Search results for ""museum of modern art""

What is a print? This volume aims to answer that question by exploring the four basic printmaking techniques – woodcut, intaglio, lithography and screenprint – that have been used to create some of the most iconic images in modern art, from Paul Gauguin’s Noa Noa to AndyWarhol’s Marilyn Monroe. Illustrated with works fromThe Museum of Modern Art’s superlative collection of prints, the book is divided into four sections that provide an overview introduction to each technique. Each section presents approximately 40 prints that demonstrate the range and variety of a particular technique and illustrate its development over the last century. Extended captions highlight the distinctive visual effects unique to each technique, and examine issues specific to printmaking, such as the democratic ideas about distribution and social and political function. Featured works range from Edvard Munch’s radical woodcut experiments from the 1890s to KelleyWalker’s digital experiments of the last several years, and include prints by modern masters like Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró as well as those made by a roster of international contemporary artists who continue to explore and expand these techniques today.

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Correspondence detailing the collaboration-cum-collision between Frank Lloyd Wright and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, about the staging of a retrospective work, and the publication of a book to accompany it, is published here for the first time, including a controversial piece by Walter Curt Behrendt.

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What is the role of a museum in contemporary society? Recognising that a museum is a mediator between art and life, Snohetta's expansion to Mario Botta's 1995 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reimagines SFMOMA both as a new art experience and as a gateway into the city of San Fran- cisco itself. No longer an inward-looking shrine to the art object, a museum today must engage with its local conditions in a proactive way. This book presents Snohetta's most recent investigation into how architecture can nurture social engagement, foster relationships between art and people, and support the museum's mission to remain vital and magnetic. Accompanied by behind-the-scenes sketches, drawings, and photographs that detail the design and construction process, this book is in itself an intimate engagement with the building, its directors and curators, its inhabitants, and its creators.

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A nuanced look at how the Museum of Modern Art’s carefully curated treatment of Latin American architecture promoted U.S. political, economic, and cultural interests In the interwar period and immediately following World War II, the U.S. government promoted the vision of a modern, progressive, and democratic Latin America and worked to cast the region as a partner in the fight against fascism and communism. This effort was bolstered by the work and products of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Using modern architecture to imagine a Latin America under postwar U.S. leadership, MoMA presented blockbuster shows, including Brazil Builds (1943) and Latin American Architecture since 1945 (1955), that deployed racially coded aesthetics and emphasized the confluence of “Americanness” and “modernity” in a globalizing world. Delving into the heated debates of the period and presenting never-before-published internal documents and photos from the museum and the Nelson A. Rockefeller archives, Patricio del Real is the first to fully address MoMA’s role in U.S. cultural imperialism and its consequences through its exhibitions on Latin American art and architecture.

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Arthur Drexler (1921-1987) served as the curator and director of the Architecture and Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) from 1951 until 1986-the longest curatorship in the museum's history. Over four decades he conceived and oversaw trailblazing exhibitions that not only reflected but also anticipated major stylistic developments. Although several books cover the roles of MoMA's founding director, Alfred Barr, and the department's first curator, Philip Johnson, this is the only in-depth study of Drexler, who gave the department its overall shape and direction. During Drexler's tenure, MoMA played a pivotal role in examining the work and confirming the reputations of twentieth-century architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Exploring unexpected subjects-from the design of automobiles and industrial objects to a reconstruction of a Japanese house and garden-Drexler's boundary-pushing shows promoted new ideas about architecture and design as modern arts in contemporary society. The department's public and educational programs projected a culture of popular accessibility, offsetting MoMA's reputation as an elitist institution. Drawing on rigorous archival research as well as author Thomas S. Hines's firsthand experience working with Drexler, Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art analyses how MoMA became a touchstone for the practice and study of midcentury architecture.

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The extraordinary fecundity of the photographic medium between the first and second world wars can be persuasively attributed to the dynamic circulation of people, of ideas, of images, and of objects that was a hallmark of that era in Europe and the United States. Voluntary and involuntary migration, a profusion of publications distributed and read on both sides of the Atlantic, and landmark exhibitions that brought artistic achievements into dialogue with one another all contributed to a period of innovation that was a creative peak both in the history of photography and in the field of arts and letters. Few, if any, collections of photography capture the imaginative spirit of this moment as convincingly as the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art. This volume represents an important chapter in the rich and complex lives of these works, providing ample evidence of the brilliance of the photographers practicing on both sides of the Atlantic in the interwar period.

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This book is the first publication in English to examine the work of the celebrated Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón (1889–1954). Published to accompany the major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, it is vibrantly illustrated with Reverón’s highly tactile landscapes and figurative works. John Elderfield introductory essay analyses the artist’s work, while Luiz Pérez- Oramas places the artist in the context of Latin American art history.

