The Third Mind American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 illuminates the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literature and philosophy to American creative culture spanning the early modern through contemporary periods. It documents how the visual and conceptual langauge of American art evolved through a process of appropriation and integration that runs consistently from the 1860s to the 1980s, when globalization came to eclipse earlier, more deliberate modes of cultural transmission. Opening with the late nineteenth- century Aesthetic movement that arose from Boston's transcendentalist circles, this chronological and thematic history reveals the Asian courses that also shaped abstract art, Conceptual art, Minimalism and the neo-avant-garde as they unfolded in New York and on the West Coast. This illustrated catalogue features essays by leading scholars in art history, history, Asian studies, and postcolonial religions and cultural studies.