Roland G. Rood

Abstract

Roland G. Rood (1863–1927) is an enigmatic, yet fascinating, figure in the history of American art criticism. Very little about his education and career is known. His published writings as well as unpublished drafts for essays on aesthetics, however, provide a comprehensive framework for his ideas. Dating or referring to the period 1904–1907, this body of work indexes a significant direction of change in the relationship of art to science. Featured in Alfred Stieglitz's avant-garde journal Camera Work, Rood's criticism also illuminates the probing, psychological, and intertextural nature of Stieglitz's modernism.