Book review

A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Land by Allan Gussow
published by Friends of the Earth, Scarboury Press, New York

Reviewed by JILLIAN SMITH

Allan Gussow's beautiful book, A Sense of Place provides us with thought-provoking insights into past and current American artists from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, whose artistic visions, in a broad sense, are reliant on the preservation of the environmental heritage of their country. The book illustrates Gussow's personal and deep commitment as an artist and an advocate of the Friends of the Earth ideals and philosophy. He creates an extension of this by embracing others, both now and in the past, who hold similar views.

In this book, George Catlin (1796-1872) is quoted as saying: 'No man's imagination with all the aids of description that can be given to it, can ever picture the beauty and wildness of scenes that may be daily witnessed in this romantic country'. Other artists who echo along similar lines include Thomas Cole, Marsden Hartley, Charles Burchfield, Edward Hopper, Arthur B. Davies, Seth Eastman, Thomas Hart Benton, Elmer Bischoff and John James Audubon, the famed naturalist, painter of flora, fauna and bird life in the Northern American continent.

A Sense of Place is made up of fifty-nine colour reproductions, handsomely presented, and includes all important American artists of the landscape, with short biographies of each painter, and their feelings and observations regarding the environment - the ultimate effect of these reflected in their paintings.

For those of us who are interested in acquiring art books, this is an excellent reference work, its collective point of view made even more valid by its contribution of another literary and visual dimension to today's ecological and preservation-minded society.