front cover of Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art
Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art
Michele H. Bogart
University of Chicago Press, 1995
Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol, J. C. Leyendecker and Georgia O'Keeffe, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Pepsi-Cola, the avant garde and the Famous Artists Schools, Inc.: these are some of the unexpected pairings encountered in Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art. In the first interdisciplinary study of the imagery and practices of commercial artists, Michele H. Bogart explores, in unprecedented detail, the world of commercial art—its illustrators, publishers, art directors, photographers, and painters. She maps out the long, permeable border between art and commerce and expands our picture of artistic culture in the twentieth century.

From the turn of the century through the 1950s, the explosive growth of popular magazines and national advertising offered artists new sources of income and new opportunities for reaching huge audiences. Bogart shows how, at the same time, this change in the marketplace also forced a rethinking of the purpose of the artistic enterprise itself. She examines how illustrators such as Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, and Norman Rockwell claimed their identities as artists within a market-oriented framework. She looks at billboard production and the growing schism between "art" posters and billboard advertisements; at the new roles of the art director; at the emergence of photography as the dominant advertising medium; and at the success of painters in producing "fine art" for advertising during the 1930s and 1940s.
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front cover of The Politics of Urban Beauty
The Politics of Urban Beauty
New York and Its Art Commission
Michele H. Bogart
University of Chicago Press, 2006

Since its founding in 1898, the Art Commission of the City of New York (ACNY) has served as the city’s aesthetic gatekeeper, evaluating all works of art intended for display on city property. And over the years, the commission’s domain has expanded dramatically to include everything from parks and courthouses to trash cans and sidewalks. In ThePolitics of Urban Beauty, Michele H. Bogart argues that this unprecedented authority has made the commission host to some complex negotiations—involving artists, architects, business leaders, activists, and politicians—about not only the role of art in urban design, but also the shape and meaning of the city and its public spaces. 

A former vice president of the ACNY, Bogart tells its story here from an insider’s perspective, tracing the commission’s history from its origins as an outgrowth of progressive reform to its role in New York’s reconstruction after 9/11. Drawing on archival correspondence, drawings, and photographs from commission collections, Bogart presents bracing examples of works—ranging from New Deal murals to Louis Kahn’s unbuilt Memorial to Six Million Jewish Martyrs—that illuminate the ACNY’s subtle yet powerful role in shaping New York’s identity. 

The Politics of Urban Beauty is thus a fascinating history of a New York art world that paralleled—and sometimes unpredictably intersected with—the more familiar realm of prominent architects, painters, galleries, and museums. Bogart’s fresh view adds a critical dimension to our understanding of “the city beautiful” and makes an important and lively contribution to the study of art history, urban design, and New York City itself.

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front cover of Sculpture in Gotham
Sculpture in Gotham
Art and Urban Renewal in New York City
Michele H. Bogart
Reaktion Books, 2018
Public sculpture is a major draw in today’s cities, and nowhere is this more the case than in New York. In the Big Apple, urban art has become synonymous with the municipal “brand,” highlighting the metropolis as vibrant, creative, tolerant, orderly, and above all, safe. Sculpture in Gotham tells the story of how the City of New York came to be committed to public art patronage beginning in the mid-1960s. In that era of political turbulence, cultural activists and city officials for a time shifted away from traditional monuments, joining forces to sponsor ambitious sculptural projects as an instrument for urban revitalization.

Focusing on specific people, agencies and organizations, and both temporary and permanent projects, from the 1960s forward, Michele H. Bogart reveals the changing forms and meanings of municipal public art. Sculpture in Gotham illustrates how such shifts came about at a time when art theories and styles were morphing markedly, and when municipalities were reeling from racial unrest, economic decline, and countercultural challenges—to culture as well as the state. While sculptural installations on New York City property took time and were not without controversy, Gotham’s processes and policies produced notable results, providing precedents and lessons for cities the world over.
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