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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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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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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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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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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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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In 1955 The Museum of Modern Art staged Latin American Architecture since 1945, a landmark survey of modern architecture in Latin America. Published in conjunction with a new exhibition that revisits the region on the 60th anniversary of that important show, Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980 offers a complex overview of the positions, debates, and architectural creativity from Mexico and Cuba to the Southern Cone between 1955 and the early 1980s. The publication features a wealth of original materials that have never before been brought together to illustrate a period of self-questioning, exploration and complex political shifts that saw the emergence of the notion of Latin America as a landscape of development. Richly illustrated with architectural drawings, vintage photographs, sketches and newly commissioned photographs, the catalogue presents the work of architects who met the challenges of modernization with innovative formal, urbanistic and programmatic solutions. Today, when Latin America is again providing exciting and challenging architecture and urban responses, Latin America in Construction brings this vital post-war period to light.

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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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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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Jacob Lawrence Makes a World follows the creative adventures of the young artist as he finds inspiration in the vibrant colours and characters of his community in Harlem. From his mother’s apartment, where he is surrounded by brightly coloured walls with intricate patterns, to the streets full of familiar and not-so-familiar faces, sounds, rhythms and smells, to the art studio where he goes each day after school to transform his everyday world on an epic scale, Jacob takes readers on an enchanting journey through the bustling sights and sounds of his neighborhood. This vividly illustrated book about the artist Jacob Lawrence (1917- 2000) and his childhood in New York during the Harlem Renaissance is full of colourful street scenes that evoke the rich African-American culture and community captured by Lawrence in his landmark Migration series.

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To celebrate the 50th Anniversary and the 500th issue of the French film journal Positif - voila! A pre-eminent film magazine since its inception, the monthly Positif has always been at the forefront of critical thought, discerning trends in cinema as they are happening. With over fifty articles covering some of the most notable films of the past fifty years, this compendium reveals how the magazine accomplished that very feat throughout its existence. Read Bernard Chardere on Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados, Paul-Louis Thirard on Maurice Burnan, Robert Benayoun on Frederico Fellini, and other critics on flicks from The African Queen and Hiroshima mon Amour to Reservoir Dogs. With an introduction by Michel Ciment, Positif's editor, and articles by distinguished critics and practitioners, this compilation pays tribute to both the importance of films and the lasting value of Positif.

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D. W. Griffith, most famous for his controversial film Birth of a Nation, was one of the undisputed pioneers of the film industry. This illustrated monograph, first published in 1940, traces Griffith's rise from an obscure actor-poet to the most imaginative and resourceful film producer of his time. In this facsimile edition of this classic book, Iris Barry gives a critical evaluation of the man under whose aegis the basic principles of the art of motion pictures were first fully developed. As Barry writes in the book's conclusion, 'the men who make films today know who it was that taught them the basis of their craft. The American public, who for 45 years have so keenly enjoyed and supported the motion picture...are recognizing that in Griffith they have one of the greatest and most original artists of our time.'

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There is a whole category of design objects and prototypes designed in order to respond to situations of emergency, to protect the body and the mind from dangerous or stressful situations, and to provide a sense of comfort and safety. This book explores these objects, featuring designs and objects in areas such as protective gear, everyday safety devices, emergency shelters, life support equipment, bioengineering and emergency vehicles.

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Robert Gober rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. In the years since, his reputation has continued to grow, commensurate with the rich and complex body of work he has produced. Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive large-scale survey of the artist’s career to take place in the United States, this publication presents his works in all mediums, including individual sculptures and immersive sculptural environments, as well as a distinctive selection of drawings, prints, and photographs. Prepared in close collaboration with the artist, it traces the development of a remarkable body of work, highlighting themes and motifs that emerged in the early 1980s and continue to inform the artist’s work today. An essay by Hilton Als, and an in-depth chronology with extensive input from the artist himself, foregrounds images from Gober’s archives, including many neverbefore- published photographs of works in progress.

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American Modern presents a fresh look at The Museum of Modern Art’s holdings of American art made between 1915 and 1950, and considers the cultural preoccupations of a rapidly changing American society in the first half of the 20th century. Organized thematically and featuring paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and film, the publication brings together some of the Museum’s most celebrated masterworks, contextualizing them across mediums and amidst lesser-seen but revelatory works. The selection of works by artists such as Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Charles Burchfield and Stuart Davis include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still-life compositions and portraiture. Although varying in style and specifics, they share certain underlying visual and emotional tendencies. Cityscapes and factories are eerily emptied of the crush of residents that flocked to them, becoming both a celebration of clean modern form and technological advances, as in Sheeler’s paintings and photographs, and a reflection of anxiety about increasingly urban life-styles and their consequences for the American individual, as in Hopper’s iconic Night Windows. Equally silent rural scenes are no less haunting, but perhaps reflect a nostalgia for seemingly simpler times, and a celebration of early American traditions and values. Rather than an encyclopedic view of American art of the period, this volume is a focused look at the strengths and surprises of MoMA’s collection in an area that has played a rich and major role in the institution’s history.

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