{"product_id":"the-sweat-of-their-face-isbn-9781588346056","title":"The Sweat of Their Face","description":"Work always has been a central construct in the United States,  influencing how Americans measure their lives and assess their  contribution to the wider society. Work also has been valued as the key  element in the philosophy of self-improvement and social mobility that  undergird the American value system. Yet work can also be something  imposed upon people: it can be exploitative, painful, and hard. This  duality is etched into the faces of the people depicted in the portraits  showcased in \u003ci\u003eThe Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers\u003c\/i\u003e.  This companion volume to an exhibition at the Smithsonian National  Portrait Gallery examines working-class subjects as they appear in  artworks by artists including Winslow Homer, Elizabeth Catlett, Danny  Lyon, and Shauna Frischkorn. This richly illustrated book charts the  rise and fall of labor from the empowered artisan of the eighteenth  century through industrialization and the current American business  climate, in which industrial jobs have all but disappeared. It also  traces the history of work itself through its impact on the men and  women whose laboring bodies are depicted. \u003ci\u003eThe Sweat of Their Face\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful visual exploration of the inextricable ties between American labor and society.\u003cb\u003eCHOICE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is this catalogue for an exhibition running at the National  Portrait Gallery through September 2018 featuring paintings, prints, and  photographs of Americans at work. As Ward explains in an introduction,  this at first seems straightforward. However, he sees the material as  paradoxical because it is \"impossible to create an authentic portrait of  a member of the working or laboring class.\" Ward sees this  impossibility as stemming from the historical connection of portraiture  to the upper class and from the reality that workers deny \"one's  individual selfhood.\" The greatest strength of the book is the essay by  Moss, in which she juxtaposes different artists' works. For example, she  pairs Grant Wood's \u003ci\u003eAmerican Gothic\u003c\/i\u003e (1930) with a  compositionally similar 1942 photograph by Gordon Parks of an African  American custodian. David Hockney's painting \u003ci\u003eMan in Shower in Beverly Hills\u003c\/i\u003e (1964) is matched with a 2013 parody of the Hockney work by Ramiro Gomez titled \u003ci\u003eWoman Cleaning Shower in Beverly Hills\u003c\/i\u003e.  An essay by art historian John Fagg about individual and collective  labor is also insightful. The book will appeal to those interested in  labor as well as to art historians.DAVID C. WARD is the National Portrait Gallery's senior historian. He  has curated exhibitions on Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, American  poetry, and the award-winning\u003ci\u003e Hide\/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture\u003c\/i\u003e. He has also authored several books, including \u003ci\u003eCharles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic\u003c\/i\u003e.  DOROTHY MOSS is director of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery. She has contributed to numerous exhibition  catalogues, and her articles and essays have been published in the \u003ci\u003eBurlington Magazine, Gastronomica\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Art\u003c\/i\u003e.Explores the visual history of American labor through portraiture by major American artists","brand":"Smithsonian Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301636100325,"sku":"NP9781588346056","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781588346056.jpg?v=1767741750","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-sweat-of-their-face-isbn-9781588346056","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}