Bountifully illustrated with 160 years of artistic responses to both the vast grasslands and agricultural expanses of the Midwest, Plain Pictures is the first book to address representations of the midwestern Prairie as a genre distinct from American western art. In a wide-ranging narrative, Joni Kinsey argues that images of the grassland, far from being plain, offer a paradox of their own: the significance of the subject is equaled only by the struggle to express it. One hundred twenty color and black-and-white reproductions showcase works by George Catlin, Worthington Whittredge, Albert Bierstadt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Terry Evans, and many others.