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Available From UC Press
Domesticating the Invisible
Domesticating the Invisible examines how postwar notions of form developed in response to newly perceived environmental threats, in turn inspiring artists to model plastic composition on natural systems often invisible to the human eye. Melissa S. Ragain focuses on the history of art education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to understand how an environmental approach to form inspired new art programs at Harvard and MIT. As they embraced scientistic theories of composition, these institutions also cultivated young artists as environmental agents who could influence urban design and contribute to an ecologically sensitive public sphere. Ragain combines institutional and intellectual histories to map how the emergency of environmental crisis altered foundational modernist assumptions about form, transforming questions about aesthetic judgment into questions about an ethical relationship to the environment.
"Melissa Ragain’s beautifully illustrated book explores how concepts of the environment moved to the foreground of artists' thinking after World War II. Drawing on an impressive array of evidence, Ragain documents how a new aesthetic sensibility developed in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts. This excellent book connects art pedagogy and the science of design and perception with the era's increasingly influential environmental movement."—Patrick McCray, author of Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture