While working on this issue of American Fine Art Magazine, an art scholar I was interviewing said, “After all, you can’t collect what you don’t know.” We were talking about how American art history is so much richer and more layered than the way we tend to think about the past.
The human mind is inclined to compartmentalize, to break things down sequentially, into movements with linear timelines, to chop up history into manageable bites that are easier for the intellect to digest.
But the past—and present—is much more fluid, and fueled by cross-pollination, overlap and evolution. Visual artists from different backgrounds, regions and generations interacted and influenced each other, while immersed in equally vibrant music, architecture, philosophy and literature that reflected the times as well.
These creatives experienced life simultaneously…
