When considering the developments in scholarship on American modernism it would be something akin to heresy to ignore or otherwise neglect the contributions made by Milton Brown. At the same time, one might question the validity of giving Brown serious critical attention at this point in time. On the one hand American Painting from the Armory Show to the Great Depression was a truly pioneering text, intended to introduce a body of work as much as to argue about it, and it is a text well over 25 years old now. However, in many ways Brown still holds his own and remains a standard against which other texts can be measured and compared, whose very iconic status almost makes it beyond any critical reproach: Brown’s work is to date still the foundation of American modern art history, and who wants to engage in the folly of chipping away at their own foundation?

A re-reading of American Painting…remains a rewarding experience, and in some sense that is an unfortunate thing. It is a sad indictment of American art history that this text is not seen today as a pioneering investigation of American art from this period, and still one of the only books to actually consider this aspect of American art with anything approaching the depth and complexity that it merits. Rather than being a somewhat staid and conservative period for modern art as one finds in Europe, on the contrary American visual culture flourishes during these years despite the cultural factors working against it. Indeed, as art history and cultural studies continue to broaden the scope of their inquiries and we factor together contributions to the fine arts, industrial and architectural design, advertising, and a wider field thanks to feminist and postmodernist investigations, we see how vital and rich this period of cultural production was to America in particular and the century as a whole. Of course very little of these elements are present in Brown’s own text, but then again he is quite careful to delimit the boundaries of his discussion with the very title of the book. By now there should be much more work built upon, and in direct response to, Brown’s efforts.
American Painting…, in its very title, is specific as to the limits of its discussion, and yet it is still a sprawling and expansive narrative. The book is written as almost an extended essay with an air of confident authority , one which need not bother with too many borrowed passages or footnotes. In the right hands this type of narrative writing can be all too refreshing to read and it also opens itself up for discussion, debates, and further exploration. The connective thread for Brown’s ramblings is twofold: politics and the question of national identity. Unfortunately, the two tend to confuse each other. At times Brown’s concerns with social radicalism and the cultural goal of establishing an American art seem to be equated to the point that even the Regionalists can be argued to be simultaneously self-consciously American, vitally contemporary, and socially progressive (if indeed not radical).

Europe still tends to cast a very large shadow on these proceedings and the ecole de Paris dominates above all. Brown himself notes a fanaticism for France among collectors and many Europe-bound artists in his discussion, but he does not go nearly far enough to redress this. For all his attempts to appear encyclopedic, there are still very few women and no artists of color in the book, and certain essential movements such as New York Dada are underplayed or seem to be beyond Brown’s grasp, which makes his treatment of artists like Duchamp, Man Ray, and John Covert a bit convoluted (still, one cannot help but be grateful to see an artist like Covert mentioned at all).

Despite these shortcomings, this is still a very useful and viable text. Brown weaves more artists names into his narrative than many 20th century specialists will be familiar with; he incorporates essential passages on related activities such as patronage and artists publications, including the radical press. To date there has been no fuller discussion of the American milieu in the postwar period and the times when his discussion seems too convoluted only helps to illustrate just how rich and complex this period truly was. In fact, Brown does himself a disservice when he tries too hard to fit all this activity into neat, predetermined categories and classifications: it is apparent by now that one characteristic of early American modernism is how much it avoids schools and movements that work so well when discussing European art. Brown has written a book that still serves as a living text to work from, question, and take issue with, which by all rights should have long ago been reclassified as one of the fundamental cornerstones of American modernism: essential if long since built upon.

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