Wood seeks to produce the paradox of an American Gothic, to combine the best of the New and the Old Worlds--a synthesis he found adumbrated in the quaint house that inspired the painting and led to its name. Essay
The seemingly innocuous occasion of commemorating the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter Hieronymus Bosch touched off a battle of museums. Essay
Vermeer did not acquire his reputation as one of the great masters until the second half of the 19th century, when the Romantic idea of genius had triumphed. Essay
Modernist hostility to the marketplace. The return to patronage and the turn to the academy and government funding. Case studies include Ezra Pound and James Joyce, with some attention to modernist painting and music. Lecture 6
