Best of
Art-History

2004

Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art


Susan L. Aberth - 2004
    nineteen-year-old debutante, she escaped the stultifying demands of her wealthy English family by running away to Paris with her lover Max Ernst. She was immediately championed by Andre Breton, who responded enthusiastically to her fantastical, dark and satirical writing style and her interest in fairy tales and the occult. Her stories were included in Surrealist publications, and her paintings in the Surrealists' exhibitions. ended up in the 1940s as part of the circle of Surrealist European emigres living in Mexico City. Close friends with Luis Bunuel, Benjamin Peret, Octavio Paz and a host of both expatriate Surrealists and Mexican modernists, Carrington was at the centre of Mexican cultural life, while still maintaining her European connections. overview of this intriguing artist's rich body of work. The author considers Carrington's preoccupation with alchemy and the occult, and explores the influence of indigenous Mexican culture and beliefs on her production.

Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, and the Artists of Optical Illusion


Al Seckel - 2004
    Hofstadter make this 320-page, breathtaking collection the definitive book of optical illusions. Rings of seahorses that seem to rotate on the page. Butterflies that transform right before your eyes into two warriors with their horses. A mosaic portrait of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau made from seashells. These dazzling and often playful artistic creations manipulate perspective so cleverly that they simply outwit our brains: we can’t just take a quick glance and turn away. They compel us to look once, twice, and over and over again, as we try to figure out exactly how the delightful trickery manages to fool our perceptions so completely. Of course, first and foremost, every piece is beautiful on the surface, but each one offers us so much more. Some, including Sandro del Prete’s charming “Window Gazing,” construct illusionary worlds where normal conceptions of up, down, forward, and back simply have no meaning anymore. Others, such as Jos De Mey’s sly “Ceci n’est pas un Magritte,” create visual puns on earlier work. From Escher’s famous and elaborate “Waterfall” to Shigeo Fukuda’s “Mary Poppins,” where a heap of bottles, glasses, shakers, and openers somehow turn into the image of a Belle Epoque woman when the spotlight hits them, these works of genius will provide endless enjoyment and food for thought.

De Kooning: An American Master


Mark Stevens - 2004
    In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York school—just as American art began to dominate the international scene.Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figure—and his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank O’Hara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimer’s, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work.This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master.

Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art


Sean Cliver - 2004
    Longtime skateboard artist Sean Cliver put together this staggering survey of over 1,000 skateboard graphics from the last 30 years, creating an indispensable insiders' history as he did so.Alongside his own history, Sean has assembled a wealth of recollections and stories from prominent artists and skateboarders such as: Andy Howell, Barry McGee, Ed Templeton, Steve Caballero, and Tony Hawk.The end result is a fascinating historical account of art in the skateboard subculture, as told by those directly involved with shaping its legendary creative face.

Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell


Deborah Solomon - 2004
    Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn't have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America's most powerful and unusual modern artists.

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents


Nicholas Ganz - 2004
    Offering a unique insight into the very essence of graffiti and its creative explosion over the past thirty-five years, it takes us on an adventure throughout the Americas and Europe to almost every corner of the globe." With over 2,000 pictures of artworks from more than 180 international artists, no other book is remotely so comprehensive or up to date. Nicholas Ganz combines his own first-hand experiences with quotes from the artists themselves to offer a true insider's perspective to the key trends and style developments that have made graffiti what it is today: a global phenomenon.

Frida Kahlo: Life and Work


Helga Prignitz-Poda - 2004
    It consists of 143 paintings of small size, rarely larger than 20 x 30 inches, many of them now considered icons of 20th century art, most of them seIf-portraits. The reasons for this ostensible narcissism were closely bound up with Kahlo's biography, with the country and epoch in which she grew up, and with her decidedly eccentric character. It was no coincidence that the major enigmatic minds of the 16th century, namely Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, were among her favorite painters. For Frida Kahlo never displayed her wounds directly--be it the physical wounds caused by accidents and illness, or the psychological inner wounds. Hers is a subtly enciphered symbolic language, rich in metaphors drawn from almost all the world's cultures. Aztec myths of creation. Far Eastern and Classical Greek mythology, and popular Catholic beliefs all mingle in Kahlo's pictures with Mexican folklore and the stuff of quotidian life, with Marx and Freud. Andre Breton, one of her many admirers among the European avant-garde, once described Kahlo's art as a "colored ribbon round a bomb." Exotic and explosive, sensuous and fascinatingly vital in terms of artistic statement. Kahlo's paintings shed a complex and often frightening light on her soul, her "inner reality." as she called it. If the incessant commercial marketing of Kahlo's paintings over the past decade had obscured a clear view of her extraordinary oeuvre, this present monograph attempts to make amends "Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work returns to the heart, to 42 select masterpieces, reproduced in full and in detail. The painterly quality, the beauty, and theimmense wealth of details in Kahlo's paintings is laid out before the reader's eyes, as is the abyss in which the artist found herself.

