Art and Culture in the USA

Literature: Among famous American writes can be named: Mark Twain, O. Henry and Jack London.

Mark Twain - American writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. Twain’s writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain’s masterpiece.

O. Henry - His credo was — art should be true, democratic and it should address contempo­rary life and embrace all aspects of life. He was most famous for his stories of city life.

Jack London - American writer, whose work combined powerful realism and humanitarian sentiment. Among his masterpieces - The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden.

Painting: Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was an original American painter, unconnected with any European movement. Throughout her long creative life, O'Keffe's imagery was derived from a variety of objects surrounding her.

One of the best of the American scene painters was Edward Hopper (1882-1967). He painted a bleak world made up of dirty streets, gloomy houses, comfortless rooms such as in the "Automate", of 1927.

A representative of the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement was Jackson Pollock (1912-56). By the 1960s Pollock was generally recognised as the most important figure in the most significant movement of this century in American painting.

The Metropolitan, one of the largest art museum in the world, is located in New York. Its permanent collection amounts to nearly 3 million works of art. They were brought from all over the world including objects from the Palaeolithic era to modern times. The museum was founded in 1870. The European paintings galleries house 2,500 works. The excellent galleries of American painting are located there too. The Metropolitan Museum contains the Greek galleries, Roman galleries, Egyptian collection, Asian galleries, the Medieval galleries and much more. Although it exhibits roughly only a quarter of its vast holdings at any one time, the museum offers more than can reasonably be seen in one visit.

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