Individual artists, art monographs Books

Book SynopsisMary Edna Fraser has taken the art of batik to otherworldly heights. An internationally renowned artist, Fraser has had works grace galleries, museums, and public buildings throughout the United States - creating wonder, awe, and an awareness of the environment around us as few artists have had the talent and vision to manage. Using fabric, wax, and dye, Fraser has transformed the techniques of batik from its ancient origins and forged new panoramas and vistas of our unique planet from the sky above us to the ground beneath our feet, and even down to the evocative landscapes that sprawl across the ocean floor. These images not only astonish us with their allure; they also remind of us of our place in the world and our responsibility to respect and care for it.Part history and guide to the challenging techniques of this form, The Batik Art of Edna Fraser affords not only a full-color introduction to Fraser's stunning perceptions of the glaciers, icebergs, coastlines, atmospheres, mountains, and rivers that grace our globe, but gives us an intimate look at the artist at work and the philosophies that guide her singular imagination as well.Bold, beautiful, thoughtful, and always visceral, Fraser's art invites us outside to see with new eyes the horizons that surround us - and inside to see ourselves in our inextricable connection with the land, the seas, the skies, the earth, as we are woven together as one in the fabric of our existence on this, our home, the vibrant blue planet hurtling through space and time.

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Book SynopsisMary Edna Fraser has taken the art of batik to otherworldly heights. An internationally renowned artist, Fraser has had works grace galleries, museums, and public buildings throughout the United States - creating wonder, awe, and an awareness of the environment around us as few artists have had the talent and vision to manage. Using fabric, wax, and dye, Fraser has transformed the techniques of batik from its ancient origins and forged new panoramas and vistas of our unique planet from the sky above us to the ground beneath our feet, and even down to the evocative landscapes that sprawl across the ocean floor. These images not only astonish us with their allure; they also remind of us of our place in the world and our responsibility to respect and care for it.Part history and guide to the challenging techniques of this form, The Batik Art of Edna Fraser affords not only a full-color introduction to Fraser's stunning perceptions of the glaciers, icebergs, coastlines, atmospheres, mountains, and rivers that grace our globe, but gives us an intimate look at the artist at work and the philosophies that guide her singular imagination as well.Bold, beautiful, thoughtful, and always visceral, Fraser's art invites us outside to see with new eyes the horizons that surround us - and inside to see ourselves in our inextricable connection with the land, the seas, the skies, the earth, as we are woven together as one in the fabric of our existence on this, our home, the vibrant blue planet hurtling through space and time.

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Book SynopsisA portrait of a young artist’s formative years studying sculpture in Paris, recounted in her own words.Angela Gregory is considered by many the doyenne of Louisiana sculpture and is a notable twentieth century American sculptor. In A Dream and a Chisel, Angela Gregory and Nancy Penrose explore Gregory’s desire, even as a teenager, to learn the art of cutting stone and to become a sculptor. Through sheer grit and persistence, Gregory achieved her dream of studying with French artist Antoine Bourdelle, one of Auguste Rodin’s most trusted assistants and described by critics of the era as France’s greatest living sculptor. In Bourdelle’s Paris studio, Gregory learned not only sculpting techniques but also how to live life as an artist. Her experiences in Paris inspired a prolific sixty-year career in a field dominated by men.After returning to New Orleans from Paris, Gregory established her own studio in 1928 and began working in earnest. She created bas-relief profiles for the Louisiana State Capitol built in 1932 and sculpted the Bienville Monument, a bronze statue honoring the founder of New Orleans, in the 1950s. Her works also include two other monuments, sculptures incorporated into buildings, portrait busts, medallions, and other forms that appear in museums and public spaces throughout the state. She was the first Louisiana woman sculptor to achieve international recognition, and, at the age of thirty-five, became one of the few women recognized as a fellow of the National Sculpture Society. Gregory’s work appeared in group shows at many prestigious museums and in exhibitions, including the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d’Automne in Paris, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the National Collection of Fine Arts in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.This memoir is based on Penrose’s oral history interviews with Gregory, as well as letters and diaries compiled before Gregory’s death in 1990. A Dream and a Chisel demonstrates the importance of mentorships, offers a glimpse into the realities of an artist’s life and studio, and captures the vital early years of an extraordinary woman who carved a place for herself in Louisiana’s history.

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Book SynopsisA year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Peña disclose Rivera’s iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelín studio, we hear Rivera’s feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author’s questions and Rivera’s answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera’s early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera’s inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Peña describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera’s inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women’s hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, “Ask me...” And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions ‘til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Peña’s weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo’s half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator’s wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.Trade Review"Conversations with Diego Rivera provides rare documentation of his confluence of politically egalitarian views and the arts. . . . shed[s] light onto the views of this gargantuan art historical titan, and also hint[s] at what it would be like to sit in his living room and absorb an earful of the older painter’s verbiage — a task that Peña patiently took on for a full year." -- Hyperallergic"The history of this publication is as fascinating as Diego Rivera’s incisive views about art in general, Mexican art in particular, the politics of the art world, and especially the complex issues of art market manipulations and creative legal evasion in collecting pre-Hispanic art." * Literature and Arts of the Americas *

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Book SynopsisA year of weekly interviews (1949-1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Peña disclose Rivera’s iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time. These intimate Sunday dialogues with what is surely the most influential Mexican artist of the twentieth century show us the free-flowing mind of a man who was a legend in his own time; an artist who escaped being lynched on more than one occasion, a painter so controversial that his public murals inspired movements, or, like the work commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, were ordered torn down. Here in his San Angelín studio, we hear Rivera’s feelings about the elitist aspect of paintings in museums, his motivations to create public art for the people, and his memorable, unedited expositions on the art, culture, and politics of Mexico. The book has seven chapters that loosely follow the range of the author’s questions and Rivera’s answers. They begin with childlike, yet vast questions on the nature of art, run through Rivera’s early memories and aesthetics, his views on popular art, his profound understanding of Mexican art and artists, the economics of art, random expositions on history or dreaming, and elegant analysis of art criticisms and critics. The work is all the more remarkable to have been captured between Rivera’s inhumanly long working stints of six hours or even days without stop. In his rich introduction, author Cardona-Peña describes the difficulty of gaining entrance to Rivera’s inner sanctum, how government funtionaries and academics often waited hours to be seen, and his delicious victory. At eight p. m. the night of August 12, a slow, heavy-set, parsimonious Diego came in to where I was, speaking his Guanajuato version of English and kissing women’s hands. I was able to explain my idea to him and he was immediately interested. He invited me into his studio, and while taking off his jacket, said, “Ask me...” And I asked one, two, twenty... I don't know how many questions ‘til the small hours of the night, with him answering from memory, with an incredible accuracy, without pausing, without worrying much about what he might be saying, all of it spilling out in an unconscious and magical manner. A series of Alfredo Cardona-Peña’s weekly interviews with Rivera were published in 1949 and 1950 in the Mexican newspaper, El Nacional, for which Alfredo was a journalist. His book of compiled interviews with introduction and preface, El Monstruo en su Laberinto, was published in Spanish in 1965. Finally, this extraordinary and rare exchange has been translated for the first time into English by Alfredo’s half-brother Alvaro Cardona Hine, also a poet. According to the translator’s wife, Barbara Cardona-Hine, bringing the work into English was a labor of love for Alvaro, the fulfillment of a promise made to his brother in 1971 that he did not get to until the year before his own death in 2016.Trade Review"Conversations with Diego Rivera provides rare documentation of his confluence of politically egalitarian views and the arts. . . . shed[s] light onto the views of this gargantuan art historical titan, and also hint[s] at what it would be like to sit in his living room and absorb an earful of the older painter’s verbiage — a task that Peña patiently took on for a full year." -- Hyperallergic"The history of this publication is as fascinating as Diego Rivera’s incisive views about art in general, Mexican art in particular, the politics of the art world, and especially the complex issues of art market manipulations and creative legal evasion in collecting pre-Hispanic art." * Literature and Arts of the Americas *

