Search results for ""Author Thomas Crow""

An investigation of the outsized influence of the Mod subculture on key figures of the 1960s London art scene Bonding over matters of taste and style, the ‘Mods’ of late 1950s London recognised in one another shared affinities for Italian-style suits, tidy haircuts, espresso bars, Vespa scooters and the latest American jazz. In this groundbreaking book, leading art historian Thomas Crow argues that the figure of the Mod exerted an influence beyond its assumed social boundaries by exemplifying the postwar metropolis in all of its excitement and complexity. Crow examines the works of key figures in the London art scene of the 1960s, including Robyn Denny, David Hockney, Pauline Boty, Bridget Riley and Bruce McLean, who shared and heightened aspects of this new and youthful urbanity. The triumphant arrival of the international counterculture forced both young Mods and established artists to reassess and regroup in novel, revealing formations. Understanding the London Mod brings with it a needed, up-to-date reckoning with the legacies of Situationism, Social Art History and Cultural Studies.Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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How California’s counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artistsThe 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period’s youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, “I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets.” And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.The result is a major new account of the counterculture’s enduring influence on modern art.

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How social upheavals after the collapse of the French Empire shaped the lives and work of artists in early nineteenth-century EuropeAs the French Empire collapsed between 1812 and 1815, artists throughout Europe were left uncertain and adrift. The final abdication of Emperor Napoleon, clearing the way for a restored monarchy, profoundly unsettled prevailing national, religious, and social boundaries. In Restoration, Thomas Crow combines a sweeping view of European art centers—Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels, and Vienna—with a close-up look at pivotal artists, including Antonio Canova, Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Francisco Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Thomas Lawrence, and forgotten but meteoric painters François-Joseph Navez and Antoine Jean-Baptiste Thomas. Whether directly or indirectly, all were joined in a newly international network, from which changing artistic priorities and possibilities emerged out of the ruins of the old.Crow examines how artists of this period faced dramatic circumstances, from political condemnation and difficult diplomatic missions to a catastrophic episode of climate change. Navigating ever-changing pressures, they invented creative ways of incorporating critical events and significant historical actors into fresh artistic works. Crow discusses, among many topics, David’s art and influence during exile, Géricault’s odyssey through outcast Rome, Ingres’s drive to reconcile religious art with contemporary mentalities, the titled victors over Napoleon all sitting for portraits by Lawrence, and the campaign to restore art objects expropriated by the French from Italy, prefiguring the restitution controversies of our own time.Beautifully illustrated, Restoration explores how cataclysmic social and political transformations in nineteenth-century Europe reshaped artists’ lives and careers with far-reaching consequences.Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

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"I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom," - Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970) said of his paintings. "If you are moved only by their colour relationships, then you miss the point." Throughout his career, Rothko was concerned with what other people experienced when they looked at his canvases. As his work shifted from figurative imagery to luminous fields of colour, his concern expanded to the setting in which his paintings were exhibited. In a series of analytic, personal, and even poetic essays by contemporary scholars, this volume explains how Rothko's most compelling creations elicit such profound and varied responses. This volume also reproduces, for the first time, Rothko's "Scribble Book," in which he jotted down his ideas on teaching art to children, and a sketchbook, both dating to the early years of the artist's career. "Seeing Rothko" includes essays by David Antin, Dore Ashton, Thomas Crow, John Elderfield, Briony Fer, Charles Harrison, Miguel Lopez-Remiro, Sarah Rich, and Jeffrey Weiss, an introduction by Glenn Phillips, and a bibliography of Rothko's own writings.

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Richard Brown Baker (1912–2002) began collecting works by emerging artists in the 1940s, becoming one of the first collectors to embrace both Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. He eventually amassed a collection of more than 1,600 works from the postwar period, including works by such groundbreaking American artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist, as well as European and Asian artists such as Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu, and Kurt Schwitters. Baker bequeathed the majority of his collection to the Yale University Art Gallery, and the balance to the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Highlighting 130 works, this is the first complete history of Baker's important collection. Essays by renowned art historians contextualize each of the five decades of Baker's collecting efforts, while entries on individual artists illustrate the remarkable scope of Baker's holdings. Throughout the publication, firsthand accounts from Baker's extensive personal journals describe his collecting activities within the dynamic New York art scene of the day.Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery

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The definitive study of the work of KAWS, one of the most influential and much-loved forces in contemporary art and culture KAWS is one of the most popular and recognizable contemporary artists, whose reach extends far beyond the art world into the realms of fashion, music, and popular culture at large. Beginning his career as a graffiti artist in the 1990s, KAWS has expanded his repertoire into painting, sculpture, drawing, product design, and augmented reality, together forming an artistic vision that unites all of these practices. KAWS has collaborated with some of the most prominent international brands, including Uniqlo, Comme des Garçons, Supreme, Nike, Dior, sacai, General Mills, and many more, and the book includes images of the artist’s studio by Jason Schmidt and a selection of KAWS’s previously unpublished preparatory drawings as well as work spanning his entire career, from his early graffiti days to his highly collectible vinyl toys, complex abstract paintings, and monumental public sculptures. Richly illustrated and featuring the most significant scholarship on his work to date, this book is a definitive study on the life and career of this extraordinary artist.

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How the Vietnam War changed American artBy the late 1960s, the United States was in a pitched conflict in Vietnam, against a foreign enemy, and at home—between Americans for and against the war and the status quo. This powerful book showcases how American artists responded to the war, spanning the period from Lyndon B. Johnson’s fateful decision to deploy U.S. Marines to South Vietnam in 1965 to the fall of Saigon ten years later.Artists Respond brings together works by many of the most visionary and provocative artists of the period, including Asco, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Corita Kent, Leon Golub, David Hammons, Yoko Ono, and Nancy Spero. It explores how the moral urgency of the Vietnam War galvanized American artists in unprecedented ways, challenging them to reimagine the purpose and uses of art and compelling them to become politically engaged on other fronts, such as feminism and civil rights. The book presents an era in which artists struggled to synthesize the turbulent times and participated in a process of free and open questioning inherent to American civic life.Beautifully illustrated, Artists Respond features a broad range of art, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, performance and body art, installation, documentary cinema and photography, and conceptualism.Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art MuseumExhibition ScheduleSmithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DCMarch 15–August 18, 2019Minneapolis Institute of ArtSeptember 28, 2019–January 5, 2020

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A fascinating view of the career of Bridget Riley, one of the most significant living artists, through her personal archive of her own works on paper Devoted exclusively to the artist’s works on paper, Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio explores the importance of these works not only as a means of visual experimentation but as works of art in their own right. Throughout her working life, Riley has preserved works of particular significance, creating an archive that records her constant artistic inquiry and development. The studies presented in the book are drawn entirely from this personal collection, with Riley’s own input. They demonstrate the artist’s progression from early figurative works, through the monochrome geometry of the 1960s, to the examination of color that has characterized the second half of her long career. The choice of work explores the themes that have absorbed Riley in different periods and highlights key influences: the importance of life drawing to her and the significance of artists such as Seurat and Mondrian. The book illustrates—literally and figuratively—the story of a productive and constantly experimental career, underpinned by drawing. Distributed for Modern Art PressExhibition Schedule:The Art Institute of Chicago (September 17, 2022–January 16, 2023)Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (January 29–May 7, 2023)The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (June 16–October 22, 2023)

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