Harvest Horizons: Perspectives on Contemporary Agrarian Experience, Art, and Literature
Harvest Horizons: Perspectives on Contemporary Agrarian Experience, Art, and Literature
By Richard D. Scheuerman
270 Pages, including full color Gallery of Images and many additional color images throughout
7” x 10” | Paperback
Reflecting on changes in agrarian landscapes and aesthetics he has witnessed since the 1960s, Richard Scheuerman reaches back to influences from his first-generation immigrant ancestors—whom he extensively recorded—who had settled in rural districts over the previous century. Scheuerman discusses works by contemporary artists and authors celebrating agrarianism as a threatened way of life, and upon which humanity’s wellbeing depends, and writes of farmers and inventors devoted to crop improvement. Harvest Horizons weaves together the author’s life experiences from rural youth and student to educator and world traveler, that have resulted in a deep-seated passion for the importance of farming and for the works of those who continue to record its story in art and literature. In Horizons we are given the means through a focused agrarian lens to see the eloquent result.
The pantheon of eminent national artists and authors who created masterpieces on agrarian themes includes Vincent Van Gogh, Jean Millet, and Émile Zola; Leo Tolstoy and Russian masters Alexey Venetsianov and Grigoriy Myasoyedov; John Linnell and Lea Anna Merritt of Great Britain; and Americans Fannie Palmer, Willa Cather, and Thomas Hart Benton. Study of Western culture through the centuries also reveals that artistic interpretations of rural experience have been variously shaped by the religious beliefs and predispositions of painter, author, and patron. While depictions of grain harvest generally retain noble aspects across times and cultures, they also can serve to realistically show other harsh realities of rural life, or use the power of symbols like sickles and the gleaning poor to advance political or social causes. Consideration of art and works of fiction and literary-nonfiction through a critical lens informs understandings of the ancient, feudal, and early modern past in ways that also influence contemporary creative expression and meaning making.
Paperback: 284 pages (includes color images)
Publisher: Coyote Hill Press (April 20, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0991264185
ISBN-13: 978-0991264186
Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.7 x 10 inches