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Published in conjunction with an exhibition of masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art at the High Museum, Atlanta, this catalogue features artwork produced during six key years, from 1913 to 2013. By concentrating on groundbreaking moments when major movements and radical strategies emerged, the book provides an overall sense of the innovations and achievements of the last century. With 1913 came new visual languages like Cubism and Futurism; 1929 focuses on the convergence of Surrealism and New Vision photography; in 1950 the emphasis was on large-scale abstract painting; in 1961 assemblage epitomized the merging of art and life; and 1988 witnessed the simultaneous embrace of identity politics and appropriation. A series of new commissions by three contemporary artists will represent the art to come in 2013. With its juxtapositions and disjunctions, Fast Forward shows an art history that unfolds messily but masterfully. Each of the six richly illustrated sections features a close reading of one major work from the period, complemented by an exploration of that year’s aesthetic zeitgeist. The publication also includes an introduction by Jodi Hauptman, Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, and a timeline illustrated with documentary photographs that provide historical context.

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Compass in Hand brings together approximately 250 works from the Judith Rothschild Foundation’s extraordinary gift of drawings to The Museum of Modern Art, in 2005. Formed by Harvey S. Shipley Miller, the Foundation’s trustee, the collection comprises over 2,500 works on paper by more than 650 artists and was conceived to be the widest possible cross-section of contemporary drawing made primarily within the past twenty years. An extended essay by Christian Rattemeyer highlights the primary curatorial concepts and categories of the collection and a conversation between Harvey S. Shipley Miller and Gary Garrels, former Chief Curator of the Department of Drawings at MoMA, recounts the objectives and processes through which the collection was originally formed, providing a unique panorama on the state of drawing today.

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Hailed as the most successful and inspiring exhibition of photography ever assembled The Family of Man opened at The Museum of Modern Art in January 1955. This book, the permanent embodiment of Steichen’s monumental exhibition, reproduces all of the 503 images that Steichen described as “a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world... Photographs, made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death... Photographs of lovers and marriage and child-bearing... Photographs concerned with man’s dreams and aspirations and photographs of the flaming creative forces of love and truth and the corrosive evil inherent in the lie.” This is a classic and inspiring work, in print for more than forty years.

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Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns each made a tremendous impact on modern art in the 20th century. As pioneers of revolutionary movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop art, they are key figures in the postwar transitions that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. These latest volumes in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favourite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guide readers through a dozen of each artist’s most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and the artist’s own life. These books provide a unique overview of the individuals who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and are excellent resources for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the modern canon.

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Published in conjunction with the exhibition Gauguin: Metamorphoses at The Museum of Modern Art, this volume explores the remarkable relationship between Paul Gauguin’s rare and extraordinary prints and transfer drawings, and his better-known paintings and sculptures in wood and ceramic. Created in several discreet bursts of activity from 1889 until his death in 1903, these remarkable works on paper reflect Gauguin’s experiments with a range of mediums, from radically ‘primitive’ woodcuts that extend from the sculptural gouging of his carved wood reliefs, to jewel-like watercolour monotypes and large, mysterious transfer drawings. Richly illustrated with approximately 190 works in a range of mediums, Gauguin: Metamorphoses explores the artist’s radically experimental approach to techniques and his pivotal place in the history of art. An introductory essay by Starr Figura considers the significance of Gauguin’s innovative printmaking and the relationship between his prints and works in painting and sculpture. Elizabeth Childs writes on Gauguin’s radical wood sculptures, using them as a touchstone from which to further investigate his peripatetic practice. An essay by Hal Foster addresses Gauguin’s ‘primitivism’ and its aesthetic and cultural implications. An essay by Erika Mosier offers a conservator’s insights into Gauguin’s unusual printmaking techniques.

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Over the past two decades, the art world has broadened its geographic reach and opened itself to new continents, allowing for a significant crosspollination of post-conceptual strategies and vernacular modes. Printed materials, both in innovative and traditional forms, have played a key role in this exchange of ideas and sources. This catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, examines the evolution of artistic practices related to prints, from the resurgence of ancient printmaking techniques – often used alongside digital technologies – to the worldwide proliferation of self-published artists’ books and ephemera. Print/Out features focused sections on ten artists and publishers, including Ai Weiwei, Ellen Gallagher, Martin Kippenberger, Lucy McKenzie, Museum in Progress, Superflex and Rirkrit Tiravanija, as well as rich illustrations of additional printed projects from the last twenty years by major artists such as Trisha Donnelly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Schütte, and Kelley Walker. An introductory essay by Christophe Cherix, Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA, offers an overview of this period with particular attention to new directions and strategies within an expanded field of printmaking.

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Hurry Up and Wait, the second volume in a new series of collaborations between artist Maira Kalman, author Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is a whimsical collection of images that capture people in motion – or not. In snapshots by the likes of Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, Helen Levitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans, some people stride forth, dash across streets, race on bicycles, and jump over puddles, while others form snaking lines, daydream on park benches, and linger on sidewalks with friends. So what’s the rush? With 11 new vibrant illustrations by Kalman inspired by photographs in MoMA’s collection, and thought-provoking prose by Handler that ponder the merits of action, Hurry Up and Wait is a spirited reflection on the daily rhythms of life.