Visions of Japan: Kawase Hasui's Masterpieces


Kawase Hasui - 2004
    Fully illustrated, this publication includes annotated descriptions for each work, as well as two essays on Hasui's life and work by Dr. Kendall H. Brown." Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) is considered the foremost Japanese landscape print artist of the 20th century, and he is most closely associated with the pioneering Shin-hanga (New prints) publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962). Hasui's work became hugely popular, not only in his native Japan but also in the West, especially in the United States. His valuable contribution to the woodblock print medium was acknowledged in 1956, a year before his death, when he was honoured with the distinction of 'Living National Treasure'.

Henry Darger: Disasters of War


Kiyoko Lerner - 2004
    The heroines are the seven Vivian sisters, Abbiennian princesses, who, after many battles, fires, tempests, and lurid torture, succeed in forcing the Glandelinians to give up their barbarous ways. "The Disasters of War" offers an affordable introduction to Darger's astonishing outsider oeuvre. It explains the technique, diligence and creativity of the works, illustrates details, and features a conversation between the Darger estate holder and the Kunstwerke's curator. A selection of 12 previously unpublished excerpts from "The Realms of the Unreal" and from Darger's diary explore the artist's favorite topics: thunderstorms and atrocities. With a biography and exhibition history.

Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe


Hunter Drohojowska-Philp - 2004
    But behind O'Keeffe's bold work and celebrity was a woman misunderstood by even her most ardent admirers. This large, finely balanced biography offers an astonishingly honest portrayal of a life shrouded in myth.

Egon Schiele: Landscapes


Rudolf Leopold - 2004
    While Schiele is largely revered for his provocative paintings of women, these works were just one aspect of his artistic expression. Schiele's landscapes represent an important facet of his career and are a valuable contribution to the school of European nature painting.

Rodin


Raphael Masson - 2004
    Revered today as the greatest sculptor of all time, whose expressive style prefigured that of the modernist movement and abstract sculpture, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) stirred up much controversy during his lifetime, and his sculptures often met with hostility and incomprehension from his peers. This monograph traces the life and work of the artist, from his youth and early poverty-stricken years of apprenticeship to his most celebrated works—The Kiss, The Thinker, The Gates of Hell—which have become veritable icons; and from his passionate and tumultuous relationship with Camille Claudel to his extraordinary studio, working methods, and sources of inspiration, and his final years marked by war and illness. Written by experts from the Musée Rodin in Paris, this richly illustrated volume includes drawings, watercolors, engravings, and archival documents, as well as specially commissioned photographs of Rodin’s sculptures, completed by a chronology, bibliography, and history of the Musée Rodin—housed in the artist’s former studio in the Hôtel Biron. Providing insight into the many facets of his creative genius, this new compact edition of the Musée Rodin’s definitive reference on the artist and his oeuvre coincides with museum’s reopening in September 2015.

MoMA Highlights: 350 Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York


Sarah Lucas - 2004
    Few institutions approach the richness of The Museum of Modern Art's holdings in painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, illustrated books, architectural models and drawings, graphic and industrial design, photography, film, video and multimedia installations. In this volume, some 350 highlights--23 of which are new to this edition--from the Museum's six curatorial departments, are interwoven to present a sumptuous and broadly chronological overview that takes readers from Post-Impressionism to contemporary art. Every work that was executed in color is reproduced in "MoMA Highlights" in vibrant hues, and each is accompanied by a brief commentary. Updated and revised, this book is the definitive guide to the broad scope of MoMA's collection. Also updated and expanded, The Museum of Modern Art recently reopened on November 20, 2004 in its newly designed building by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, MoMA is dedicated to being the foremost museum of modern art in the world. The ultimate purpose of the Museum declared at its founding, is to acquire the best modern works of art in all visual mediums.

