chambers 4-voume ELIZABETHAN STAGE; but it shines a searchlight on the history of one of the mostimportant acting companies of the time; illuminating and clarifying everything it touches. I was especially impressed by the scrupulous; painstaking evidence used to produce such fascinating "byproducts" as the fact that Shakespeare was indeed associated with Lord Stranges Company; and that SIR THOMAS MORE might now arguably be considered a play which had Shakespeare involved in its creation from the its inception -- now re-dated to the early 1590s; correcting John Jowetts conclusion of only a few years back (in his New Arden edition of SIR THOMAS MORE) that the play was written c. 1600 and that Shakespeare merely revised or rewrote a couple of scenes originally written by another playwright. As a Shakespeare scholar and teacher; I find this book so good as to be literally amazing. I dont know how long Lawrence W. Manley and Sally-Beth Maclean worked on LORD STRANGES MEN AND THEIR PLAYS; but as someone familiar with the topic; with the sort/amount of digging required to unearth what they have unearthed; and with the logical problems involved in bringing to closure some of the long-standing attending disputes; it seems almost an understatement to call it a triumph.1 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Lord Shake-speareBy David FrankThis outstanding study provides so much new information; and research; that; combined with Dr. John M. Rolletts new biography William Stanley as Shakespeare: Evidence of the Authorship of the 6th Earl of Derby; we are entering a new era in the Authorship Question. William Stanley was the younger brother of the impresario of Lord Stranges Men; Ferdinando Stanley. Prof. Manleys work shows how dominant they were in the development of the Elizabethan Renaissance and how "Shake-speare" learned his craft and got his works produced.