Dance and American Art: A Long Embrace

This examination of the affinity between visual art and dance traces from the 19th into the 20th centuries how American visual artists have grappled in their paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs with dance and the essence of movement. American art's love affair with dance reaches across boundaries: "high" and "low" art, theatrical and social dance, elite and popular audiences. We see an 1825 Currier & Ives lithograph of Shakers dancing; a Lewis Hine photograph of immigrants dancing while waiting at Ellis Island. Martha Graham's expansive stage presence captured artists' imagination (as did Vaslav Nijinsky and Isadora Duncan): a 1931 photo of Martha Graham captures the ritualistic spirit of her Primitive Mysteries, and metal sculptor David Smith's 1935 modernist "Dancer" suggests the power and expansiveness of Graham in performance. Images of African-Americans abound: a lively Winslow Homer employs minstrel stereotyping in an engraving of Union soldiers around a campfire watching a black dancer, and Alexander Calder's wire sculpture of the celebrated Josephine Baker captures her indelible stage persona. Despite the inclusion of some alluring artwork, art historian Udall's opaque, often stilted prose will turn off a nonacademic audience, and her exclusion of contemporary art is disappointing. 143 color illus. (Oct.)