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Erika Doss

Author of Twentieth-Century American Art

14+ Works 285 Members 5 Reviews

About the Author

Erika Doss is professor of fine arts at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Includes the names: DOSS E, Erika Lee Doss

Works by Erika Doss

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MartyOBrien | Feb 27, 2023 |
Doss believes that the power and ubiquity of Elvis Presley’s image provides insight into the cultural values of contemporary American culture. By looking at the consumers, “protectors,” and owners of Elvis’s image, we can understand how he has been appropriated by different social groups and interpreted to mean conflicting and mutually exclusive ideas of American values. The success of his image is predicated on this malleability, as is American identity, leading Doss to criticize those who would seek to control and limit Elvis’s image in the name of profit.

Various ideas of Elvis, including his image as a saint, sexual icon, and symbol of white purity, all conflict and elucidate gender, race, and identity issues in the United States and, due to Elvis’s global popularity, possibly even around the world. Americans construct their own identities through their understanding of Elvis—in essence, what they see in him says more about themselves.

Elvis Inc., by seeking to “clean up” and sterilize Elvis’s image in order to maximize profit potential, is possibly neutering Elvis of exactly what made him so popular in the first place. Interestingly, Doss proves that during Elvis’s lifetime, his period of least influence was during his years of attempted self-sterilization in the 1960s before the comeback special. When Presley was challenging notions of sexual identity in the 1950s and 1970s, he was at his peak influence. By “uncomplicating” Elvis, Elvis Inc. risks undermining the exact elements that connected Elvis with audiences during his lifetime.

Doss has shown that popular culture icons serve well as a lens into American identity—by understanding how fans see such icons as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, or Madonna, we can understand how Americans idealize their values. Elvis being imaged alternately as masculine and feminine, sexual and saintly, rebel and model citizen, shows that Americans have a complex and conflicting view of American cultural values and American identity.
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drbrand | Jun 8, 2020 |
Detailed, excellent study, divided by lengthy chapters on feelings of grief, fear, gratitude, shame, and anger. The portrait of America here is uniformly depressing, accentuated here and there by the author's biases. An excellent baseline study, but not to be taken as the last word either.
 
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threegirldad | May 28, 2020 |
Coming Home opens with informative introductory essays which discuss firstly the inspiration for the collection, and subsequently the art of the period 1930-1950 and the conditions under which it was produced and the attitudes which prevailed at the time. Following the catalogue the book concludes with an extensive artist specific bibliography.

The bulk of the volume, from page 41 to page 319 comprises the catalogue. Each painting is allotted a double page spread, the image on the left hand page with a brief biography of the artist and comments about the painting on the facing page. Occasionally the comments extend to two pages followed by a full page bleed illustration of a detail of the painting. There are about one hundred and forty full colour plates in all.

This is a well produced work, with an attractive page layout and imaginative typography. While I have not seen the original works in flesh the colour reproduction here seems to be a little subdued, an impression not helped (or perhaps created by) by the large amount of white space surrounding each image. It is perhaps unfortunate that the bulk of the pictures here are landscape in format whilst the book itself is portrait, combined with the wide side margins this results in the image occupying less than half the total page area, sometimes considerably less than that; by contrast the few full page bleed illustrations appear bright and vibrant.

The Schoen Collection contains a fascinating and varied selection of paintings, and this handsome volume, which despite being a paperback has a feeling of quality, is well worth having.
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presto | Apr 24, 2012 |

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Works
14
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