Helpless in the Presence of Beauty: The Gilded Age and the remarkable public and intimate lives of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White

Description

John McConnell will be joining us to give a lecture on the so-called Gilded Age in America (1880 –1910), fueled by a wealthy élite whose desire for material opulence resulted in the elevation of design as a professional, and now university-taught discipline. Visual arts came to be dominated by a renewed scholarly interest in great historical styles, chiefly Gothic and Roman Imperial Classicism. The result was the creation of a remarkable group of talented artists and architects who could produce these things. Among the most gifted, and hard-working, were sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Stanford White, whose collaborations rank among the best public works of art and architecture ever produced. Less known is the rather free-wheeling, secretive, and at times scandalous, private lives led by these men and their circle of friends, and the degree to which their passions, driven by an obsession with beauty, and their artistic achievement, were intertwined.