All American Ads of the 20's


Steven Heller - 2004
    Speakeasies, luxury cars, women's liberation, bathtub gin and a booming economy kept the country's mood on the up-and-up. Women sheared off their locks and taped their chests, donning flapper dresses and dancing the Charleston until their legs gave out. Gangsters flourished in big cities and gangster movies flourished in Hollywood. It was the roaring twenties in America: a singular time in history, a lull between two world wars and the last gas before the nation's descent into the Great Depression. Forging the way into the future like a modern streamliner in a sea of antiquity, advertising in the 20s sought to bring avant-garde into the mainstream -- which it did with great success.

The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland


George Henderson - 2004
    Tribal Celtic-speaking warriors and farmers in what is now Scotland, the Picts were one of the major peoples of early medieval Britain, but their culture and their beautiful art have puzzled historians for centuries.George and Isabel Henderson’s acute analysis reveals an art form that both interacted with the currents of “Insular” art and was produced by a sophisticated society capable of sustaining large-scale art programs. The illustrations include specially commissioned drawings that help one understand the mysterious symbols found in the art.

Tim Biskup 100 Paintings Book


Tim Biskup - 2004
    The ensuing series, '100 paintings', was immediately popular amongst fans who appreciated the compact size and whimsical content of these mini-masterpieces.

Dumb Luck: The Idiotic Genius of Gary Baseman


Pao & Paws - 2004
    Now Dumb Luck, presents the first complete collection of his work, spanning more than ten years. According to Baseman himself, his art inhabits "that muddy spot where the line between genius and stupidity has been smudged beyond recognition." Dark and dopey, hokey and heartbreaking, his world is populated with freaky folks, maimed bunnies, weird wiener dogs, and anthropomorphic ice-cream cones that yearn and burn just like we do. Baseman's particular genius lies in capturing those ridiculous and all-too-often appalling aspects of being human. Hilarious testimony to the mind of its creator, Dumb Luck is both an art manifesto and a raw celebration of idiocy.

Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance


Geoffrey Batchen - 2004
    Available now in paperback, this spellbinding book features color photographs of eighty such objects, extraordinary works of art, part memento, part obsessive assemblage, created by ordinary people from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora


Irwin Chusid - 2004
    His designs pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins, who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. In the background, geometric doo-dads floated willy-nilly like a kindergarten toy room gone anti-gravitational. He wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring up flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives. Yet Flora's wondrous, childlike exuberance was subverted by a sinister tinge of the grotesque. As Flora confessed in a 1998 interview, "I got away with murder, didn't I?"This is the first collection of the marvelous, mischievous album art of Jim Flora (1914-1998). The book contains most of Flora's known covers (around 50), which command high prices on eBay. The gallery includes rarely seen illustrations and covers from Columbia's new release monthly, "Coda" (1943-1953), and some of Flora's post-WWII commercial magazine work. The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora also presents the first reprinting of Flora's fabled Little Man Press work (1939-1942). LMP was a small publishing imprint started by literary nutjob Robert Lowry, who recruited Flora as his graphic co-conspirator. Their LMP editions were printed at home in small runs of 125 to 400 copies. These books served as artistic rites of exorcism for Flora, as the budding illustrator's images veered from childish whimsy to disturbing freakishness. The book encapsulates Flora's life with a biographical profile, interviews, photos, autobiographical reminiscences, and tributes from Alex Steinweiss, Gene Deitch, Shag, R.O. Blechman, Tim Biskup, and others who knew Jim and/or were influenced by him.