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Pablo Picasso’s modest yet revolutionary cardboard and sheet metal Guitar sculptures (1912 and 1914, respectively) bracket an incandescent period of structural, spatial and material experimentation for the artist. In October 1912, while in what he described as ‘the process of imagining a guitar’, Picasso embraced the radical techniques of collage, construction, and mixedmedia painting, frequently combining traditional artists’ supplies – oil paint, charcoal, pastel, ink – with what were then unconventional materials, including cardboard, newspaper, wallpaper, sheet music and sand. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this volume situates Picasso’s Guitars within the constellation of objects that surrounded them in his studio, affording a fresh understanding of the unique material and historical qualities of the artist’s work in the years immediately prior toWorldWar I. An essay by Anne Umland incorporates photographs, correspondence, archival records and eyewitness accounts, providing insights into Picasso’s practice and the remarkable institutional history behind the acquisition of the two Guitar sculptures, both gifts to MoMA from the artist.

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During a career spanning half a century, Ileana Sonnabend helped shape the course of postwar art in Europe and America. Both a gallerist and a noted collector, Sonnabend promoted some of the most significant art movements of her time. Artists as varied as Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, A. R. Penck, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol worked with Sonnabend, whose support for difficult avant-garde work was legendary. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that pays tribute to Sonnabend in honour of the Sonnabend family’s gift of Robert Rauschenberg’s well-known Combine Canyon (1959) to The Museum of Modern Art in 2012, Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New features approximately fifty works presented in Sonnabend’s eponymous galleries in Paris and New York from 1962 through the late 1980s. A biographical essay by Leslie Camhi, artists’ recollections of working with Sonnabend, and individual entries on the selected works provide further reflection on Sonnabend’s taste and lasting influence.

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Published in conjunction with the second major exhibition The Museum of Modern Art is organizing for the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Van Gogh to Richter: People, Places and Things is an exploration of the myriad innovative ways modern artists have reinvented the traditional genres of portrait, still life and landscape from the 1880s to today. By looking closely at works in a range of media, the catalogue shows how these long-established categories have expanded and transformed from Post-Impressionism to Photorealism, reflecting changes in our conceptions of individuals, objects and spaces. The selection of works range from Frida Kahlo’s confident selfrepresentation to Gerhard Richter’s blurred likeness; from Paul Cézanne’s iconic tabletop arrangements to Jeff Koons’s commodified objects; from Vincent van Gogh’s roiling olive trees to Richard Long’s land art, each demonstrating how modernism’s radical new forms have continuously revitalized art history’s conventional subjects. An introductory text reflects on how these artists both inherit and reject the traditions of their adopted genres, and three essays provide close readings of a key portrait (Henri de Toulouse Lautrec’s La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge), still-life (Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl and Oranges), and landscape (Van Gogh’s The Olive Trees) from the dawn of modernism, and expand to consider subsequent works.

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Design has a history of violence. It can be an act of creative destruction and a double-edged sword, and yet professional discourse around design has been dominated by voices that only trumpet its commercial and aesthetic successes. Violence, defined here as the power to alter circumstances against the will of others and to their detriment, is ubiquitous in history and in contemporary society. In recent years, moreover, technology has introduced new threats and added dramatically to the many manifestations of violence. Design and Violence is an exploration of the relationship between the two that sheds light on the complex impact of design on the built environment and on everyday life, as well as on the manifestations of violence in contemporary society. Published to accompany an online experiment launched by The Museum of Modern Art in Autumn 2013, it brings together controversial, provocative, and compelling design projects with leading voices from a variety of fields. Each invited author responds to one object chosen by the curators – ranging from an AK-47 to a Euthanasia Rollercoaster, from plastic handcuffs to the Stuxnet digital virus – and invites dialogue, comments, reflection, and active, occasionally fierce, debate. Examples of questions posed include: Can we design a violent act to be more humane? How far can the state go to ‘protect’ its borders from immigration before it becomes an act of violence? Is violence ‘male’? These experimental and wide-ranging conversations bring together voices from the fields of art and design, science, law, criminal justice, ethics, finance, journalism, and social justice, making Design and Violence an invaluable resource for lively discussions and classroom curricula.

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Published to accompany the first museum exhibition in the United States of the work of German-born Grete Stern and Argentinean Horacio Coppola, From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires explores the individual accomplishments and parallel developments of two of the foremost practitioners of avantgarde photography in Europe and Latin America. The book traces their artistic development from the early 1930s, when the two met in Berlin at the Bauhaus, through the mid-1950s, by which time they had firmly established the foundations of modern photography in Buenos Aires. While twentieth-century photography has a fair number of important teams, Stern and Coppola are unique in that they managed to share their avant-garde ambition while maintaining their autographic styles and individual practices. The couple effectively imported the lessons of the Bauhaus to Latin America, and revolutionized the practice of art and commercial photography on both sides of the Atlantic by introducing such innovative techniques as photomontage, embodied in Stern’s protofeminist works for the women’s journal Idilio, and through Coppola’s experimental films and groundbreaking images for the photographic survey Buenos Aires 1936. Featuring a selection of newly translated original texts by Stern and Coppola, and essays by curators Roxana Marcoci and Sarah Meister and scholar Jodi Roberts, From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires is the first publication in English to examine the critical intersections that defined the notable careers of these two influential artists.

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