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Book SynopsisA spirited memoir by artist Aviva Rahmani, offering a relatable narrative to discuss trigger point theory and the importance of eco-art activism. Divining Chaos is an intimate personal memoir of unparalleled transparency into the moments in Rahmani's life that shaped her as an artist and activist. Detailing the history that led her to two seminal projects—Ghost Nets, restoring a coastal town dump to flourishing wetlands, and The Blued Trees Symphony, which applied her premises to challenge natural gas pipelines with a novel legal theory about land use—Rahmani shares the decisions that shaped her life’s work and thinking. Her discussions about trigger point theory argue for how to predict, confront, and determine outcomes to the ecological challenges we face today.Trade ReviewRahmani brings us to the place where her art (which speaks of the urgency of action and the lack of time to make change) is refracted through her reflections of her life—moments in time as a process through time. -- Hilary Robinson, Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory, Loughborough University, UK; editor of Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 1968–2014In Divining Chaos Aviva Rahmani nails her own heart to the Earth’s gallery wall and invites us to examine it, a daunting experience of critical life-moments revealing the complex dialectic of violation. Yet, to fight ecocide and regain the symphony of life, we must 'read' and 'listen' to her beautiful, beating heart, an avatar of harmonia mundi. -- Glenn Albrecht, environmental philosopher; author of Earth Emotions and SolastalgiaAviva Rahmani offers a memoir of anti-capitalist, anti-ecocidal storytelling imbued with a deep and abiding faith that people and art can interrupt and reinvent the status quo. In twinning deep scientific and theoretical knowledge with her art, she manages a near-impossible task of rendering the world as it is—precarious, violent, dangerous, beautiful. -- Laura Raicovich, writer and curator; author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest and former director of the Queens Museum of ArtAviva Rahmani’s remarkable Divining Chaos is part bildungsroman, part eco-action guidebook, part pandemic diary, and part portrait of a turbulent time in American art and history. With searing honesty, Rahmani presents her complex multidisciplinary thinking as it has evolved through the twists and turns of a tumultuous life. This is the story of a life in art that is also a life in politics, science, and environmental- ism. And, in our dark times, it is also a story of what we may still be able to do to save our planet. -- Eleanor Heartney, art critic and curator; author of Art & Today and Doomsday DreamsDivining Chaos is a compelling and courageous memoir of historical importance, written by a central figure in the emergence of ecofeminist art. Aviva Rahmani makes clear that the same entrenched systems of power enable the abuse of women and the abuse of nature. Her personal experiences of trauma might well have defeated her. Instead, they seemingly empowered her to become a strong and persistent advocate for ecological issues through her artwork, and to challenge the status quo in innovative and effective ways. -- Julie Reiss, PhD, editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the AnthropoceneIn Divining Chaos she nails her own heart to the Earth’s gallery wall and invites us to examine it, a daunting experience of critical life-moments revealing the complex dialectic of violation. -- Glenn Albrecht, environmental philosopher; author of Earth Emotions and SolastalgiaAviva Rahmani offers a memoir of anti-capitalist, anti-ecocidal storytelling imbued with a deep and abiding faith that people and art can interrupt and reinvent the status quo. In twinning deep scientific and theoretical knowledge with her art, she manages a near-impossible task of rendering the world as it is—precarious, violent, dangerous, beautiful. -- Laura Raicovich, author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest and former director of the Queens Museum of ArtAviva Rahmani’s remarkable Divining Chaos is part bildungsroman, part eco-action guidebook, part pandemic diary, and part portrait of a turbulent time in American art and history. With searing honesty, Rahmani presents her complex multidisciplinary thinking as it has evolved through the twists and turns of a tumultuous life. -- Eleanor Heartney, art critic and curator; author of Art & Today and Doomsday DreamsDivining Chaos is a compelling and courageous memoir of historical importance, written by a central figure in the emergence of ecofeminist art. Aviva Rahmani makes clear that the same entrenched systems of power enable the abuse of women and the abuse of nature. -- Julie Reiss, PhD, editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene

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Book SynopsisA spirited memoir by artist Aviva Rahmani, offering a relatable narrative to discuss trigger point theory and the importance of eco-art activism. Divining Chaos is an intimate personal memoir of unparalleled transparency into the moments in Rahmani's life that shaped her as an artist and activist. Detailing the history that led her to two seminal projects—Ghost Nets, restoring a coastal town dump to flourishing wetlands, and The Blued Trees Symphony, which applied her premises to challenge natural gas pipelines with a novel legal theory about land use—Rahmani shares the decisions that shaped her life’s work and thinking. Her discussions about trigger point theory argue for how to predict, confront, and determine outcomes to the ecological challenges we face today.Trade Review"Rahmani brings us to the place where her art (which speaks of the urgency of action and the lack of time to make change) is refracted through her reflections of her life—moments in time as a process through time." -- Hilary Robinson, Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory, Loughborough University, UK; editor of Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 1968–2014"In Divining Chaos Aviva Rahmani nails her own heart to the Earth’s gallery wall and invites us to examine it, a daunting experience of critical life-moments revealing the complex dialectic of violation. Yet, to fight ecocide and regain the symphony of life, we must 'read' and 'listen' to her beautiful, beating heart, an avatar of harmonia mundi." -- Glenn Albrecht, environmental philosopher; author of Earth Emotions and Solastalgia"Aviva Rahmani offers a memoir of anti-capitalist, anti-ecocidal storytelling imbued with a deep and abiding faith that people and art can interrupt and reinvent the status quo. In twinning deep scientific and theoretical knowledge with her art, she manages a near-impossible task of rendering the world as it is—precarious, violent, dangerous, beautiful." -- Laura Raicovich, writer and curator; author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest and former director of the Queens Museum of Art"Aviva Rahmani’s remarkable Divining Chaos is part bildungsroman, part eco-action guidebook, part pandemic diary, and part portrait of a turbulent time in American art and history. With searing honesty, Rahmani presents her complex multidisciplinary thinking as it has evolved through the twists and turns of a tumultuous life. This is the story of a life in art that is also a life in politics, science, and environmental- ism. And, in our dark times, it is also a story of what we may still be able to do to save our planet." -- Eleanor Heartney, art critic and curator; author of Art & Today and Doomsday Dreams"Divining Chaos is a compelling and courageous memoir of historical importance, written by a central figure in the emergence of ecofeminist art. Aviva Rahmani makes clear that the same entrenched systems of power enable the abuse of women and the abuse of nature. Her personal experiences of trauma might well have defeated her. Instead, they seemingly empowered her to become a strong and persistent advocate for ecological issues through her artwork, and to challenge the status quo in innovative and effective ways." -- Julie Reiss, PhD, editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene"In Divining Chaos she nails her own heart to the Earth’s gallery wall and invites us to examine it, a daunting experience of critical life-moments revealing the complex dialectic of violation." -- Glenn Albrecht, environmental philosopher; author of Earth Emotions and Solastalgia"Aviva Rahmani offers a memoir of anti-capitalist, anti-ecocidal storytelling imbued with a deep and abiding faith that people and art can interrupt and reinvent the status quo. In twinning deep scientific and theoretical knowledge with her art, she manages a near-impossible task of rendering the world as it is—precarious, violent, dangerous, beautiful." -- Laura Raicovich, author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest and former director of the Queens Museum of Art"Aviva Rahmani’s remarkable Divining Chaos is part bildungsroman, part eco-action guidebook, part pandemic diary, and part portrait of a turbulent time in American art and history. With searing honesty, Rahmani presents her complex multidisciplinary thinking as it has evolved through the twists and turns of a tumultuous life." -- Eleanor Heartney, art critic and curator; author of Art & Today and Doomsday Dreams"Divining Chaos is a compelling and courageous memoir of historical importance, written by a central figure in the emergence of ecofeminist art. Aviva Rahmani makes clear that the same entrenched systems of power enable the abuse of women and the abuse of nature." -- Julie Reiss, PhD, editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene

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Book SynopsisWill Eisner's innovations in the comics, especially the comic book and the graphic novel, as well as his devotion to comics analysis, make him one of comics' first true auteurs and the cartoonist so revered and influential that cartooning's highest honor is named after him. His newspaper feature The Spirit (1940-1952) introduced the now-common splash page to the comic book, as well as dramatic angles and lighting effects that were influenced by, and influenced in turn, the conventions of film noir. Even in his tales of crime fighting, Eisner's writing focused on everyday details of city life and on contemporary social issues. In 1976, he premiered A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories, a collection of realist cartoon stories that paved the way for the modern ""graphic novel."" His 1985 book, Comics and Sequential Art, was among the first sustained analyses and overviews of the comics form, articulating theories of the art's grammar and structure. Eisner's studio nurtured such comics legends as Jules Feiffer, Wally Wood, Lou Fine, and Jack Cole.Will Eisner: Conversations, edited by comics scholar M. Thomas Inge, collects the best interviews with Eisner (1917-2005) from 1965 to 2004. Taken together, the interviews cover the breadth of Eisner's career with in-depth information about his creation of The Spirit and other well-known comic book characters, his devotion to the educational uses of the comics medium, and his contributions to the development of the graphic novel.

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Book SynopsisThe early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics--in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights--as new methods of publishing and distribution broadened the possibilities. Among those artists utilizing these new methods, Chester Brown (b. 1960) quickly developed a cult following due to the undeniable quality and originality of his Yummy Fur (1983-1994).Chester Brown: Conversations collects interviews covering all facets of the cartoonist's long career and includes several pieces from now-defunct periodicals and fanzines. It also includes original annotations from Chester Brown, provided especially for this book, in which he adds context, second thoughts, and other valuable insights into the interviews. Brown was among a new generation of artists whose work dealt with decidedly nonmainstream subjects. By the 1980s comics were, to quote a by-now well-worn phrase, ""not just for kids anymore,"" and subsequent censorious attacks by parents concerned about the more salacious material being published by the major publishers--subjects that routinely included adult language, realistic violence, drug use, and sexual content--began to roil the industry. Yummy Fur came of age during this storm and its often-offensive content, including dismembered, talking penises, led to controversy and censorship.With Brown's highly unconventional adaptations of the Gospels, and such comics memoirs as The Playboy (1991/1992) and I Never Liked You (1991-1994), Brown gradually moved away from the surrealistic, humor oriented strips toward autobiographical material far more restrained and elegiac in tone than his earlier strips. This work was followed by Louis Riel (1999-2003), Brown's critically acclaimed comic book biography of the controversial nineteenth-century Canadian revolutionary, and Paying for It (2011), his best-selling memoir on the life of a john.

