Research Catalog

George Ohr : sophisticate and rube

Title: George Ohr : sophisticate and rube / Ellen J. Lippert.
Author: Lippert, Ellen J.
Publication: Jackson, [Mississippi] : University Press of Mississippi, [2013]

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	NK4210.O42 L57 2013	Off-site

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Details

Description

x, 163 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates; 24 cm

Summary

"The late nineteenth-century Biloxi potter, George Ohr, was considered an eccentric in his time but has emerged as a major figure in American art since the discovery of thousands of examples of his work in the 1960s. Currently, Ohr is celebrated as a solitary genius who foreshadowed modern art movements. While an intriguing narrative, this view offers a narrow understanding of the man and his work that has hindered serious consideration. Ellen J. Lippert, in her expansive study of Ohr and his Gilded Age context, counters this fable. The tumultuous historical moment that Ohr inhabited was a formative force in his life and work. Using primary documentation, Lippert identifies specific cultural changes that had the most impact on Ohr. Developments in visual display and the altered role of artists, the southerner redefined in the wake of the Civil War, interest in handicraft as an alternative to rampant mass production, emerging tenets of social thought seeking to remedy worker exploitation, and new assessments of morals and beauty as a result of collapsed ideals all played into the positioning Ohr purposefully designed for himself. The second part of Lippert's study applies these observations to Ohr's body of work, interpreting his stylistic originality to be expressions of the contradictions and oppositions particular to late nineteenth-century America. Ohr threw his inspiration into being both the sophisticate and the "rube," the commercial huckster and the selfless artist, the socialist and the individualist, the "old-fashioned" craftsman and the "artist-genius.""--

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN

9781617039010 (hardback)
1617039012 (hardback)
9781617039027 (ebook) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2013014727
40023020950

OCLC

ocn837957646
837957646
SCSB-5723399

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries