Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture
Monuments, Manliness, and the Work Ethic, 1880–1935

A study of American sculpture with themes of labour and manliness.

Melissa Dabakis (Author)

9780521461474, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 1999

314 pages
25.4 x 17.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.74 kg

"Offering a refreshing thematic approach to a study of American sculpture, this book connects the subject of American labor in both large- and small-scale sculpture to the context of history, gender roles, and even the dynamics of labor-management." Choice

Originally published in 1999, Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture focuses on representations of work in American sculpture, from the decade in which the American Federation of Labor was formed, to the inauguration of the federal works project that subsidized American artists during the Great Depression. Monumental in form and commemorative in function, these sculptural works provide a public record of attitudes toward labor in a transitional moment in the history of relations between labor and management. Melissa Dabakis argues that sculptural imagery of industrial labor shaped attitudes towards work and the role of the worker in modern society. Restoring a group of important monuments to the history of labor, gender studies and American art history, her book focuses on key monuments and small-scale works in which labor was often constituted as 'manly' and where the work ethic mediated both production and reception.

1. The work ethic ideology and American art
2. The Haymarket affair
3. The world's Columbian exhibition of 1893
4. Douglas Tilden's mechanics fountain
5. The Constantin Meunier exhibition
6. American genre sculpture in the progressive era
7. Capitalism, communism, and the politics of sculpture, 1917 to 1935
8. The Samuel Gompers Memorial.

Subject Areas: Sociology: work & labour [JHBL], Non-graphic art forms [AFK], History of art & design styles: from c 1900 - [ACX], History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900 [ACV]