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Book SynopsisReaders will know Bob Ross (1942-1995) as the gentle, afro'd painter of happy trees on PBS. And while the Florida-born artist is reviled or ignored by the elite art world and scholarly art educators, he continues to be embraced around the globe as a healer and painter, even decades after his death. In Happy Clouds, Happy Trees, the authors thoughtfully explore how the Bob Ross phenomenon grew into a juggernaut. Although his sincerity in embracing democracy, gift economies, conservation, and self-help may have left him previously denigrated as a subject of rigorous scholarship, this book uses contemporary art theory to explore the sophistication of Bob Ross's vision as an artist. It traces the ways in which his many fans have worshiped, emulated, and parodied him and his work. His technique allowed him to paint over 35,000 paintings in his lifetime, mostly of mountains and trees in landscapes heavily influenced by his time in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska.The authors address issues of amateur art, sentimentality, imitation, boredom, seduction, and democratic practices in the art world. They fully examine Ross as a painter, teacher, healer, media star, performer, magician, and networker. In-depth comparisons are made to Andy Warhol and Thomas Kinkade, and mention is made of his life in relation to Joseph Beuys, Elvis Presley, St. Francis of Assisi, Carl Rogers, and many other creative personalities. In the end, Happy Clouds, Happy Trees presents Ross as a gift giver, someone who freely teaches the act of painting to anyone who believes in Ross's vision that ""this is your world.""

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Book SynopsisOver a period of some twenty years, Mexican-born artisan Dionicio Rodríguez created imaginative sculptures of reinforced concrete that imitated the natural forms and textures of trees and rocks. He worked in eight different states from 1924 through the early 1950s but spent much of his early career in San Antonio, where several of his creations have become beloved landmarks. More than a dozen of Rodríguez’s works have been included on the National Register of Historic Places. Patsy Pittman Light has spent a decade documenting the trabajo rústico (""rustic work"") of Rodríguez, along with its antecedents in Europe and Mexico, and the subsequent work of those Rodríguez trained in San Antonio. Rodríguez’s unique and unusual art will fascinate those new to it and delight those to whom it is familiar. San Antonio sites such as the bus stop on Broadway, the faux bois bridge in Brackenridge Park, and the ""rocks"" on the Miraflores Gate at the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with the Old Mill at T. R. Pugh Memorial Park in North Little Rock and Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis, are just a few of the locations covered in this volume celebrating the life and work of a Latino artisan. Students and devotees of Texas and Southwestern art will welcome this book and its long-overdue appreciation of this artist. Additionally, this book will commend itself to those interested in Latino studies, art history, and folklore.

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Book SynopsisEverett Spruce came to Texas from his Arkansas home in 1925 to study at the Dallas Art Institute. Over the next seven decades, he became one of the most important painters and teachers in the region. One of the 'Dallas Nine,' a group of influential Texas Regionalists that included Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, William Lester, and others, Spruce was among the artists who lobbied the Texas Centennial Commission for a greater role in the Centennial Exposition of 1936. These efforts, though unsuccessful, nevertheless led to greater recognition and influence for Texas art and artists.Spruce was assistant director and taught art at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts until 1940 when he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. He painted and taught at the university for the next 38 years, guiding and shaping the next generation of Texas artists, including Roger Winter, William Hoey, and others. Spruce died in 2002 at the age of 94.Texas Made Modern: The Art of Everett Spruce traces Spruce's artistic evolution from his early experimental work of the 1920s through the mysterious, surrealist-imbued landscapes of the 1930s. The work addresses his boldly expressionistic imagery of the 1940s and his abstract expressionist - inspired paintings of the mid-twentieth century. Departing from previous accounts of Spruce, which label him a prototypical regionalist, this study reveals the nuanced meanings behind the artist's shifting approaches to Texas subject matter and resituates his artwork within the broader narrative of American art.Trade ReviewThe first comprehensive view of a Texas master . . .

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Book SynopsisCanadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant, pen name Seth, emerged as a cartoonist in the fertile period of the 1980s, when the alternative comics market boomed. Though he was influenced by mainstream comics in his teen years and did his earliest comics work on Mister X, a mainstream-style melodrama, Seth remains one of the least mainstream-inflected figures of the alternative comics' movement. His primary influences are underground comix, newspaper strips, and classic cartooning.These interviews, including one career-spanning, definitive interview between the volume editors and the artist published here for the first time, delve into Seth's output from its earliest days to the present. Conversations offer insight into his influences, ideologies of comics and art, thematic preoccupations, and major works, from numerous perspectives--given Seth's complex and multifaceted artistic endeavours. Seth's first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, announced his fascination with the past and with earlier cartooning styles. Subsequent works expand on those preoccupations and themes. Clyde Fans, for example, balances present-day action against narratives set in the past. The visual style looks polished and contemplative, the narrative deliberately paced; plot seems less important than mood or characterization, as Seth deals with the inescapable grind of time and what it devours, themes which recur to varying degrees in George Sprott, Wimbledon Green, and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists.

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Book SynopsisFor ten years before the creation of Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney struggled with, failed at, and eventually mastered the art and business of animation. Most biographies of his career begin in 1928, when Steamboat Willie was released. That first Disney Studio cartoon with synchronized sound made its main character--Mickey Mouse--an icon for generations.But Steamboat Willie was neither Disney's first cartoon nor Mickey Mouse's first appearance. Prior to this groundbreaking achievement, Walt Disney worked in a variety of venues and studios, refining what would become known as the Disney style. In Walt before Mickey: Disney's Early Years, 1919-1928, Timothy Susanin creates a portrait of the artist from age seventeen to the cusp of his international renown.After serving in the Red Cross in France after World War I, Walt Disney worked for advertising and commercial art in Kansas City. Walt used these experiences to create four studios--Kaycee Studios, Laugh-O-gram Films, Disney Brothers Studio, and Walt Disney Studio. Using company documents, private correspondence between Walt and his brother Roy, contemporary newspaper accounts, and new interviews with Disney's associates, Susanin traces Disney's path. The author shows Disney to be a complicated, resourceful man, especially during his early career. Walt before Mickey, a critical biography of a man at a crucial juncture, provides the ""missing decade"" that started Walt Disney's career and gave him the skills to become a name known worldwide.

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Book SynopsisShadow Patterns: Reflections on Fay Jones and His Architecture is a collection of critical essays and personal accounts of the man the American Institute of Architects honored with its highest award, the Gold Medal, in 1990.The essays range from the academic, with appreciations and observations by Juhanni Palaasma and Robert McCarter and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, to personal reflections by clients and friends. Two of Arkansas’s most accomplished writers, Roy Reed and Ellen Gilchrist, who each live in Fay Jones houses, have provided intimate portrayals of what it’s like to live in, and manage the quirks of, a “house built by a genius,” where “light is everywhere. . . . Everything is quiet, and everything is a surprise,” as Gilchrist says.Through this compendium of perspectives, readers will learn about Jones’s personal qualities, including his strong will, his ability to convince other people of the rightness of his ideas, and yet his willingness, at times, to change his mind. We also enter into the work: powerful architecture like Stoneflower and Thorncrown Chapel and Pinecote Pavilion, along with private residences ranging from the modest to the monumental. And we learn about his relationship with his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright.Shadow Patterns broadens and enriches our understanding of this major figure in American architecture of the twentieth century.

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Book SynopsisLouis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes is a new and personal reading of the architecture, teachings, and legacy of Louis I. Kahn from Per Olaf Fjeld's perspective as a former student. The book explores Kahn's life and work, offering a unique take on one of the twentieth century's most important architects. Kahn's Nordic and European ties are emphasized in this study that also covers his early childhood in Estonia, his travels, and his relationships with other architects, including the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo. The authors have gathered personal reflections, archival material, and other student work to offer insight into the wisdom that Kahn imparted to his students in his famous masterclass. Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes addresses Kahn's legacy both personally and in terms of the profession, documents a research trip the University of Pennsylvania's Louis I. Kahn Collection, and confronts the affiliation of Kahn's work with postmodernism.

