An unforgettable voyage across the reaches of America and the depths of memory, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay follows one incredible family to discover a unique craft tradition
grounded in America繒s vast natural landscape. Looking back through the generations, renowned critic Christopher Benfey unearths an ancestry--and an aesthetic--that is quintessentially
American. His mother descends from colonial explorers and Quaker craftsmen, who carved new arts from the trackless wilds of the frontier. Benfey繒s father escaped from Nazi Europe--along with
his aunt and uncle, the famed Bauhaus artists Josef and Anni Albers--by fleeing across the Atlantic and finding an eventual haven in the American South.
Bricks form the backbone of life in North Carolina繒s rural Piedmont, where Benfey繒s mother was raised among centuries-old folk potteries, tobacco farms, and clay pits. Her father, like his
father before him, believed in the deep honesty of brick, that men might build good lives with the bricks they laid. Nurtured in this red-clay world of ancient craft and Quaker radicalism,
Benfey繒s mother was poised to set out from home when a tragic romance cracked her young life in two. Salvaging the broken shards of his mother繒s past and exploring the revitalized folk arts
resisting industrialization, Benfey discovers a world brimming with possibility and creativity.
Benfey繒s father had no such foundation in his young life, nor did his aunt and uncle. Exiled artists from Berlin繒s Bauhaus school, Josef and Anni Albers were offered sanctuary not far from
the Piedmont at Black Mountain College. A radical experiment in unifying education and art, Black Mountain made a monumental impact on American culture under Josef繒s leadership, counting
Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Buckminster Fuller among its influential students and teachers. Focusing on the natural world, innovative craftsmanship, and the physical reality of
materials, Black Mountain became a home and symbol for an emerging vision of American art.
Threading these stories together into a radiant and mesmerizing harmony, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay is an extraordinary quest to the heart of America and the origins of its
art.
