San Antonio College Library

Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949) is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. A black man born into slavery in Alabama, he was an eyewitness to history - the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the steady rise of African American urban culture in the South. Traylor would not live to see the civil rights movement, but he was among those who laid its foundation....

"Focusing on the thirty-three paintings Philip Guston exhibited at the Marborough Gallery in 1970, this in-depth account reconsiders the history of postwar American art and the conception of figuration in modern art history. Through a myriad of cultural touchstones, including evidence from literary and musical vogues of the period, this book examines the role of history as both artistic medium and creative catalyst to Guston's practice as a painter....

"An incandescent journey to unearth the beginnings of American art. An unforgettable voyage across the reaches of America and the depths of memory, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay tells the story of America's artistic birth. Following his family back through the generations, renowned critic Christopher Benfey unearths an ancestry- and an aesthetic-that is quintessentially American. His mother descends from colonial craftsmen, such as the Quaker...