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of sculptor Chana Orloff. In Sculpting a Life, the first book-length biography of sculptor Chana Orloff (1888-1968), author Paula Birnbaum tells the story of a fiercely determined and ambitious woman who fled antisemitism in Ukraine, emigrated to Palestine with her family, then travelled to Paris to work in haute couture before becoming an internationally recognized artist. Against the backdrop of revolution, world wars, a global pandemic and forced migrations, her sculptures embody themes of gender, displacement, exile, and belonging. A major figure in the School of Paris, Orloff contributed to the canon of modern art alongside Picasso, Modigliani and Chagall. Stories from her unpublished memoir enrich this life story of courage, perseverance, and extraordinary artistic accomplishments that take us through the aftermath of the Holocaust when Orloff lived between Paris and Tel Aviv. This biography brings new perspectives and understandings to Orloff’s multiple identities as a cosmopolitan émigré, woman, and Jew, and is a much-needed intervention into the narrative of modern art. Trade Review“Sculpting a Life is a thoroughly researched, scrupulous biography that will undoubtedly stand as the definitive study of Chana Orloff. At the end of this admirable biography, we’re left with the sense that Chana Orloff’s greatest creation was herself. She mastered the diasporic art world of the interwar era, fashioning a transnational and uniquely Jewish identity.” * H-France *"This is the first biography of Orloff (1888–1968), a Ukrainian-born Jewish sculptor whose work is part of collections in Israel, Europe and the United States. Birnbaum. . . traces the artist’s multiple migrations — from Ukraine to Palestine to Paris to Switzerland and back to Paris while establishing a second home in Tel Aviv after World War II — and the impact these migrations had on her career." * J. The Jewish News of Northern California *“Birnbaum has created a truly remarkable and compelling portrait of the internationally-exhibited multi-national sculptor who worked across—and fully participated in—the tumultuous decades of twentieth century Jewish, modernist, and world histories from her elective home in Paris. Wide ranging-research sustains subtle insights into the formal, historical, and cultural significance of Orloff’s compelling portraits of her Jewish intellectual, political and artistic contemporaries that she created alongside a modernizing, feminist exploration of women’s subjectivities and life experiences through sculptural embodiment. A truly vital monument to Chana Orloff’s extraordinarily fascinating place in our extended, and fuller understanding of the art of the twentieth century and its creative communities.” -- Griselda Pollock, Professor Emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art, University of Leeds"Paula Birnbaum’s well-researched study of Chana Orloff is a tremendous achievement. In this pathbreaking, first book-length biography of the unfairly neglected sculptor, Birnbaum places Orloff securely in the company of her School of Paris contemporaries. Even more, she illuminates and contextualizes Orloff’s multiple identities as a cosmopolitan émigré, woman, and Jew. This wide-ranging book is a major contribution to our understanding of Jewish art, feminist art, and Israeli art." -- Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History, Cleveland State University"Sculpting A Life offers a fascinating case study of an artist whose life and work embodies themes of gender, migration, displacement, and belonging. This first of its kind biography explains the extraordinary conditions in which Chana Orloff lived and carried out a long and prolific career in Ukraine, France, Palestine, and later Israel. By analyzing her hyphenated identities from an intersectional point of view, Birnbaum captures the complexities and tensions between cosmopolitanism and national identity for women artists who live and work in diaspora. This book is an important contribution to the history of modern art, as well as Jewish history, while highlighting the many layers of gendered issues that impact women’s careers in an age of transnationalism. Although Orloff does not fit neatly into the discipline of art history, which is normatively written according to fixed notions of national style grounded in a stable idea of the nation-state, its enormous contribution is correcting the canon of modernity and offering a more inclusive history of art." -- Tal Dekel, author of Transnational Identities: Women, Art and Migration in Contemporary Israel“Paula Birnbaum’s biography of Chana Orloff offers a timely and much-needed intervention into the narrative of modern art. Orloff’s life is a perfect model for the study of artistic practice within the contexts of forced displacement, voluntary immigration, transnationalism, and the multilinguality so pervasive in the 20th century.” -- Alla Efimova, Author and Curator“Paula Birnbaum’s lucid and engrossing biography of Chana Orloff (the first of its kind) restores the artist to her rightful place among the 20th century’s foremost sculptors. More than this, through meticulous research embedded in a lively, engaging narrative, a complete portrait emerges of a sublime artist negotiating the difficult balance of her diverse identities. There is also a distinctively Jewish story told here, one of a life’s journey touched, shaped and bruised by late 19th and 20th century social and political upheavals from Ukraine to Palestine, France and Israel: a life that incorporated extraordinary highs and lows including a six-year close friendship with Modigliani and a courageous last-minute border-crossing escape from Nazi pursuers. Both art and artist are brightly illuminated in this vivid record of Chana Orloff’s intense, crowded, and extraordinarily creative life.” -- Jonathan Wilson, author of Marc Chagall“In Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff between Paris and Tel-Aviv, Paula J. Birnbaum offers readers a deeply researched, beautifully illustrated, and engagingly written biography of a cosmopolitan and once-renowned sculptor who deliberately resisted categorization. In the world of art, Orloff (1888-1968) became an outsize figure with a multifaceted hybrid identity; she was tenacious, resilient, and enterprising, overcoming multiple historical obstacles (ranging from pogroms to two world wars and persecution of Jews) that not only disrupted her professional development as an artist but also threatened her very survival. Orloff’s strong emphasis on motherhood as central to her artistic expression is particularly noteworthy, as is her fascination with the female body. This book also reminds readers of the relative marginality in Paris of the subsequently famous circles of émigré artists in which Orloff traveled (including Picasso, Modigliani, and Chagall, who hailed from Spain, Italy, Russia, and Palestine) and the difficulties of 'defining' French art during the first half of the twentieth century. Particularly noteworthy are Birnbaum’s efforts to ground Orloff’s extraordinary life and ultimately successful career in historical context and to probe the meanings implied in her sculptures and drawings.” -- Karen Offen, The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University; Author of European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History, The Woman Question in France, 1400-1870, and Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870-1920.“Birnbaum’s deeply researched study rescues an extraordinary artist from obscurity. Triumphing over infinite odds, Chana Orloff, a Russian Jewish émigré, became an original and compelling artist in modern Paris during and between the world wars. This book brilliantly restores her resilient voice and amazing story.” -- Wanda M. Corn, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor Emerita in Art History, Stanford University“Birnbaum weaves together pioneering research and analysis into a compelling narrative of Orloff’s life and work, a story about the courage, perseverance, and accomplishments of an artist who overcame the dislocation of multiple migrations and trauma of forced exiles, facing anti-Semitism and gender bias. This exemplary biography is a model for analyzing the complexities of an artist whose multiple migrations, identities, and the tensions between cosmopolitanism and national identity deeply informed her work.” -- Ruth E. Iskin, Ben Gurion UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: Ukrainian Beginnings, 1888-1905Chapter 2: Moving to the Promised Land, 1905-1907Chapter 3: Becoming a New Hebrew Woman, 1907-1910Chapter 4: Paris: from Haute Couture to Avant-Garde, 1910-1913Chapter 5: Forging a Career at the Onset of War, 1913-16Chapter 6: Orloff during Wartime 1916-1919: Amazon, Mother, and WidowChapter 7: Portraitist of Montparnasse: 1919-25Chapter 8: Villa Seurat: Building a Studio and a Community, 1926-1929Chapter 9: Transatlantic Travel and Networks, 1929-1930Chapter 10: From Paris to Tel Aviv: The Jewish Art World in the Pre-State period of 1930sChapter 11: Occupation and Escape, 1938-1942Chapter 12: Exile and Return, 1942-1948Chapter 13: “Israeli Artist of the École de Paris,” 1948-1968Chapter 14: Conclusion: Legacy in Israel & FranceAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA cherished erotic play by Federico García Lorca, illustrated by a major Spanish artist. Painting, poetry, and music come together in Zóbel Reads Lorca, as Fernando Zóbel, a Harvard student who would become one of Spain’s most famous painters, translates and illustrates Federico García Lorca’s haunting play about the wounds of love. The premiere of Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín, an “erotic allelujia” which Lorca once called his most cherished play, was shut down in 1928 by Spanish government censors who confiscated the manuscript and locked it away in the pornography section of a state archive. Lorca rewrote the work in New York, and an amateur theater group brought it to the Spanish stage a few years later. Since his death, the play has also been transformed into ballet and opera. Zóbel Reads Lorca presents Zóbel’s previously unpublished translation and features contextual essays from several scholars. Art historian Felipe Pereda studies Lorca in the context of Zóbel’s development as a painter, Luis Fernández Cifuentes describes the precarious and much-debated state of the humanities in Zóbel’s Harvard and throughout the United States in the 1940s, and Christopher Maurer delves into musical and visual aspects of the play’s American productions. Trade Review"[...] his translation is far superior to the 1941 O'Connell/Graham Luján version and is a real treat as presented in this exquisitely illustrated volume." * The Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsPreface Marta Mateo vii Zóbel Reads Lorca: The Painter’s Early Years in New England Felipe Pereda 1 Zóbel’s Harvard and the 1940s Crisis in Higher Education Luis Fernández Cifuentes 41 American Perlimplín Christopher Maurer 63 About the Translation Christopher Maurer 81 Federico García LorcaDon Perlimplín in Love Translated by Fernando Zóbel 83 Federico García Lorca Music to Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín Arranged by Gustavo Pittaluga 123 From Stage to Page: A Perlimplín Chronology Christopher Maurer and Lincoln Son Currie 127 Illustrations 141 Notes 145 Bibliography 165 Acknowledgments 171

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Book SynopsisThe work of Italian printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) has captivated artists, architects and designers for centuries. Although contemporary Australia is a long way from eighteenth-century Rome, it is home to substantial collections of his works, the largest being at the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne.The Piranesi Effect is a collection of exquisitely illustrated essays on the impact of Piranesi’s work throughout the years. The book brings together Australian and international experts who investigate Piranesi’s world and its connections to the study of art and the practice of artists today. From curators and art historians, to contemporary artists like Bill Henson and Ron McBurnie, the contributors each bring their own passion and insight into the work of Piranesi, illuminating what it is about his work that still inspires such wonder.

