Aiken Times

University of South Carolina-Aiken issued the following announcement on September 17.

The remarkable 180-page book is the culmination of 21 years of research.

For more information contact: UofSC Aiken News (803) 641-3738, news@usca.edu

Aiken, SC (09/17/2021) — Dr. Michael Fowler, professor of art at the University of South Carolina Aiken (UofSC Aiken), recently published "Calling the Fleeting Breath: Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln's Personae Through Art and Material Culture" a book which he both wrote and designed. He will be hosting a book talk on September 28 at the Aiken Center for the Arts from 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

The remarkable 180-page book is the culmination of 21 years of research by Fowler. While it is largely comprised of visual imagery, Fowler emphasizes the importance of the book's written text, too - there are extensive analyses and captions.

According to the book's preface, written by Fowler:

"To date, I have viewed and analyzed several hundred original artworks firsthand regarding Lincoln from some five-dozen public and private art collections in the United States. I have composed the artwork analyses into narratives for illustrated presentations. I have spoken at Lincoln conferences and on college campuses in Illinois, Louisiana, Washington DC, and South Carolina, outlining highlights of the 160 years of artistic interpretations of Lincoln."

Fowler's fascination with Lincoln began as a teenager when his grandmother bequeathed a family heirloom to him - a Union ticket from Lincoln's second presidential term.

"Following my inheritance of the Union ticket, I began to study Lincoln's life: descriptions by those who remarked of his physicality - how he looked and walked - then by his sense of humor and subsequently his moral fiber of perseverance through his trails of courtship, struggles with depression, then his guidance of the nation through a horrific civil war," Fowler wrote. "As I matured, I was coming to discover less of the kindly martyred saint that was promoted in so much of the literature of Lincoln's mythology, and came to learn more instead, of the hard, tough man of amazing perception and political discernment while keeping the goal of the preservation of the Union uppermost in his war efforts."

Fowler joined the faculty at UofSC Aiken in 2000 and holds the Mary Durban Toole Chair in Art.

Original source can be found here.