American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition
Peter J. Holliday
Abstract
American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition examines the mythologizing of California as a Mediterranean haven recalling ancient Greece or Rome. It explores how Californians shaped their world using the rhetoric of classical antiquity, from the first Anglo settlers in the nineteenth century to the present. It looks at how Americans sought to establish an American Arcadia to contrast with the harsh winters, despoiled landscape, and dark industrial cities they left in the East and Midwest. Indeed, the classical metaphor proved so alluring that some individuals shaped their very physi ... More
American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition examines the mythologizing of California as a Mediterranean haven recalling ancient Greece or Rome. It explores how Californians shaped their world using the rhetoric of classical antiquity, from the first Anglo settlers in the nineteenth century to the present. It looks at how Americans sought to establish an American Arcadia to contrast with the harsh winters, despoiled landscape, and dark industrial cities they left in the East and Midwest. Indeed, the classical metaphor proved so alluring that some individuals shaped their very physical and spiritual selves according to classical types. American Arcadia examines the evidence of material culture—painting, sculpture, photography, and especially architecture and landscape design—to explore these themes. More important, the book emphasizes the stories and people behind the works to understand how they came into being, what they meant to their makers, and how they affected contemporary and later observers. Although its primary focus is on Los Angeles, early promoters defined the Southland loosely, so it also covers a broad geographical scope. Furthermore, there are no other sustained examinations of the deployment and reception of classical metaphors in shaping California’s identity. The book provides a new appreciation for a way of seeing our history and ourselves, and for a mode that was once familiar—for a time even central—in America and that not only helps explain artworks from our past but also how our contemporary world developed.
Keywords:
architecture,
classical tradition,
landscape design,
Los Angeles,
painting,
reception,
Southern California,
Sculpture
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190256517 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190256517.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Peter J. Holliday, author
Professor, History of Art and Classical Archaeology, California State University, Long Beach
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