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Book SynopsisIt is always based on what I see, what is touching me.'For more than fifty years, Klaus Moje devoted his life to the art of glass. He called it the 'most seductive' medium, and in his hands it had the power to delight and amaze collectors around the world. His lifetime's work changed the practice and appreciation of contemporary glass. Moje's philosophy of 'working into the hopeful' and his passion for the colour and geometry he saw in the natural world shone through his kilnformed glass works, a technique he pioneered.Moje was both artist and educator. After an apprenticeship in his father's small glass-cutting and glass-grinding business and a masters degree at the Glasfachschule Hadamar, Moje established his Hamburg studio. In 1982, he moved to Australia to set up the Glass Workshop at the Canberra School of Art, one of the most successful glass education programs in the world. Following 10 years teaching, Moje returned to full-time studio work. His life and art inspired many who chose to work with this medium.In Glass: The Life and Art of Klaus Moje, art historian Nola Anderson celebrates the creativity and artistic spirit of this remarkable artist.

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Book SynopsisSoon after his death, Vincent van Gogh’s reputation grew and developed through the remarkably symbiotic relationship evident between his paintings and letters. However, the sheer bulk and complexity of Van Gogh’s complete surviving correspondence presents a formidable challenge to those who wish to read and analyze the whole text as a literary work.Reading Vincent van Gogh is at once an interpretive guide to Van Gogh’s letters and a distillation of the key themes that reoccur throughout his collected letters – foremost among them the motifs of suffering, love, imagination, and the ineffable. In this indispensable, synoptic view of the letters, Patrick Grant makes the main lines of Vincent van Gogh’s thinking accessible and displays the arresting vividness of the well-known artist’s writing.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Privacy and the Public Record - Biography and Beyond1 Shaping Commitments2 Enduring Adversity3 What Holds at the Centre4 The Power of Words5 Matter and SpiritAppendix 1: Some Facts About the LettersAppendix 2: Suggestions for Further Reading

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Book SynopsisMarx’s ideas are now subject to worldwide reappraisal, with conferences attracting the most important critical thinkers on the left. Marx and the Aesthetic (Amsterdam, 2012) reappraised Marx in the context of his own creative inspirations and contemporary art today. Max Raphael’s Proudhon, Marx, Picasso (1933), published in Paris by the exiled German art historian, a contemporary of Walter Benjamin, included the first attempt at a Marxist critique of Picasso. His book appeared when the global crisis of capitalism coincided with the birth of fascism. Picasso/Marx looks backwards and perhaps forwards, resituating Picasso in dialectical terms. His context as player in the little-known Communist West, centred on Paris, brings into play the Marxist theory of his times. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Marx, Lenin and Stalin’s own theories on art and literature were discussed together with Plekhanov, Bogdanov and Zhdanov. John Berger’s Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), dedicated to Raphael, offered a critique of Picasso’s art and Communist politics within the lifetime of the painter. Picasso/Marx presents a critical view of Picasso to his new audiences from Melbourne to Moscow.Trade ReviewReviews 'Long awaited by scholars, this is a work of astonishing verve and scope by unquestionably the leading authority on left-wing artistic movements of the period.' Michael KellyTable of Contents Introduction Picasso to Marx Popular Front Paris World Fair Holocaust Atomic Age Colonialism Portraits Conclusion Postface Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Biographic senes presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits and achievements of each subject, and uses infographics to convey all of them in vivid snapshots. Many people know that Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was a French painter whose work and influence linked Post- Impressionism and Cubism. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he was best friends with French novelist Emile Zola until a disagreement ended their friendship of 34 years; that his work was rejected by the Salon and mainstream art schools before his unique style received critical acclaim; that he died from pneumonia after refusing to stop painting in a thunderstorm; and that, in 2011, his iconic artwork The Card Players was sold for more than $250million. Biographic: Cezanne presents an instant impression of his life, work and fame, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures. It is published to coincide with the major international exhibition of Cezanne's portraits 'Once in a Lifetime'.

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Book SynopsisThe Biographics series presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits, and achievements of each subject, and uses infographics to convey each of them in vivid snapshots. Many people know that Frida Kahlo (1907–54) was a Mexican artist, a feminist icon who lived in the famous Blue House and whose work includes 'The Two Fridas'. What, perhaps, they don't know is that 55 of her 143 artworks are self-portraits; that her painting 'Roots' holds the record for a Latin American artwork, having sold for $5.6 million in 2006; that her love letters sold for $137,000; that she married her husband twice; or that she arrived for her first solo exhibition in an ambulance. Biographic: Kahlo casts a modern eye over her life and work, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures. AUTHOR: Author Sophie Collins has worked in publishing for over thirty years, in roles ranging from author to publisher, and on projects ranging from major exhibition catalogues to graphic novels. She spent 15 years as a publisher, commissioning an eclectic list of illustrated non-fiction and writing a number of books alongside it. Consultant Dr Diana Newall has lectured for 12 years on a range of subjects in Art History at numerous establishments including Sotheby's Institute of Art and Birkbeck College, London. SELLING POINTS: . 50 defining facts about Frieda Kahlo conveyed through infographics . Entertaining and informative, celebrating and challenging the artist . Stylish gift for art and culture lovers 120 illustrationsTrade Review"The Biographic Series is an exciting new collection of biographies about some of the world's greatest thinkers, writers, artists and cultural innovators. Whilst each book could be read cover to cover, readers are more likely to randomly select pages, stopping and pausing to find out more about the subject . . . The infographics are visually appealing and entertaining, perhaps reinvigorating an interest in the subject . . .The legacy of artists, such as Monet and Van Gogh are particularly well documented in their Biographic." --Armadillo magazine

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Book Synopsis'A crisis in historical representation unfolded in French visual culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, reaching its climax at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855, when artists and critics alike came to a troubling realization: depictions of past heroes that had once held exceptional influence over their viewers now left the public indifferent. This book shows that underneath this crisis was a mounting demand for empirical observation in art, and an emergent modern epistemology that posited the past as foundational and yet inaccessible to the physically and historically specific individual. Since neither the painter nor the viewer could have actually experienced a bygone historical incident as it unfolded, was history painting even feasible in modern times? When historical representation seemed all but impossible to critics and artists of various hues, Gérôme came up with a momentous solution. A small group of paintings constitute the focus of this provocative study on the artist’s early work, whose pivotal role in Gérôme’s oeuvre as well as in the broader history of modernization of art have been so far unrecognized in art historical scholarship. In these, the artist charted a new roadmap for the art of painting in response to the modern sensibility of history.'Trade ReviewReviews 'Based on solid research, this exciting work takes the subject forward in a new and interesting direction, making a valuable contribution to scholarship.'Dr Patricia Smyth, University of Warwick'An important, powerfully-argued book that reinserts Gérôme back into the pictorial mainstream of the 1850s and 1860s, even as it also makes the case for the original, searching, and ambitious character of Gerome's art at a decisive moment of his career. A welcome intervention that essentially rewrites the career of a still controversial artist, now back in the public eye.' Marc Gotlieb, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art'Gülru Çakmak’s book offers intriguing insights and a demonstration of the power of close analysis.' Beth S. Wright, H-France Review'Both methodologically and in terms of content, this latest contribution to the study of academic art in the 19th century is convincing and provides important impulses for the in-depth analysis of works of art that only seem to be accessible at first glance.' (Translated from German.)sehepunkte'Gülru Çakmak’s book on the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme was a joy to read. It is the first monograph that I have read that engages seriously, thoroughly, and deeply with Gérôme’s academic paintings. [...] The book will be an indispensable go-to study for all subsequent scholarship on Gérôme and on European history painting.' Nina Lubbren, caa.reviews

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Book SynopsisPublished to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, this incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes that shaped the life of Leonardo and forever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art and self-fashioning. Leonardo spent his childhood in the Tuscan countryside among farm workers before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he bloomed as one of the leading painters of his time, and began applying his skills to explore and question the world. By the 1480s he had transformed himself into an ideal court artist and was a familiar of kings; by the 1510s he left behind him the solemn image of a magus philosopher. Following the chronology of his life, Leonardo da Vinci: Self, Art and Nature examines Leonardo as artist, courtier and thinker, and explores how these aspects found expression in his paintings, as well as his work in sculpture, architecture, theatre design, urban planning, engineering, anatomy, geology and cartography. It concludes with observations on Leonardo's relevance today as a multidisciplinary artist, one who combined imagination and science to shape his own self and the world.

