| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness, and the Work Ethic, 1880–1935. By Melissa Dabakis. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xvi, 296 pp. $80.00, isbn 0-521-46147-2.)

Affirmations of labor's value are central to the ideological core of American identity, but few representations of people "at work" are well known in American art except for those funded by New Deal programs. However, as Melissa Dabakis demonstrates, both public monuments and smaller private sculptures that addressed labor themes were created across the nation between 1880 and 1935. In a fascinating series of case studies, Dabakis explores the historical, ideological, and aesthetic tensions that shaped these works from conception through production and reception. She combines careful historical research with a cogent analysis of art's participation in contemporary discourses that addressed the governance of labor and the tensions between progressive, cooperative, and resistant strategies for asserting labor's value. She also considers the influence of social hierarchies expressed through the representation or muting of gender, class, age, and racial/ethnic identities. . . .

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