Hokusai: Mountains and Water, Flowers and Birds


Matthi Forrer - 2004
    The Japanese artist Hokusai spent the second half of his life sketching and painting with tremendous energy nearly everything he saw, and this book focuses on one of his most productive periods, when the artist was in his seventies. This book presents fifty works of the artist's astonishing oeuvre. It includes selections from his renowned series of woodblock prints, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, including "In the Hollow of a Wave," "Shower below the Summit," and "South Wind at Clear Dawn." Also presented are images of flowers, waterfalls, bridges, birds, and fish, demonstrating the uniquely precise yet passionate quality of Hokusai's art. An expert on the artist's work, Matthi Forrer provides illuminating commentary on Hokusai's life and technique, offering insight into his enduringpopularity throughout the world.

Rubens (Taschen Basic Art)


Gilles Néret - 2004
    A shrewd businessman, international ambassador, passionate scholar, devout Catholic, and loving family man, Rubens--fluent in six languages, no less--cared about nothing more than painting, and thus devoted his life to it. Combining typical Flemish realism with classical themes influenced by the Renaissance, Rubens caught the attention of all of Europe and helped put his native Antwerp on the map. His very profitable workshop of accomplished artists, one of whom was Van Dyck, completed over 2000 works under his supervision.

Santiago Calatrava: The Complete Works


Alexander Tzonis - 2004
    This updated volume comprehensively examines this contemporary master’s career, including the architect’s furniture designs, sculpture, and drawings. His spectacular cultural and civic projects have secured Calatrava’s place in the pantheon of world-class 21st-century architects. Among these are the Athens Olympics Sports Complex; the Tenerife Concert Hall in the Spanish Canary Islands; the Valencia Science Museum, Planetarium, and Opera House, and the much-anticipated World Trade Center Transportation Hub. This newest edition introduces Calatrava’s latest triumphs, including the expressive Turning Torso tower in Sweden and the Chicago Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the US when built. A catalogue raisonne, detailed biography, and bibliography complete this comprehensive monograph.

Art Masterpieces to Color: 60 Great Paintings from Botticelli to Picasso


Dover Publications Inc. - 2004
    Artists of all ages are invited to add their own hues to Grant Wood's American Gothic, Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, Winslow Homer's Snap the Whip, as well as works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, and masterpieces by 51 other great artists.

Typologies of Industrial Buildings


Hilla Becher - 2004
    Their work can be linked to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement of the 1920s and to such masters of German photography as Karl Blossfeldt, August Sander, and Albert Renger-Patzsch. Their photographs of industrial structures, taken over the course of forty years, are the most important body of work in independent objective photography. A keynote of their contributions to "industrial archaeology" has been their creation of typologies of different types of buildings; this book, which accompanies a major retrospective exhibition, collects all known Becher studies of industrial building types and presents them as a visual encyclopedia.Each chapter is devoted to a different structure--water towers, coal bunkers, winding towers, breakers (ore, coal, and stone), lime kilns, grain elevators, blast furnaces, steel mills, and factory facades. These are organized according to typologies, most of which are presented as tableaux or suites of about twelve images each. The book contains close to 2000 individual images. The accompanying text by Armin Zweite is an essential art historical consideration of the Bechers' work. This ultimate Becher book stands as a capstone to the Bechers' unique body of work.

The Wizardry of Oz: The Artistry and Magic of the 1939 MGM Classic


Jay Scarfone - 2004
    Why does Oz endure? This lavishly illustrated book reveals all as it explores the making of the movie at the height of Hollywood's Golden Age. Details of Oz's costumes, make-up, and special effects are revealed, accompanied by rare stills, Technicolor test frames, over 300 colour and b and w illustrations (many published for the first time) and much, much more.

Paintings in the Musee d'Orsay


Serge Lemoine - 2004
    Since its opening in 1986 in a spectacularly renovated train station, the museum has welcomed more than 50 million visitors to its collection of works by Bouguereau, Courbet, Renoir, Cizanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Redon, Whistler, Gauguin, and other artists of the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. In this deluxe, oversize volume, the museum's director, Serge Lemoine, and his team of curators and specialists examine this extraordinary collection, ranging from the primacy of Academic painting through the shock of Impressionism to the rise of modern art. With 830 full-color illustrations of masterpieces by some of the world's best-loved artists, from Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles to Cizanne's Apples and Oranges, this is the definitive guide to paintings in one of the world's most popular museums. The exhaustive scope of this book and the richness of its imagery make Paintings in the Musie d'Orsay an essential addition to the bookshelves of all lovers of Impressionism and of great art."

Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico


Ilona Katzew - 2004
    Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics. The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.

Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers


Robert Flynn Johnson - 2004
    A collection of two hundred classic images by unidentified photographers features pieces that reflect the psychological insights of their creators or the transcendent qualities of depicted subjects, in a volume organized under such themes as birth, death, love, war, travel, and celebrity.

The Northern Renaissance


Jeffrey Chipps Smith - 2004
    Jeffrey Chipps Smith analyses key conceptual aspects of that period, such as the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of the Americas, offering the reader a penetrative insight into domestic, civic and court life as illustrated by some of the most exquisite artworks ever created.In the years from 1380 to 1580, northern Europe witnessed a period of artistic innovation as dynamic as contemporary developments in Italy. Stimulated by the atmosphere of intellectual curiosity about the individual and the natural world, Northern Renaissance artists mastered the new techniques of oil painting and printmaking to produce some of the most exquisite art of all time. It was also a period of political, religious and social turmoil, which profoundly changed the patronage, production and subject matter of art.At all levels of society art was a part of everyday life. Chipps Smith writes with tireless lucidity about these changes and the objects themselves. The works range from tapestries, altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts to churches, palaces and civic architecture. He discusses the audiences and functions of art from across nothern Europe, including not only Germany, France and the Low Countries, but also Britain and Austria. He explores major cultural and historic events such as the Protestant Reformation and the discovery of the Americas, to consider how they widened intellectual and religious horizons. The result is a book that reveals, with passion and erudition, how the Northern Renaissance masters laid the foundations for the art of succeeding centuries.

Wonderwater: Alice Offshore


Roni Horn - 2004
    Each volume comprises a text written in response to the same selection of Horn's titles/phrases: "19th C. Water; Cabinet Of; Dead Owl; Gurgles, Sucks, Echoes; Her, Her, Her and Her; Untitled (Yes); Water, Still; You are the Weather."The respondents are sculptor Louise Bourgeois, poet/writer Anne Carson, philosopher/writer Helene Cixous and film director/artist John Waters. Individually, these booklets embody the voice of each writer. Together they become the content of "Wonderwater (Alice Offshore)"--further extending the landscape of Roni Horn's art.

Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art


Jacquelynn Baas - 2004
    This shift began in the nineteenth century and is now pervasive in many aspects of everyday experience. In the arts especially, the increasing importance of process over product has promoted a profound change in the relationship between artist and audience. But while artists have been among the most perceptive interpreters of Buddhism in the West, art historians and critics have been slow to develop the intellectual tools to analyze the impact of Buddhist concepts. This timely, multi-faceted volume explores the relationships between Buddhist practice and the contemporary arts in lively essays by writers from a range of disciplines and in revealing interviews with some of the most influential artists of our time. Elucidating the common ground between the creative mind, the perceiving mind, and the meditative mind, the contributors tackle essential questions about the relationship of art and life.Among the writers are curators, art critics, educators, and Buddhist commentators in psychology, literature, and cognitive science. They consider the many Western artists today who recognize the Buddhist notion of emptiness, achieved through focused meditation, as a place of great creative potential for the making and experiencing of art. The artists featured in the interviews, all internationally recognized, include Bill Viola, and Ann Hamilton. Extending earlier twentieth-century aesthetic interests in blurring the boundaries of art and life, the artists view art as a way of life, a daily practice, in ways parallel to that of the Buddhist practitioner. Their works, woven throughout the book, richly convey how Buddhism has been both a source for and a lens through which we now perceive art.

Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties


James Meyer - 2004
    Artists known as minimalists have distinctively different methods and points of view. This highly readable history of minimalist art shows how artists as diverse as Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Anne Truitt came to be designated as minimalists during a series of exhibitions in the 1960s.“I can think of no book that even undertakes a comparable art historical account—not merely tracing a movement year by year, but showing how the movement’s consciousness of itself emerged.”—Arthur Danto, Times Literary Supplement“Many skeptics deem the sixties too close for comfort and hence not suitable for an art history in the grand tradition. James Meyer proves them wrong. Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties establishes a historical precision and seriousness that many have thought lacking in the recent wave of writing about postwar American art.”—Christine Mehring, Art Journal“By far the best account to date of Minimalism’s development and the essential point of departure for all future research on the subject.”—Pepe Karmel, Art in America

Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 2: 1945 to the Present (College Text Edition with Art 20 CD-ROM)


Hal Foster - 2004
    In this groundbreaking and original work of scholarship, four of the most influential and provocative art historians of our time have come together to provide a comprehensive history of art in the twentieth century, an age when artists in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere sought to overturn the traditions of the past and expectations of the present in order to invent new practices and forms. Adopting a unique year-by-year approach, Foster, Krauss, Bois, and Buchloh present more than 50 short essays, each focusing on a crucial event--the creation of a seminal work, the publication of an artistic manifesto, the opening of a major exhibition--to tell the story of the dazzling diversity of practice and interpretation that characterizes the art of the period. All the turning points and breakthroughs of modernism and postmodernism are explored in depth, as are the frequent and sustained antimodernist reactions that proposed alternative visions of art and the world. Illustrating the authors' texts are more than 300 of the most important works of the century, many reproduced in full color. The book's flexible structure and extensive cross-referencing allow readers to follow any one of the many narratives that unfold, whether that be the history of a medium such as photography or painting, the development of art in a particular country, the influence of a movement such as surrealism or feminism, or the emergence of a stylistic or conceptual category like abstraction or minimalism. Boxes give further background information on the important figures and issues. In their insightfulintroductions, the four authors explain the different methods of art history at work in the book, providing the reader with the conceptual tools for further study. A roundtable discussion at the close of the book considers the questions raised by the preceding decades and look ahead to the art of the future. A glossary of terms and concepts completes this extraordinary volume. 300 illustrations, 200 in color. This college edition also includes the "Art 20" CD-ROM.

Dan Flavin: A Retrospective


Michael Govan - 2004
    The simplicity and systematic character of his extraordinary work, along with his relentless exploration and ingenious discovery of an art of light, established him as a progenitor and chief exponent of Minimalism. Uniquely situated outside the mediums of painting and sculpture, the majority of Flavin’s work after 1963 consists of art made from light.This landmark book—the first retrospective publication of Flavin’s art since 1969—includes around 45 of the artist’s most important light works, beginning with a pivotal series of constructed boxes with attached incandescent or fluorescent lights, called “icons,” made from 1961 to 1963. Works spanning Flavin’s career are discussed in depth, including examples that integrate light with the surrounding space and show the particular characteristics of blended fluorescent light, large-scale installations, and constructed corridors. The book also includes reproductions of Flavin’s drawings, which show his thought processes and working methods.New scholarship and interpretation of Flavin’s work appears in the form of three critical essays by experts, an extensive chronology, comprehensive bibliography, and exhibition history. In addition, Flavin’s seminal text “‘. . . in daylight or cool white.’ an autobiographical sketch,” originally published in Artforum in 1965, is included.Exquisitely designed and produced, with many new stunning color reproductions, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective captures the brilliance of this artist’s contribution to and challenges of the art world and will be the authoritative volume on Flavin for years to come.

Seventeenth Century Art and Architecture


Ann Sutherland Harris - 2004
    The text engagingly and effectively combines analytical discussions with an expansive collection of vivid, illuminating illustrations that teach students the major developments of art, painting, and architecture that emerged from seventeenth-century Western Europe, as well as the socio-political and cultural background of the period.

The Art of the Islamic Garden


Emma Clark - 2004
    The principal elements are water and shade; they are also characterized by the chahar-bagh: a four-fold pattern, constructed around a central pool or fountain, with four streams flowing toward the four corners of the earth. Aesthetically, this design provides a striking feature in itself; however, a true appreciation of an Islamic garden is only ever complete with an understanding of the spiritual symbolism manifested in its design and planting. This lavish book provides both an intellectual guide to the symbolism of the Islamic garden and a practical guide to its component parts, with recommendations for suitable trees, shrubs, and flowers and advice on creating an Islamic garden in cooler climates. Garden designer Emma Clark teaches Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts at The Prince’s Foundation, London.