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Book Synopsis‘I want to know what I am, what I want, what I can do, what is real, what is lovely.’ The post-war British artist Keith Vaughan (1912–77) was not only a supremely accomplished painter; he was an impassioned, eloquent writer. Image of a Man is the first book to provide a comprehensive critical reading of Vaughan’s extraordinary journal, which spans thirty-eight years and sixty-one volumes to form a major literary work and a fascinating document of changing times. From close textual analysis of the original manuscripts, this book uncovers the attitudes and arguments that shaped and reshaped Vaughan’s identity as a man and as an artist. It reveals a continual process of self-construction through journal-writing, undertaken to navigate the difficulties of conscientious objection, the complications of desire as a gay man, and the challenges of making meaningful art. By focussing on Vaughan’s journal-writing in the context of its many influences and its centrality to his art practice, Image of a Man offers not only a compelling new critical biography of a significant yet underappreciated artist, but also a sustained argument on the constructed nature of the ‘artist’ persona in early and mid-twentieth-century culture – and the opportunities afforded by journal and diary forms to make such constructions possible.Trade Review'Belsey writes well about Vaughan’s attitude to warfare as a conscientious objector, and how, reduced to a mere cog in the Non-Combatant Corps, he used the early part of the journal to construct an identity for himself. We are also shown Vaughan’s determination to improve and evolve as a writer. In this he succeeded, and his journal is not only an invaluable social document but, at its best, a considerable work of literature.' Peter Parker, Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsImage of a Man: IntroductionOutsider1. War and the Objector2. Society and the ObserverCreator3. Autobiography and the Intellectual4. Art and the ArtistCurator5. Self-Editorship and 'Keith Vaughan'The Diaristic Impulse and Self-Construction: An AfterwordBibliography

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Book SynopsisInside the Invisible provides the first examination of the work of Turner Prize-winning Black British artist and curator Professor Lubaina Himid CBE. This comprehensive volume breaks new ground by theorizing her development of an alternative visual and textual language within which to do justice to the hidden histories and untold stories of Black women, children, and men bought and sold into transatlantic slavery. For Himid, the act of forgetting within official sites of memory is indivisible from the art of remembering within an African diasporic art historical tradition. She interrogates the widespread distortion and even wholesale erasure of Black bodies and souls subjected to dehumanizing stereotypes and grotesque caricatures within western imaginaries and dominant iconographic traditions over the centuries. Creating bodies of work in which she comes to grips with the physical and psychological realities of iconic and anonymous African diasporic individuals as living breathing human beings rather than as objectified types, she bears witness not only to tragedy but to triumph. A self-appointed researcher, historian, and storyteller as well as an artist, she succeeds in seeing “inside the invisible” regarding untold narratives of Black agency and artistry by mining national archives, listening to oral stories, acknowledging art-making traditions, and revisiting autobiographical testimonies.Trade ReviewReviews'An extremely significant contribution to the art historical research focused on contemporary Black British visual artists.'Professor Earnestine Jenkins, University of MemphisWhile Inside the Invisible challenges us to face painful histories and their contemporary legacies, it also celebrates the possibilities of what can be achieved by reimagining these issues through Himid’s perspective. This is an important and generous publication, essential reading for scholars seeking to reframe the study of art through the lenses of anti-racism and decoloniality. Sabrina Rahman, Wasafiri‘Himid’s deft ability to link her artistic and academic gifts bridges a body of information that we take for granted: cultural visibility. Her work takes the stories of black men and women who have been systematically erased and makes them raw and visually accessible. Looking through these pages makes me ask why we do not currently use art – and this book specifically – to teach history.’ Lavinya Stennett (writer and founder of The Black Curriculum), The GuardianTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgements Foreword by Marlene SmithIntroduction: Making Black Histories, Stories, and Memories VisibleI - ‘Gathering and Reusing’ by Lubaina Himid Part 1: Visualising the ‘Politics of Representation’Chapter 1: ‘Humour, fury, celebration, and optimism’: A Politics of Protest and Cut-Out Men (1981-85)Chapter 2: ‘Rituals of reclaiming lost artefacts, refusing oppression and looking for ancestors’ in Heroes and Heroines (1984)Chapter 3: ‘They who document / paint the History hold the Power’: Retelling, Reimagining and Recreating New Narratives of Black Heroism in Toussaint I (1988) and Toussaint II (2002)II - ‘Telling Invisible Stories’ by Lubaina Himid Part 2: Resistance, Reclamation and Revolutionary History PaintingChapter 4: No more ‘Silent Victims’: Agency, Authority and Artistry in the ‘Black Woman’s Story’ in Revenge (1992)Chapter 5: ‘Lost hope, abandoned lives, decimated civilisations’: Sites of ‘Cultural Struggle’ in Beach House (1995)Chapter 6: ‘Safety and danger and how to tell the difference’: Suffering, Struggle and Survival in Plan B (1999)III - ‘Return to the Operatic’ by Lubaina Himid Part 3: Past, Present and Future Artistry, Activism and AgencyChapter 7: Imaging and Imagining ‘Lost Lives of the Black Diaspora’ in Venetian Maps (1997) Chapter 8: Reimaging and Reimagining an Absent-Presence in Cotton.com (2003)Chapter 9: ‘The Slave Servant’: Guerrilla Memorialisation and Multi-accented Performances in Naming the Money (2004)Chapter 10: ‘Intervention, Mapping and Excavation’: White Caricatures versus Black Dehumanisation in Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service (2007)IV - ‘Painting over the British to reveal the British’ by Lubaina Himid Part 4: Imagining ‘the ghosts and the traces’Chapter 11: Tracing ‘The living/ the dead/ the ancestors’ in London and Paris Guidebooks (2009)Chapter 12: Mapping Space, Debating Place: Jelly Mould Pavilions (2010) and Official Sites and Sights of Slavery and MemoryChapter 13: ‘The “Ghost” of it all’: Tragedy, Trauma and a ‘People There and Not There’ in Le Rodeur (2016)V - ‘Working on Paper’ by Lubaina Himid ‘It’s All about Action’: An Interview with Lubaina Himid by Hannah DurkinConclusion: ‘Lives Depend on Accurate Histories’Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWyndham Lewis was both a serious proponent and forthright critic of modernism. His assault upon his contemporaries foreshadowed the twenty-first century scholarly interest in the networks, professions, and coteries – rather than the myths and heroics – of modernism. Lewis, after a long period of neglect, now sits increasingly at the heart of a revised field of modernist studies.This book explores Lewis’s cultural criticism as a valuable body of writing which posed questions that have yet to be answered about subsidy and the function of the artist, about professionalism and ethics, about who should pay for the arts, and what the artist’s obligations should be in return. It is the first book-length study of this body of critical writing, through which Lewis articulated the central and most lasting of his critical preoccupations: the question of how the work of the artist is to be valued, and the artist to be paid, in a professionalised society. This book makes an important contribution to the long overdue reassessment of a complex, contrarian figure, spanning the disciplines of literature and the visual arts, who asked pressing questions about the role and status of the artist, and ultimately about the value (economic, civic, political) of the work of art.

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Book SynopsisPerceiving Dubuffet: Art, Embodiment, and the Viewer offers a comprehensive reconsideration of Jean Dubuffet’s work which contextualizes it within contemporary developments in phenomenology and examines the central role played by questions relating to embodiment in the evolution of his aesthetic thinking and artistic practice. Conceived as an interdisciplinary project and combining phenomenological approaches with detailed visual and linguistic analysis, elucidation of interpictorial and intertextual reference, and extensive archival research, the study examines the development across Dubuffet’s work of a core set of cognate themes and formal concerns, charts his many and various shifts in priority and direction, and identifies the constants that drive his tireless experimentation with materials, genre, dimensionality, viewer involvement, visual-verbal interplay, and metareference. Topics explored include: the affinities between Merleau-Ponty's account of the phenomenological reduction and Dubuffet's conception of the functioning of the artwork; Dubuffet’s thematisation of the experience of embodiment; the foregrounding of temporality and the exploration of corporeal and associative memory; the testing and transgression of generic boundaries; the experimentation with unconventional materials and with dimensionality; the impact of Dubuffet’s reading of scientific theory and of Daoist and Buddhist philosophy on his understanding of man’s relationship with his environment; and the central role given to the viewer's physical interaction with the artwork. Perceiving Dubuffet: Art, Embodiment, and the Viewer covers Dubuffet’s lengthy career and examines the full range of his pictorial and sculptural œuvre and the large corpus of aesthetic writings produced between the 1940s and the 1980s.Trade Review'A detailed, comprehensive, and readable account of Dubuffet’s work, Perceiving Dubuffet is a highly informative and impressive piece of scholarship.' Dr Johanna Malt, King’s College London'Duffy’s nuanced analyses, grounded in archival research and close looking at Dubuffet’s art and writing — with an eye for not only visual but also bodily engagement — provides an important contribution to the scholarship on this artist. … Her situation of Dubuffet’s interest in perceiving — and how culture, language, and habit even in the domain of science affect it — brings a fresh perspective to Dubuffet scholarship.' Stephanie Chadwick, H-France ReviewTable of Contents Acknowledgements Illustrations and Copyright Information Abbreviations Outline Chronology Introduction Chapter 1: Breaking the Habit, Changing the View Chapter 2: Bodies and Boundaries Chapter 3: Rearranging Faces Chapter 4: Like Riding a Bicycle: Body Memory and Time-Consciousness Chapter 5: Assemblage, Association and Transformation: Dubuffet’s Memory Theatres Chapter 6: Times of Our Lives Chapter 7: Routes, Routines, and Wayfaring Travellers Chapter 8: Science, Art, and Language Conclusion and Epilogue Index

