{"id":82142,"date":"2015-01-29T15:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T20:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82142"},"modified":"2015-01-29T20:06:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T01:06:39","slug":"explorations-and-surveys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/29\/explorations-and-surveys\/","title":{"rendered":"Explorations and Surveys"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"10-810-011_USPRRHerdofBison\"<\/a>

William Steiger, USPRR Herd of Bison<\/i>, 2014, gouache, glue, vintage lithograph, paper, 9″ x 11\u00bc”.<\/p><\/div>\n

William Steiger\u2019s collages are wondrous, often humorous refractions of early American landscapes. They traffic in a very particular kind of anachronism, grafting zeppelins, prop planes, gondolas, bridges, and the gleaming apparatus of the steam age onto the vast plains and prairies of the nineteenth-century frontier. The images dare us to reconcile two equally innocent visions of American life. One is taut, sleek, and brimming with technological optimism; the other is lush, free, and unspoiled. Neither, it goes without saying, have quite panned out as our forebears hoped they might.<\/p>\n

The series, \u201cExplorations & Surveys<\/a>,\u201d plays with our country\u2019s mythology, conflating more than a century of travel and invention into pale stories of our na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2014everything in the world of these images is still ours for the taking. Steiger constructed the pieces using a nineteenth-century surveyors\u2019 guide. His gallery, Pace Prints, explains:<\/p>\n

\n

Steiger borrowed the abbreviated title, Explorations & Surveys<\/em>, from the title of his source material, Reports of the Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economic Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean<\/em>. These accounts were published by the Federal Government in the late 1850s to both document the western regions and to locate the best routes for the forthcoming Pacific Railroad. Disseminated in bound editions, the volumes were essentially the first published images of the American West.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These works, and others, are on view at Pace Prints Chelsea<\/a> through February 21, with an opening reception tonight at six. <\/p>\n

\"10-810-013_USPRRSanLuisHarbor\"<\/a>

USPRR San Luis Harbor<\/i>, 2014, gouache, glue, vintage lithograph, paper, 8\u00be” x 11\u00bc”.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"10-810-010_USPRRLosAngeles\"<\/a>

USPRR Los Angeles<\/i>, 2014, gouache, glue, vintage lithograph, paper, 8\u00bd” x 11\u00bc”.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"810-014_Silvercup\"<\/a>

Silvercup<\/i>, 2014, aquatint and soft ground etching, 21\u00bd” x 29″.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Steiger\u2019s collages are wondrous, often humorous refractions of early American landscapes. They traffic in a very particular kind of anachronism, grafting zeppelins, prop planes, gondolas, bridges, and the gleaming apparatus of the steam age onto the vast plains and prairies of the nineteenth-century frontier. The images dare us to reconcile two equally innocent visions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[142,16817,35,16819,16636,16816,7676,9615,13916,16815,9528,16820,16821,16818,16814],"class_list":["post-82142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-america","tag-american-west","tag-art","tag-buffalo","tag-collages","tag-frontiers","tag-galleries","tag-machines","tag-openings","tag-pace-prints","tag-prints","tag-steam-age","tag-steampunk","tag-the-west","tag-william-steiger"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn William Steiger\u2019s Collages, Two Visions of America\u2019s Past<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"His new series, \u201cExplorations & Surveys,\u201d splices together images from the early American frontier with sleek steam-age inventions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/29\/explorations-and-surveys\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Explorations and Surveys by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 29, 2015 \u2013 William Steiger\u2019s collages are wondrous, often humorous refractions of early American landscapes. 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