Alfred Stieglitz and the American avant-garde

Abstract

In the twenty years before World War I, one man almost single-handedly changed the course of American art and photography. That man was Alfred Stieglitz--master photographer, gallery proprietor, publisher, raconteur, philosopher, and critic. This book treats in detail the interaction of Stieglitz and his colleagues, the relationship between European and early American abstract painting, the friendships and travels of the American modernists, the Armory Show and its aftermath, and finally the cultural and social forces that led Stieglitz to close his famous gallery, "291", and to stop publishing his influential magazine, Camera Work.

Contents

Alfred Stieglitz : the formative years -- Stieglitz, Steichen, and the photo-secession -- 291 and the arts before the Armory Show -- The rise of the American avant-garde : artists of the Stieglitz circle before 1913, I (Marin, Dove) -- The rise of the American avant-garde : artists of the Stieglitz circle before 1913, II (Weber, Walkowitz, Hartley) -- Stieglitz and modern art in America -- Life and work of the artists of the Stieglitz circle, 1913-1917 -- Alfred Stieglitz : his contributions and limitations -- Stieglitz and his friends after 1917.