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Book SynopsisSamuel Hirszenberg is an artist who deserves to be more widely known: his work intertwined modernism and Jewish themes, and he influenced later artists of Jewish origin.Born into a traditional Jewish family in Łódź in 1865, Hirszenberg gradually became attached to Polish culture and language as he pursued his artistic calling. Like Maurycy Gottlieb before him, he studied at the School of Art in Kraków, which was then headed by the master of Polish painting, Jan Matejko. His early interests were to persist with varying degrees of intensity throughout his life: his Polish surroundings, traditional east European Jews, historical themes, the Orient, and the nature of relationships between men and women. He also had a lifelong commitment to landscape painting and portraiture.Hirszenberg’s personal circumstances, economic considerations, and historical upheavals took him to different countries, strongly influencing his artistic output. He moved to Jerusalem in 1907 and there, as a secular and acculturated Jew who had adopted the world of humanism and universalism, he strove also to express more personal aspirations and concerns. This fully illustrated study presents an intimate and detailed picture of the artist’s development.Trade Review‘Hirszenberg is a fascinating and important artist who deserves to be known more widely, The authors have produced an authoritative volume about his life and work, his studies and travels, his patrons and fellow artists, opening a most interesting window on the world of Polish Jews and their various milieux—Jewish, Polish, and European—during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The intellectual approach is sophisticated and speaks to current concerns in the social and cultural history of art more generally.’ Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw‘This comprehensive and well-researched book by two leading Israeli historians of Jewish art provides a fascinating account of Hirszenberg’s life and work, based on material preserved in Polish museums, private collections and archives, along with paintings, drawings and archival material in Israel, the United States, England, France, and Switzerland. Through its exploration of the complex situation of the Jews in partitioned Poland, how Jews fitted into the fin-de-siècle artistic world, and early Zionist visual culture, it will appeal to scholars and a wider public interested in the history of Jews in east-central Europe and in Jewish art.’ Antony Polonsky, Chief Historian of the Global Education Outreach Program, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw‘This book makes a valuable contribution to the field of Jewish art history in eastern Europe and adds new layers to our understanding of nineteenth-century Jewish life and culture more generally. Hirszenberg is an important and original, yet understudied artist, and this very readable and richly illustrated biography, based on much new material, will be enjoyed and cited for many years to come.’ Marcin Wodziński, University of Wrocław‘Cohen and Rajner have made this figure, with all his complexities and inner tensions, accessible to a wider audience. The combination of historian and art expertise allows Hirszenberg to emerge against his contemporary background, while the detailed analysis of his works reflects the power and grace of the artist at all stages of his creative life.’ Mordechai Beck, The Jerusalem Post‘This book demonstrates that Hirszenberg’s work as a Jewish artist was not only a deliberate choice, but also a process that continued throughout his life. It also offers evidence that interdisciplinary biographical writing is possible.’ Adam Mickiewicz, Studia Judaica"Samuel Hirszenberg 1865-1908 represents an exemplary collaboration between a historian of modern Jewry (Cohen) and a historian of Jewish art (Rajner)… the book is essential for Judaica research libraries and art libraries." Zachary M. Baker, AJL ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Łódź: The Beginning 2. Kraków: Hirszenberg’s First Steps as an Artist 3. Coming of Age in Munich 4. The Years of Wandering: Paris, Łódź, and Munich 5. Success in Łódź 6. The Poznański Palace Commission 7. From Łódź to Kraków 8. Jerusalem: The Final Destination 9. Hirszenberg’s Legacy Epilogue: Hirszenberg—the Man, the Artist Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisUntil well into the twentieth century, the claims to citizenship of women in the US and in Europe have come through men (father, husband); women had no citizenship of their own. The case studies of three expatriate women (Renée Vivien, Romaine Brooks, and Natalie Barney) illustrate some of the consequences for women who lived independent lives. To begin with, the books traces the way that ideas about national belonging shaped gay male identity in the nineteenth century, before showing that such a discourse was not available to women and lesbians, including the three women who form the core of the book. In addition to questions of sexually non-conforming identity, women's mediated claim to citizenship limited their autonomy in practical ways (for example, they could be unilaterally expatriated). Consequently, the situation of the denizen may have been preferable to that of the citizen for women who lived between the lines. Drawing on the discourse of jurisprudence, the history of the passport, and original archival research on all three women, the books tells the story of women's evolving claims to citizenship in their own right.Trade Review“This book explores the ways in which marginal sexual identities have been expressed through the trope of national identity. The study is as accessible as it is erudite, Melanie Hawthorne writes in a lively style that is all her own."Gretchen Schultz, Brown UniversityTable of ContentsWomen, Citizenship, and Sexuality: IntroductionChapter 1. "Comment Peut-on Etre Homosexuel?": Multinational (In)Corporations and the Frenchness of SaloméChapter 2. Renée Vivien: French Poet?!!Time Passes: An InterchapterChapter 3. "Partout Etrangère": Romaine BrooksChapter 4. Natalie Barney's Missed MarriagesAfterword: On Becoming a CitizenNotesBibliography

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Book SynopsisAs early as the ancient Greeks, goddesses served as Muses for artistic creation. In essence, a creatively charged energy inspired the artist, leaving a unique and recognizable mark on the artwork. Picassos relationships with the women in his life was deeply formative, and he often represented them as Muses. He was particularly unabashed in the declaration of his feelings to one of them, Marie-Therese Walter, his youthful mistress of 1927. But at that point Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, thus forced to practice the utmost discretion. His marriage to Olga made him increasingly frustrated with her imposed bourgeois expectations. As a release from this marital burden, Marie-Therese was ever present in his work, often portrayed as Aphrodite with a wreath in her hair, a basket of flowers and fruits by her side. Marie-Therese was the Dream the Muse. This fertile period coincided with the strong influence of surrealism which helped liberate Picassos psyche from the straitjacket that Olgas lifestyle imposed on him. By 1935, however, the model and mistress became a mother to Maya, radically changing the role she previously had. The following year Picasso was introduced to a new woman, Dora Maar, an encounter that signalled the beginning of the end of Marie-Thereses exclusive claim on Picassos affections and the closing of an artistic period clearly marked by fertility. The Aphrodite Period (19241936) provides new insights and analysis of Picassos life as recently uncovered through the research of the Online Picasso Project. This time-span is one of the most illustrative periods of Picassos career in that it clearly demonstrates the close interdependence between sexuality and artistic creativity that characterize Picasso's entire output.

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Book SynopsisAlthough Pablo Picasso spotted Dora Maar at a cafe in January 1936 it is highly likely that she had come to his attention prior. As Brassaï, a Hungarian-French photographer, recalled, 'It was at Les Deux-Magots that, one day in autumn 1935, [he] met Dora. On an earlier day, he had already noticed the grave, drawn face of the young woman at a nearby table, the attentive look in her light-colored eyes, sometimes disturbing in its fixity. When Picasso saw her in the same cafe in the company of the surrealist poet Paul Éluard, who knew her, the poet introduced her to Picasso' (Brassaï, a.k.a. Gyula Halász, Conversations with Picasso [University of Chicago Press, 1999]). Tinged with a seductive mix of violence and dark eroticism, this first meeting has attained mythical status in the story of the artist's life. It reads like an unreal fantasy. A mysterious and feline beauty, which Man Ray had captured in the pictures he took of her, a companion of Georges Bataille, Dora was an accomplished photographer, close to the Surrealists revolutionary aesthetics. Picasso addressed her in French, which he assumed to be her language; she replied in Spanish, which she knew to be his. For the next decade, the painter would translate not just his fascination with the woman who had seduced him on the spot, but also his desire to escape the grip of someone who, for the first time, could intellectually aspire to be his equal. Dora would appear in his works as a female Minotaur, a Sphinx, a lunar goddess and a muse. Because of her intense artistic sensibility, her poetic gifts and her ability to participate in suffering, she was especially qualified to resonate Picasso's own inner torments during these troubled years.

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Book SynopsisPaul Delaroche: Painting and Popular Spectacle explores the connections between painting and an emergent popular visual culture in the early nineteenth century, which included new forms of optical entertainment such as Panoramas and Dioramas and innovation in fields such as illustration, art reproduction, and stage decor. Delaroche’s paintings caused a sensation at the Paris Salon, with critics comparing the emotional response they elicited to that of popular melodrama. Yet his appeal to a certain type of spectator lay behind the increasingly hostile criticism to which his works were subjected, and has in our own time led to his uncertain status in the art historical canon. This book focuses on Delaroche’s popularity with a newly expanded audience. Lacking in specialist knowledge, but nevertheless keen to engage with and deeply affected by art, the behaviour of this new public prompted lively discussions about who has the right to judge art and on whatgrounds.Working across disciplinary boundaries, this book proposes a new reading both of Delaroche and of the connections between the arts in this period. The artist emerges as a figure at the cutting edge of an emergent trans-medial popular visual culture in which we see the formation of modern spectatorship.Trade Review‘Through sustained analysis of the critical reception of Delaroche’s work, this welcome book brings into the foreground the role played by illusion in popularising his distinctive style, and relates his “reality effects” to current debates about the significance of “theatricality” in the development of French painting from the eighteenth century onwards.’ Professor Stephen Bann CBE FBA, University of Bristol‘In a work of impressive interdisciplinary scope, Patricia Smyth applies 21st century theories regarding the immersive and self-commenting technologies of new media to provide an enlightening new way of understanding the simultaneous illusionistic transparency and legibility of Delaroche’s art, created for a 19th century audience already affected by technologies of spectacular realism.’ Beth S. Wright, Distinguished University Professor of Art History, University of Texas at Arlington‘In accounting for the growing demand for authenticity, she [Smyth] highlights the period’s perception of the historical past’s ineradicable distance from the present… The book avidly makes the case not only for the modernity of Delaroche’s work, but also for the enduring influence of the artist’s pictorial strategies on subsequent art and visual culture.’ Gülru Çakmak, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide

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Book SynopsisWyndham Lewis was both a serious proponent and forthright critic of modernism. His assault upon his contemporaries foreshadowed the twenty-first century scholarly interest in the networks, professions, and coteries – rather than the myths and heroics – of modernism. Lewis, after a long period of neglect, now sits increasingly at the heart of a revised field of modernist studies.This book explores Lewis’s cultural criticism as a valuable body of writing which posed questions that have yet to be answered about subsidy and the function of the artist, about professionalism and ethics, about who should pay for the arts, and what the artist’s obligations should be in return. It is the first book-length study of this body of critical writing, through which Lewis articulated the central and most lasting of his critical preoccupations: the question of how the work of the artist is to be valued, and the artist to be paid, in a professionalised society. This book makes an important contribution to the long overdue reassessment of a complex, contrarian figure, spanning the disciplines of literature and the visual arts, who asked pressing questions about the role and status of the artist, and ultimately about the value (economic, civic, political) of the work of art.

