The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art - Paperback

by Laura L. Vookles (Editor), Bartholomew F. Bland (Editor), Hudson River Museum (Author)

ON MY MODERN MET'S TOP TEN LIST OF BEST CREATIVE BOOKS TO CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF MOON LANDING

The moon--its face, color, and power--threads through the tapestry of American landscape painting, holding timeless allure for artists and beloved by viewers of paintings everywhere. The Hudson River Museum has organized The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art--the first major museum examination of the moon in American visual arts from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries for a 2019 exhibition. This timely presentation also celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission when, in 1969, American astronauts first stepped onto the surface of the moon.

From the romantic silvery moonscapes of nineteenth-century artists to the abstractions by artists of the twentieth century who explored the moon, the perfect orb, and tapped into its spiritual possibilities, this celestial body, closest to Earth, remains constant in our sky, though our relationship to it and our home planet changes, as technology extends our reach toward space.

The Hudson River Museum, Fordham University Press, and the James A. Michener Art Museum are joint publishers of the lavishly illustrated catalog The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art. In engaging essays, author Stella Paul maps the colors of the moon; catalog co-editors Bartholomew F. Bland and Laura Vookles explore Hudson River School and Modernist moonscapes and their cultural resonance; and curators Melissa Martens Yaverbaum and Ted Barrow sight the moon's passage in art of both the Gilded and Space ages.

The exhibition and catalog have been made possible by a generous grant by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc.

The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY February 8 - May 12, 2019
James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA June 1 - September 8, 2019

Back Jacket

The moon―its face, color, and power―threads through the tapestry of American landscape painting. The moon holds timeless allure for artists and is beloved by viewers of paintings everywhere. The Hudson River Museum has organized The Color of Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art―the first major museum examination of the moon in American visual arts from the 19th through the 20th century. The exhibition, accompanied by a catalog, appears at the Hudson River Museum and the James A. Michener Art Museum in 2019, and its timely presentation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission when, in 1969, American astronauts stepped onto the surface of the moon

The Color of the Moon reveals the longing romanticism for this celestial body in the shimmery silver moonscapes of 19th-century artists―Thomas Cole, Father of the Hudson River School, Jasper Cropsey, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Susie M. Barstow, George Inness, Edward Bannister, Ralph Blakelock, Winslow Homer, and Childe Hassam. Scientific inquiry stimulated the thirst for moonlight for the exhibition's 20th-century artists, among them―George Ault, Arthur Dove, Charles Burchfield, Edward Steichen, Oscar Bleumner, Agnes Pelton, Marguerite Zorach, Norman Rockwell, Joseph Cornell, and Jamie Wyeth, who explore abstractions of a full moon as the perfect orb, while tapping into its spiritual possibilities. Other artists show our race toward space, as we cling to our age-old attraction to the chill, distant moon always in our sky.

The Hudson River Museum, Fordham University Press, and the Michener Art Museum are joint publishers of the lavishly-illustrated, 200-page catalog, The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art. In engaging essays author Stella Paul maps the colors of the moon; catalog
co-editors Bartholomew Bland and Laura Vookles explore Hudson River School and Modernist moonscapes and their cultural resonance; and curators Melissa Martens Yaverbaum and Ted Barrow sight the moon's passage and allure in art of the Gilded and Space Ages.

The exhibition and catalog have been made possible by a generous grant by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc.

The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY February 8 - May 12, 2019
James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA June 1 - September 8, 2019

Author Biography

Laura L. Vookles (Edited By)
Laura Vookles is Chair of the Curatorial Department at the Hudson River Museum, where she has curated numerous exhibitions and written for its publications, among them Wyeth Wonderland: Josephine Douet Envisions Andrew Wyeth's World.

Bartholomew F. Bland (Edited By)
Bartholomew F. Bland is Executive Director of Lehman College Art Gallery, The City University of New York, and was previously Deputy Director of the Hudson River Museum.