Nico Icon Region 2

Nico Icon Region 2

This lavishly illustrated volume offers a stunning new view of Yosemite’s visual history by presenting two hundred works of art together with provocative essays that explore the rich intersections amongst art and nature in this incomparable Sierra Nevada wilderness. Integrating the work of Native peoples, it provides the firstborn inclusive view of the artists who helped manufacture an icon of the American wilderness by featuring painting, photography, basketry, and other artworks from both well-known and little-studied artists from the nineteenth century to the present. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon pursues assorted evocative themes, including the kinship amidst surroundings and aesthetics in Yosemite; the respective ways in which artists have shaped how we see and use the park; and the dynamic intersections amidst art, nature, and commerce that have played out for the duration of it is history. In addition to providing a wide-ranging view of Yosemite’s art over the past two centuries, the volume provides intriguing perceptivenesses into the complexities and contradictions inherent in it is enduring effigy as both an unspoiled natural wonder and a must-see spot for sightseers.
With Essays by Amy Scott, William Deverell, Kate Nearpass Ogden, Gary F. Kurutz, Brian Bibby, Jennifer A. Watts, and Jonathan Spaulding
Copub: Museum of the American West

From the Inside Flap”For Americans of the nineteenth century, Yosemite, like Niagara Falls, offered a defining natural symbol of American possibilities. Here, in effigy and text, is the record of how the painters and photographers of that era-poised on California peaks in silent awe-celebrated the Yosemite as place and icon.”–Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California

“For 150 years Yosemite Valley has captured the American imagination through literary description, the photographer’s lens, and the artist’s palate. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon is a wonderful, multilayered cultural history of a spectacular American landscape. This is a story of the beauty of Nature melded with humane perceptions, which tells us much with regards to ourselves as well as the ‘incomparable valley.’ It is a spectacular, agreeably diverting read.”–Robert Righter, author of The Battle over Hetch Hetchy

“Tracing the dynamic interconnections amidst art, nature, and commerce that transformed Yosemite into one of the most powerful and usual icons of wilderness in American culture, Yosemite: Art of an American Icon is a one-of-a-kind volume that graphically probes and discloses our ambivalent cultural love affair with pristine wilderness. Not only does it provide a nuanced and comprehensive survey of the art of Yosemite, but it also inspires us to seriously thoroughly examine our contradictory desire for Yosemite to be both untouched natural preserve and sought-after tourist destination.”–Marguerite S. Shaffer, Director of American Studies, Associate Professor of American Studies and History, Miami University, Oxford Ohio

“As Amy Scott puts it in her introduction: “In Yosemite, visitors encounter nature but see a work of art.” For us to see nature it ought to be turned into a landscape, a work of art, but always then what we see is the work of art. It is this paradox that the book so skillfully elucidates, in a major contribution that places the visual creation of Yosemite at the heart of western studies, American art, and the role of wilderness in progressed urban society. Scott and her colleagues do a splendid occupation of capturing Yosemite’s significance and it is hard realities and complexities, synthesizing current exploration on the development of Yosemite, and extending that exploration in some fruitful directions. And the book is beautifully written and illustrated.”–Bruce Robertson, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

About the AuthorAmy Scott is Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California. William Deverell is Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. Kate Nearpass Ogden is Associate Professor of Art History at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Gary Kurutz is Curator of Special Collections at the California State Library. Brian Bibby is an independent scholar and author. Jennifer Watts is curator of photography at the Huntington Library. Jonathan Spaulding is executive conductor and chief curator at the Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West.

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Most helpful client reviews

0 of 0 humans found the following review helpful.
Captures the grandeur of an aweinspiring place
By Ref Lindmark
The book and I assume the exhibit it is based on does an splendid occupation documenting the particular way Yosemite makes an impression on all who have been there. Artists, photographers, and regular persons all have tried to capture the essence and singularity of the Valley, the waterfalls, the vistas, and the humans of Yosemite. I have boxes of slides, pages of sketches, books of poems and writing that try the same. But largely I have memories and stories and this book brought them back to me in a way only a photo or a grand painting can. The writing is splendid in placing the works in context of history and of the humans that interacted in the park. So now go read John Muir again be thankful for what he has done and what these artists have preserved.

6 of 10 humans found the following review helpful.
Excellent Look at American Icon
By Art and Book Lover
This a an magnificent compilation of the history and beauty of Yosemite and it’s art. Amy Scott is a bright voice in the art world. I highly commend it.

9 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Certain Yosemite Native American humans are misidentified. Not Miwoks, but Paiute.
By Ghost of Tenaya
The problem that a good deal of Yosemite, Bridgeport, Bishop and Mono Lake Paiutes have with this book is that a lot of of the Yosemite Indians are misidentified tribally. Before the book was published galore of our Paiute historians contacted the Autry and Amy Scott with documentation concerning the ancestry of important Mono Lake Paiute people. We adivsed the Autry and gave them the Charlie family’s 1928 California Indian Applications. Instead of identifying them correctly they went with Craig Bates book Tradition and Innovation as the source of the Indian ancestry in the Yosemite area. The problem with using Craig D. Bates book, Tradition and Innovation, is that it is full of errors. The book, in the Yosemite American Indian biography section, has Young Charlie as a son of a “Yosemite Miwok chief”. In recognise as a fact this is incorrect. I know a great deal of of the Charlies and they are NOT Yosemite Miwoks, but full blooded Paiutes. We Paiutes who are descendant of the Charlie family would like to know where is the primary source that states that Young Charlie was a the son of a Yosemite Miwok chief. Every piece of documentation, probates, land sales and 1928 California Indian Applications of the whole family the Charlies are documented as full blooded Mono Lake Paiutes. Daisy Mallory was a full blooded Yosemite Mono Lake Paiute, yet her baskets are not identified on page 109. The George Wharton photo of woman sitting with a gambling tray, page 95, is not identified. She is a Paiute. Helen Coats grandmother is not Lucy Telles, her mother Hazel, was an orphan adopted by Lucy Telles. Where and when was it identified that was a “Miwok family” by Martin Mason Hazeltine on page 93. Who identified it and when was ever cited that this grouping was a Miwok family? No one ought to ever use Tradition and Innovation as reference material for any type of genealogy of the Yosemite Indians because numerous of the Yosemite Indians in that book have wrong tribal identification or they are implied. All of Young Charlie’s and his families tribal governmental documentation states they were Mono Lake Paiutes and NOT Miwoks. We have done an extensive family exploration and there is no proof that before the non-profit Southern Seirra Miwuks went federal acknowledgement there is any proof that Young Charlie was a ever a son of a Miwok chief. Edwin Charles is not from the same family as the Charlies.

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