Description

A New World Imagined proposes a bold new look at the art of the Americas by viewing it through its intersections and relationships with the world at large. Taking the vast geography and staggering cultural diversity of the North and South American continents as its starting point, the book introduces the ways in which American art, broadly defined, has been shaped both by its encounters with cultures around the globe and by its own past--from the ancient and native populations that first inhabited these territories to the European, Asian, Scandinavian and Latino émigrés who settled here. But beyond actual immigration, foreign cultures--especially the strikingly different cultures of Asia and the Islamic world--have also impacted our own in purely imaginary ways, as American artists projected their fantasies and preconceptions on these far-off lands and "imported" their motifs, infusing their work with a rich, wholly invented and thoroughly American vision of the "other." Discussing over 200 artworks, from incense burners and painted drinking vessels to some of this country's most celebrated paintings and sculptures, and coinciding with the opening of MFA Boston's new Art of the Americas wing, A New World Imagined offers an alternate history of the Americas through the diverse inspirations and interactions through which its art has been fashioned.