Awards

• Winner of Award for Excellence, Greater Hudson Heritage Network 2015

Overview

"Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art explores our fascination with that most glamorous of birds. The peacock, strutting in its sapphire-blue and emerald-green plumage, symbolizes all things vain and beautiful in centuries of painting and sculpture, in books, and on clothes that swirl and shine like the iridescent bird itself. Intrigued by the exotic art of Asia that prized and portrayed the peacock and its trail of an emblazoned train of feathers, Western artists in the 1890s chose the bird as a symbol of design on their canvases and for objects in the home. Though striking Gilded Age peacock imagery escalated in fin-de-siecle French Art Nouveau and the Art Deco of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression of 1929 quelled the idea of beauty for its own sake; art now needed to be more than beautiful- it should serve, first, the social good. While in the aftermath of the Depression and a world war Americans of the '50s looked, again, for luxury, modernism gave rise to the ethos ""Less is more."" The peacock's profile changed once more, this time into a symbol of drama and decadence. Today, as the contemporary art world renews its embrace of visual beauty, the peacock in form, color, and association resurges. The first major scholarly examination of the peacock in visual arts in the United States, England, and France, from the nineteenth century's Gilded Age to today, Strut, organized by the Hudson River Museum, has assembled paintings and decorative arts from museums and private collections throughout the United States. Contributing essays to the catalog Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art by Bartholomew F. Bland; Penelope Fritzer; Kirsten M. Jensen; Melissa J. Martens; Ellen E. Roberts; and Laura L. Vookles."

Full Product Details

9780943651453

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Reviews

'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art' provides a comprehensive study of all aspects of the peacock in art and its symbolism. -Yonkers Rising

'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art' provides a comprehensive study of all aspects of the peacock in art and its symbolism. -Yonkers Rising In 'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art, ' the gorgeous creature with the magnificent plumage is dissected and found to have hidden depths and multiple personalities. Through some 150 objects created in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, this fascinating exhibition from the Hudson River Museum recounts the many ways artists, designers, and the rest of us have made use of this astonishing bird. -Slyviane Gold, The New York Times

'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art' provides a comprehensive study of all aspects of the peacock in art and its symbolism. GCoYonkers Rising 'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art' provides a comprehensive study of all aspects of the peacock in art and its symbolism. -Yonkers Rising In 'Strut: The Peacock and Beauty in Art,' the gorgeous creature with the magnificent plumage is dissected and found to have hidden depths and multiple personalities. Through some 150 objects created in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, this fascinating exhibition from the Hudson River Museum recounts the many ways artists, designers, and the rest of us have made use of this astonishing bird. -Slyviane Gold, The New York Times

Author Information

"BARTHOLOMEW F. BLAND is Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Hudson River Museum. Among the exhibitions with accompanying catalogs he has organized for the museum are ""Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York's Rivers, 1900-1940""; ""The Panoramic River: The Hudson and the Thames""; ""Sylvia Sleigh: Invitation to a Voyage""; ""Whitfield Lovell: All Things in Time""; ""Red Grooms: In the Studio""; and ""I Want Candy: The Sweet Stuff in American Art."" He has organized interpretive projects for the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the Ronchini Gallery in London, and the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Florida. LAURA L. VOOKLES is Chief Curator of Collections at the Hudson River Museum. For the museum she has curated exhibitions and accompanying catalogs that include ""The Panoramic River: The Hudson and the Thames""; ""The Old Croton Aqueduct: Rural Resources Meet Urban Needs""; ""Next Stop Westchester! People and the Railroad""; ""Westchester: The American Suburb""; ""Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture""; and ""Paintbox Leaves: Autumnal Inspiration from Cole to Wyeth."""

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