BOOK REVIEW HOLIDAY SPECIAL SECTION : Made in America

The cornucopia of the holidays will soon spill out at our feet, a lavish cascade of time past tumbling into time present, of memories cherished and relationships refreshed by the changes that are the spice of rituals renewed year after year. Once again, we will rush about our kitchens, to cars brimming with glittering presents, to trains and airplanes, to doors opening into encircling arms. Voices will rise into the warm, sweet-smelling air, making a joyous embroidery above the clatter of children, the glad exclamations of sisters and brothers and parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends reunited. Glasses will be raised in praise, candles will be lit, familiar music resound.

And, after the feasting, the singing, the delight of mutual recognitions and realignments, there will come the private satisfaction of our holiday books. Best of all the art books, this year a sumptuous variety. Combining fine photographs with interesting information, any one of these books would be a splendid present.

A survey of the eclectic collection in the “National Museum of American Art,” with a foreword by its director Elizbeth Broun and an introduction by William Kloss, is usefully divided into early America, tradition, 20th-Century life, people, folk art, modern art, craft objects and contemporary voices. Its lucid text is amplified by quotations from the artists as well as from art historians, and a bibliographical index invites further investigation.

In “Greenville County Museum of Art: The Southern Collection,” the category of Southern artists is so generously defined as to include those from the whole Southwest, as well as those who only briefly lived and worked in the South--at Black Mountain College, N.C., for example--as well as introducing readers to the fresh voices of a variety of African American artists. The editor has written a history of how this museum developed its collection, an account of an exemplary and successful effort to create a provincial museum of distinction.

The Phillips Collection in Washington has published “In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keefe, and Alfred Steiglitz.” Edited by Elizabeth Hatton Turner, it includes “Selected Correspondence,” letters from 1926 to 1949 delineating the relationship between this group and Duncan Phillips, and an instructive chronology as well.

“Printmaking in America: Collaborative Prints and Presses 1960-1990” documents the extraordinary flowering of American printmaking. Trudy V. Hansen, David Mickenberg, Joann Moser and Barry Walker contribute authoritative and entertaining essays that catch the excitement of artists and printers alike. Photographs of work-in-progress and a bibliography amplify the text.

“Visions of the North: Native Art of the Northwest Coast” features the lyrical photographs of Tom Till. Don and Debra McQuiston, a father-and-daughter team known for their books on Native American history and art, have organized these stunning pictures into a geographical progression from south to north, illustrated by informative maps. Lynn Bush’s text is lively and easy to read--this would be an ideal present for a curious teen-ager.

“The Spirit Within: Northwest Coast Native Art From the John H. Hauberg Collection” is the most accessible discussion of this art that I have ever read. John Hauberg introduces his collection with an engaging account of how he tracked down and acquired the glorious artifacts that he transported to the Seattle Art Museum. A map places the various cultural groups of the Northwest, and a language chart elucidates pronunciation. Beautiful photographs of works in the collection are supplemented by text and documentary pictures--many of them taken in the late 19th Century--of Native Americans making and, occasionally, wearing the objects, as well as of their original sites. The range and ingenuity of this work is matched by a complex, fresh iconography. Sensitively edited by Steven Brown, among others, this book is a masterly achievement, enhanced by a bibliography of general interest.

“Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945” is a generous compendium of another group of relatively unknown regional artists, punctuated by a few familiar names--Mabel Dodge Luhan, Dorothy Brett, Henriette Wyeth, Helen Lundeberg and, of course, Georgia O’Keeffe. Edited by Patricia Trenton, 11 essays, organized by geographical area, celebrate a compelling variety of talents. The dynamic growth of the West in the late 19th Century provided women with unusual opportunities for freedom--this work emanates individuality. Pioneer artists are represented, including those of Native American, African, Mexican and Asian heritage. The photographs of these women, their houses, their improvised studios and their farms, ranches and pueblos are wonderfully evocative of the spontaneity and vigor of self-expression.

“James McNeill Whistler,” the catalogue for recent retrospective exhibitions in London, Paris and Washington, is a definitive consideration of his art, with essays and extensive notes on each of the works illustrated. In her “Diabolical Designs: Paintings, Interiors, and Exhibitions of James McNeill Whistler,” Deanna Marohn Bendix confines herself to a discussion of Whistler’s decisive contributions to the design reform movement in the closing decades of the 19th Century. Bendix is particularly interesting in her description of the famous Peacock Room, F. R. Leyland’s dining room in London, decorated by Whistler in 1876-77 and later transported in its entirety to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.

Whistler’s interiors invite conversation. In contrast, as Robert Hobbs makes admirably clear in his “Edward Hopper,” rooms can as well preclude human exchange: Hopper’s poignant protagonists are as voiceless as the wall around them, or the empty American landscape to which they are incidental. Hobbs’ chapter on “The Automobile and the American View” is especially telling--the speeding automobile reduces view to glimpse, intimacy denied.

“The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer,” by Barbara J. Bloemink, is a leisurely biography of a poet and painter whose work has received scant attention. Stettheimer, born in the last quarter of the 19th Century and brought up in New York and Europe, transcended a conventional background. Friendships with Alfred Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp helped to place her beyond her domestic circle--literally on a larger stage, as she designed the stage settings and costumes for Gertrude Stein’s “Four Saints in Three Acts” in 1934.

In Stettheimer’s dreamy, idiosyncratic paintings, time is measured by the tinkle of teacups. For the contemporary artist Jennifer Bartlett, time is a stern protagonist. To each of the expressive works in “Air: 24 Hours,” the fiction writer and playwright Deborah Eisenberg adds her own revelatory comments, followed by an intense exchange between the writer and the artist.