David: Five Hundred Years


Antonio Paolucci - 2004
    In celebration, Italy has restored this sculpture to its original splendor--and David: Five Hunded Years is the first to capture each step of the way.What started as a solid block of granite, emerged as one of the most significant statues in the world. After half a millennium of exposure, David has undergone a complete restoration to revive his original splendor. This magnificent depiction reveals the classical man as he looked when Michelangelo originally laid down his chisel in 1504. Radically new photographic techniques, including new photographic zooms, and color accuracy capture in detail every aspect of the restored masterpiece, all accompanied by illuminating background information from prominent art historian Antonio Paolucci.Art lovers, historians, or just those who appreciate a true beauty will not be able to resist such a brilliant addition to their collection.

Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)


Helen C. Evans - 2004
    During the last centuries of the Empire of the Romans, Byzantine artists created exceptional secular and religious works that had an enduring influence on art and culture. In later years, Eastern Christian centres of power emulated and transformed Byzantine artistic styles, the Islamic world adapted motifs drawn from Byzantium's imperial past, and the development of the Renaissance from Italy to the Lowlands was deeply affected by Byzantine artistic and intellectual practices. This spectacular book presents hundreds of objects in all media from the late thirteenth through mid-sixteenth centuries. embroidered silk textiles, richly gilded metalwork, miniature icons of glass, precious metals and gemstone, and elaborately decorated manuscripts. In the accompanying text, renowned scholars discuss the art and investigate the cultural and historical interaction between these major cultures: the Christian and Islamic East and the Latin West. Continuing the story of the critically acclaimed Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261, this book, the first to focus exclusively on the last centuries of the Byzantine era, is a highly anticipated publication that will not be superceded for generations.

Prosthetic Gods


Hal Foster - 2004
    T. Marinetti, Max Ernst, and others.How to imagine not only a new art or architecture but a new self or subject equal to them? In Prosthetic Gods, Hal Foster explores this question through the works and writings of such key modernists as Gauguin and Picasso, F. T. Marinetti and Wyndham Lewis, Adolf Loos and Max Ernst. These diverse figures were all fascinated by fictions of origin, either primordial and tribal or futuristic and technological. In this way, Foster argues, two forms came to dominate modernist art above all others: the primitive and the machine. Foster begins with the primitivist fantasies of Gauguin and Picasso, which he examines through the Freudian lens of the primal scene. He then turns to the purist obsessions of the Viennese architect Loos, who abhorred all things primitive. Next Foster considers the technophilic subjects propounded by the futurist Marinetti and the vorticist Lewis. These new egos are further contrasted with the bachelor machines proposed by the dadaist Ernst. Foster also explores extrapolations from the art of the mentally ill in the aesthetic models of Ernst, Paul Klee, and Jean Dubuffet, as well as manipulations of the female body in the surrealist photography of Brassai, Man Ray, and Hans Bellmer. Finally, he examines the impulse to dissolve the conventions of art altogether in the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, the scatter pieces of Robert Morris, and the earthworks of Robert Smithson, and traces the evocation of lost objects of desire in sculptural work from Marcel Duchamp and Alberto Giacometti to Robert Gober. Although its title is drawn from Freud, Prosthetic Gods does not impose psychoanalytic theory on modernist art; rather, it sets the two into critical relation and scans the greater historical field that they share.

The Van Gogh File: The Myth and the Man


Kenneth Wilkie - 2004
    With evidence accumulated from Van Gogh's European life, from Belgium, the Netherlands, England, and France, this illuminating account reveals sources of his unhappiness, terrible childhood illnesses, personal relationships, and even introduces his possible grandchildren. Fully illustrated with more than 50 photographs and art reproductions, these new facts show the seeds of Van Gogh's inspiration and shine light on one of the most enigmatic figures of 19th-century art.

Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel


Lucinda Hawksley - 2004
    Saved from the drudgery of a working-class existence by a young Pre- Raphaelite artist, Lizzie Siddal rose to become one of the most famous faces in Victorian Britain and a pivotal figure of London's artistic world, until tragically ending her life in 1862.

Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights


Prestel Publishing - 2004
    This poster-and-book combination provides clear evidence of why Bosch's triptych continues to fascinate and intrigue us nearly five hundred years after its creation. The book offers stunningly close examination of the work after its recent restoration. Accompanied by a brief, fascinating essay that offers cultural and historical background on Bosch and his art, these numerous details allow readers to appreciate fully the breadth and magnificence of Bosch's achievement. A detachable poster of the painting, suitable for framing, makes this package an extraordinary gift for the artist's many devotees.

