"In An American Lens, Jay Bochner looks at a series of milestones in the development of the American avant-garde that capture a pivotal period in artistic consciousness. He focuses on the multiple roles of Alfred Stieglitz - as influential gallery owner, photographer, and impresario of the emerging art scene - at a series of significant moments in his career. These close-ups offer a more intense and expanded understanding of the subject than the familiar long view." "Stieglitz as impresario and artist achieved an almost mythical status, which some recent critics have worked to deflate - casting him, for example, as Svengali to Georgia O'Keeffe's spellbound Trilby. Engaging in neither idolatry nor demolition, Bochner looks instead for the truth about the man and the myth. The scenes from American art in An American Lens create a new version of Stieglitz's biography, allowing us to reread his life and the life of his times by focusing intently on what is visible and not so visible in the art he left behind."--Jacket.
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