In “Pat Steir,” Thomas McEvilley surveys the work and career of another contemporary artist, whose virtuoso paintings are pure poetry. The intelligence and tenacity of Steir’s search are impressive--young artists could learn from her example.

“Howard Hodgkin Paintings,” by Michael Auping, John Elderfield and Susan Sontag, is the most complete critical evaluation of the artist’s work to date, and includes Marla Price’s cursive catalogue raisonne and a selected bibliography. Born in England in 1932, Hodgkin has only within the last 20 years received acclaim for his handsome paintings. Abstract, Cubist in structure, these works are nonetheless personal; “Jealousy” is one title. John Elderfield’s exchange of letters with the artist arouses particular interest.

“Frederick Hart: Sculptor” is a gripping account of an unusual artist--unusual in that his life as well as his work are in the 19th-Century pattern of Daniel Chester French. It is a pleasure to learn about an artist who has made himself so comfortable: He owns an imposing estate in Virginia, a Tara-like house and a convenient studio, to which he gathers members of a congenial group of artists who call themselves the “Centerists.” Born in 1943, Hart’s training was primarily an apprenticeship to the traditional stone carvers working at the Washington National Cathedral. He is best known for the sculpture adjacent to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, “Three Soldiers.” An introduction by J. Carter Brown and a commentary by Tom Wolfe, accompanied by seven other essays, elucidate--in a sense defend--a point of view generally discounted by the current art Establishment, but perennially welcomed by the public at large.

Andrew Wyeth is perhaps the best known, most popular, artist in the United States. “Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography,” introduced by Thomas Hoving, is a distinguished book. Beautifully designed, it is a pleasure in itself and replete with a revealing photograph of the artist, chronologies and a selected bibliography. But its special delight is its personal touch: Wyeth makes casual, even chatty, comments on the territory he has distilled and fixed in his paintings and on his own particular world.

Winslow Homer’s world is as explicit as Wyeth’s, but wider, rich with inflection, variety and vitality. “Winslow Homer,” by Nikolai Cikovsky Jr., and Franklin Kelly, with contributions by Judith Walsh and Charles Brock, is the catalogue for the generous retrospective of that artist’s work currently on view at the National Gallery of Art, due to travel to Boston and then to New York. Supplemented by an illustrated chronology, an exhibition history and a selected bibliography, it is a thrilling examination of one of the greatest artists this country has produced. More than 200 drawings, watercolors and paintings, dating from Homer’s work as a free-lance illustrator during the Civil War to the visionary paintings he made toward the end of his long life, are reproduced and amply discussed, with many quotations from the artist as well as those with whom he was associated. His psychological development from a young man walking around with a sketchbook on the field of war to his withdrawal to his perch on the edge of the continent at Prout’s Neck, Me., is paradigmatic of an artist deepening into maturity. This is a book for all who are interested in what it is to be an artist, a holiday treasure for all seasons.

****

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, By the Smithsonian Institution Staff (Bulfinch: $40; 280 pp.)

GREENVILLE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART: The Southern Collection, By Martha Severiens (Hudson Hills Press / New York: $65; 289 pp.)

IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keefe, and Alfred Steiglitz. The Steiglitz Circle at the Phillips Collection. By Elizabeth Hutton Turner (Counterpoint: $55; 192 pp.)

PRINTMAKING IN AMERICA: Collaborative Prints and Presses 1960-1990, By Trudy V. Hansen, David Mickenberg, Joann Moser and Barry Walker (Abrams / Block Gallery / Northwest University: $65; 248 pp.)

VISIONS OF THE NORTH: Native Art of the Northwest Coast, By Don and Debra McQuiston . Text by Lynne Bush . Photography by Tom Till (Chronicle: $35 hardcover, $19.95 paperback; 120 pp.)

THE SPIRIT WITHIN: Northwest Coast Native Art. From the John H. Hauberg Collection. By Stephen Brown et al. (Rizzoli / Seattle Art Museum: $35; 303 pp.)

INDEPENDENT SPIRITS: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945. Edited by Patricia Trenton (Autry Museum of Western Heritage / University of California Press: $60 hardcover, $29.95 paperback; 304 pp.)

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER, By Richard Dorment and Margaret F. MacDonald (Abrams: $85; 336 pp.)

DIABOLICAL DESIGNS: Paintings, Interiors, and Exhibitions of James McNeill Whistler. By Deanna Marohn Bendix (Smithsonian: $49.95; 365 pp.)

EDWARD HOPPER, By Robert Hobbs (Abrams: $39.95; 160 pp.)

THE LIFE AND ART OF FLORINE STETTHEIMER, By Barbara J. Bloemink (Yale University Press: $45; 303 pp.)

AIR: 24 Hours, By Jennifer Bartlett and Deborah Eisenberg (Abrams: $49.50; 167 pp.)

PAT STEIR, By Thomas McEvilley (Abrams: $50; 280 pp.)

HOWARD HODGKIN PAINTINGS, By Michael Auping, John Elderfield and Susan Sontag (Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth: $40)

FREDERICK HART: Sculptor, Introduction by J. Carter Brown . Commentary by Tom Wolfe (Hudson Hills Press / New York: $50; 144 pp.)

ANDREW WYETH: Autobiography, By Andrew Wyeth . Introduction by Thomas Hoving (Bulfinch: $50; 168 pp.)

WINSLOW HOMER, By Nicholai Cikovsky, Jr. and Franklin Kelly (National Gallery of Art / Yale: $60; 420 pp.)