Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland, 1900-1940

Between 1900 and 1940, a group of modernist artists gathered regularly on the coast of Maine in a region then known as Seguinland. For photographer Paul Strand, painter Marsden Hartley, sculptor Gaston Lachaise, and others, it was a way to escape market-driven, competitive, and divisive New York City, and celebrate a new kind of American Modernism.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Libby Bischof and Susan Danlyand#160;explore the state's important place in the history of modern art and show how summers in Seguinland inspired a new classicism that merged the antique with the modern. They also shed light on how the various artists' experiences in the refreshing atmosphere on the Maine coast cemented their friendships, shaped their individual styles, and fostered their understanding of what it meant to be a modern artist.

"[A] carefully researched and generously illustrated book . . . [the authors] do a fine job of weaving local history into a narrative that features the personalities and relationships of these emerging Modernist artists."and#8212;Museum

"Ultimately, the artworks stand alone. Their business is to transport, to help viewers see afresh, to remain pertinent because of depth of spirit, which is shown to arise often from a powerful combination of place and persons. I applaud the exhibition and this, its fine record."and#8212;Maine Antique Digest

Winner of the 2013 New England Society Book Award in the Art and Photography category.

Libby Bischof is an assistant professor of history at the University of Southern Maine. Susan Danly is curator of graphics, photography, and contemporary art at the Portland Museum of Art and the author of Georgia O'Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity (Yale).