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Book SynopsisThis book sets out to establish Michele Tosini's critical role in sixteenth-century Mannerist art in Florence. He was well-trained, well-educated and well-liked, and created a highly productive workshop environment that not only succeeded but thrived in one of the most competitive ages of artistic production in the history of art. To date, scholarship executed on Tosini (Carlo Gamba in 1928, Sydney Freedberg in 1974) has produced a plethora of misunderstandings about Tosini's role in the Florentine artistic community. The verdict that Tosini was a 'hack' painter who could make his works look like those of more 'established' painters in order to get commissions, and that he was an uneducated 'second-rate' painter who could not formulate complex iconographical programs, is at odds with the evidence presented in this current research. Tosini was much more than just 'the right man in the right place at the right time'. He not only promoted Mannerism, but was part of its process; indeed, the formation of the Accademia del Disegno took place at the height of his artistic career. Given his business acumen it is perhaps understandable that ;misunderstandings; have arisen. (To borrow from William Wallace, Tosini can legitimately be thought of as 'Genius as Entrepreneur'.) This is not only essential reading for all students of Late Renaissance / Mannerist art history, but a majestic story of the process of artistic endeavour and how it unfolds that is so deeply admired today.Trade Review"The fruit of twenty-two years of labor, Heidi Horniks monograph on Tosini (150377) fills an important void." - Elizabeth Pilliod, Rutgers University, Renaissance QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction -- With Spirit & Without Effort; Respectful of Tradition; Confratenities, Accademia & Civic Projects; Patterns of Patronage -- Innovative Iconography; Tosini's Workshop Style -- The Dissemination of the High Maniera in Florence;; Epilogue -- A Living Legacy; Index.

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Book SynopsisWaiting at the Shore chronicles the extraordinary life of the Spanish artist Luis Quintanilla, championed by Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Elliot Paul, and many other American and European writers and artists. In 1912, at the age of 18, he ran off to Montmartre where, under the influence of his fellow countryman Juan Gris, he began his artistic career as a Cubist. Returning to Madrid before the war he befriended prominent Spaniards, including Juan Negrin, the Premier during the Spanish Civil War. In April 1931 he and Negrin participated in the peaceful revolution which ousted the monarchy and installed the Second Spanish Republic. When civil war broke out Quintanilla helped lead troops on Madrid's Montana Barracks, which saved the capital for the Republic. "Because great painters," as Hemingway put it, "are scarcer than good soldiers," the Spanish government [Negrin] ordered Quintanilla out of the army after the fascists were stopped outside Madrid. The artist completed 140 drawings of the various fronts of the war which were exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, with a catalogue by Hemingway. After the Republic lost the war Quintanilla was forced into an exile which lasted several decades. Living in New York and in Paris he strove to perfect his art, shunning the modernist vogues of the time. Although a celebrity when he first arrived in the United States he eventually fell into obscurity. This volume, which is heavily illustrated, brings him out of the shadows of neglect, and provides the compelling story of an artist who led not just an extraordinary life but left a legacy of paintings and drawings which, in both their skill and great imaginative variety, should be known to all art lovers.

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in Dutch and translated to Spanish for the fourth centenary celebration of the death of El Greco in 2014, this book is a comprehensive study of the rediscovery of El Greco -- seen as one of the most important events of its kind in art history. The Nationalization of Culture versus the Rise of Modern Art analyses how changes in artistic taste in the second half of the nineteenth century caused a profound revision of the place of El Greco in the artistic canon. As a result, El Greco was transformed from an extravagant outsider and a secondary painter into the founder of the Spanish School and one of the principle predecessors of modern art, increasingly related to that of the Impressionists -- due primarily to the German critic Julius Meier-Graefe's influential History of Modern Art (1914). This shift in artistic preference has been attributed to the rise of modern art but Eric Storm, a cultural historian, shows that in the case of El Greco nationalist motives were even more important. This study examines the work of painters, art critics, writers, scholars and philosophers from France, Germany and Spain, and the role of exhibitions, auctions, monuments and commemorations. Paintings and associated anecdotes are discussed, and historical debates such as El Greco's supposed astigmatism are addressed in a highly readable and engaging style. This book will be of interest to both specialists and the interested art public.Trade Review"The book creates a great argument for the improbability of El Greco as a choice for critics to elevate as a founding father of the Spanish School, and by knowing the multiple and strong reactions to El Grecos oeuvre, it offers art lovers a chance to reencounter the art with fresh eyes". - Barragan, Maite (2017) "Review of Eric Storm, The Discovery of El Greco. The Naturalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art, 1860-1914," Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies: Vol. 42 : Iss. 2 , Article 18.

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Book SynopsisThe work of Alex Colville, O.C. (1920-2013), one of the great modern realist painters, combines the Flemish detail of Andrew Wyeth, the eerie foreboding of George Tooker and the anguished confrontations of Lucian Freud. Behind the North Americans stands their common master, Edward Hopper. Colville's works are in many museums in Canada and Germany. He has affinities with Max Beckmann and appeals to the German "secondary virtues": cleanliness, punctuality, love of order. In a long life he resolutely opposed the fashionable currents of abstract and expressionistic art. In contrast to Jackson Pollock's wild action painting, Colville created paintings of contemplation and reflection. As Jeffrey Meyers writes: I spent several days with Colville on each of three visits from California to Wolfville. I received seventy letters from him between August 1998 and April 2010, and kept thirty-six of my letters to him. He sent me photographs and slides of his work and, in his eighties, discussed the progress and meaning of the paintings he completed during the last decade of his life. His handwritten letters, precisely explaining his thoughts and feelings, provide a rare and enlightening opportunity to compare my insights and interpretations with his own intentions and ideas. He also discussed his family, health, sexuality, politics, reading, travels, literary interests, our mutual friend Iris Murdoch, response to my writing, his work, exhibitions, sales of his pictures and of course the meaning of his art. His letters reveal the challenges he faced during aging and illness, and his determination to keep painting as health difficulties mounted. He stopped writing to me when he became seriously ill two years before his death. In this context the late paintings, presented in colour in this book, take on a new poignancy.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the interaction between collectors, dealers and exhibitions in Pablo Picassos entire career. The former two often played a determining role in which artworks were included in expositions as well as their availability and value in the art market. The term collector/dealer must often be used in combination since the distinction between both is often unclear; Heinz Berggruen, for instance, identified himself primarily as a collector, although he also sold quite a few Picassos through his Paris gallery. On the whole, however, dealers bought more often than collectors; and they bought works by artists they were already involved with. While some dealers were above all professional gallery owners; most were mainly collectors who sporadically sold items from their collection. Picassos first known dealer was Pere Manyach, whom he met as he travelled to Paris in 1900 when he was only 19 years old. As his representative, Manyach went about setting up exhibitions of his works at galleries in the French capital, such as Bethe Weills and Ambroise Vollards. Picassos first major exhibition took place in 1901 at Vollards. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Leonce Rosenberg came in after Vollard lost interest during the Cubist period, as they had a manifest preference for the new style. Like Vollard, later dealers often preferred the more conventional Neoclassical phase in Picasso. This was the case with Leonces brother, Paul Rosenberg. The book is organized chronologically and discusses the interaction between Picassos collectors, dealers and exhibitions as they take place. Once collectors acquired an artwork, their willingness to lend them to exhibitions or their necessity to submit them to auction had a direct impact on Picassos prominence in the art world.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the interaction between collectors, dealers and exhibitions in Pablo Picassos entire career. The former two often played a determining role in which artworks were included in expositions as well as their availability and value in the art market. The term collector/dealer must often be used in combination since the distinction between both is often unclear; Heinz Berggruen, for instance, identified himself primarily as a collector, although he also sold quite a few Picassos through his Paris gallery. On the whole, however, dealers bought more often than collectors; and they bought works by artists they were already involved with. While some dealers were above all professional gallery owners; most were mainly collectors who sporadically sold items from their collection. Picassos first known dealer was Pere Manyach, whom he met as he travelled to Paris in 1900 when he was only 19 years old. As his representative, Manyach went about setting up exhibitions of his works at galleries in the French capital, such as Bethe Weills and Ambroise Vollards. Picassos first major exhibition took place in 1901 at Vollards. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Leonce Rosenberg came in after Vollard lost interest during the Cubist period, as they had a manifest preference for the new style. Like Vollard, later dealers often preferred the more conventional Neoclassical phase in Picasso. This was the case with Leonces brother, Paul Rosenberg. The book is organized chronologically and discusses the interaction between Picassos collectors, dealers and exhibitions as they take place. Once collectors acquired an artwork, their willingness to lend them to exhibitions or their necessity to submit them to auction had a direct impact on Picassos prominence in the art world.

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