Thomas Cole, The Vicious State, or The State of Destruction, from The Course of Empire series, 1836. And it would certainly be simple to leave the matter there, leaving Cole to his faith in the ...

The theme of union-versus-disunion spreads along with the empire in the long 19th century. The growth of “settler colonies” (i.e., those populated mostly by British and Irish emigrants rather ...

Nearly 200 years ago, Thomas Cole painted American civilization ending in violent destruction. The contemporary artist Ed Ruscha recently revisited Cole's classic, but identified end times with ...

Of course, the U.S. is unlikely to descend into outright civil war anytime soon. ... But one way or another, our empire will eventually end.

Writing about the putatively good war of 1939-1945, Nicholson Baker in Human Smoke described its beginnings as the advent of civilization’s end with the records of both sides marred by the most ...

When one first encounters “The Course of Empire,” the Consummation seems to loom over the rest of the paintings. It is the largest (130 cm x 196 cm, to the others’ 100 cm x 161 cm), and in Thomas Cole ...