Vija Celmins


Robert Gober - 2004
    Primarily a painter of still life and landscape, Celmins is associated with 1960s Pop art and often uses photographs to create her signature 'impossible images', such as just-fired revolvers or exploding airplanes.Temporarily abandoning painting in the 1970s, Celmins turned her attention to drawing exquisite graphite seascapes and other vast natural landscapes. Like the night skies she began in the 1980s, the artist explains, hers are 'unbound spaces' wrestled into two-dimensions. As with her later spider webs, Celmins often blurs the boundaries of photography, painting, printmaking and drawing.Now based in New York, Celmins has exhibited widely since the 1960s in museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the ICA, London; Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. In the Interview noted artist Robert Gober speaks with Celmins about their differing studio habits and the sources behind her work. Critic Lane Relyea surveys the artist's long and unique career with emphasis on her formative early paintings. Art historian and theorist Briony Fer in her Focus takes a deep look into Night Sky no. 19 (1998). In parallel to Celimins' own limitless depiction of the world, the Artist's Choice is Jorge Luis Borges' tale Funes the Memorious, about the vastness of human memory. Arists Writings include excerpts from her important 1991 interview with artist Chuck Close.

Italian Frescoes: High Renaissance and Mannerism 1510-1600


Julia Kliemann - 2004
    Authors Julian Kliemann and Michael Rohlmann pay equal attention to religious frescoes, which in this period extended and enriched a venerable tradition, and secular imagery. During the cinquecento in Italy hardly a single opulent residence, villa, or palace belonging to a cardinal or aristocrat was not decorated in some fashion with mural painting, which developed in an unprecedented variety of forms.

The Cultural World of Eleonora Di Toledo


Konrad Eisenbichler - 2004
    Her patronage of some of the leading artists of the time, her support of newly arrived Jesuit preachers, her involvement in charitable activities, her unfailing devotion to her husband and his policies, not to mention her successful farming and business ventures are only some of the areas where her influence was unambiguously exercised and felt. She also provided the House of Medici with a full stable of children to re-invigorate the failing family line, ensure male succession even in the face of unexpected calamities, and provide enough females to establish marriage connections with a variety of noble and ruling houses in Italy. In spite of all these contributions, Eleonora has attracted little attention from scholars. This apparent disinterest may be a factor of Eleonora's personal style, or of the bad press that, as a Spanish noblewoman, she quickly received from her Florentine subjects, or of modern antipathy for some of the basic characteristics of ducal Florence. An examination of her impact on Tuscany is long overdue. In fact, a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the duchess can shed a more profound light not only on her as a person, or on her impact on Tuscan culture in the sixteenth century, but also on the contribution of female consorts to the vitality of a successful early-modern state. The essays collected here bring together a variety of scholars working in various disciplines. While many of the articles take their cue from art history (a natural reflection of the innovative research recent art historians have carried out on the duchess), they also reach out towards other disciplines - political history, literature, spectacle, and religion to mention just a few. In so doing, they expand our understanding of Eleonora's place in her society and reveal a very complex, determined, and capable woman.

Design!: A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists Craftspeople


Steven Aimone - 2004
    Through hundreds of photographs and accessible text, even the most abstract design concepts—such as rhythm and balance—become easy to visualize and understand. Find out how to manipulate visual elements, work within the design space, create attractive symmetrical arrangements, establish a focal point, and more. Examples of good design range from ceramics, jewelry, architecture, and painting to clothing, hair styling, gardening, sushi, and vintage movie posters. Plus, guided exercises help users grasp each principle.

Holy Cards


Sandra Di Pasqua - 2004
    Given as remembrances at wakes and funerals, communions and confirmations, holy cards are also a widely popular-and highly collectible-form of folk art. This handsome volume, the only book available on the subject, is both a rich illustrated survey of this devotional art and a gallery of saints organized thematically along with brief biographies, attributes, and powers.Prophets and angels, disciples and evangelists, martyrs and hermits, visionaries and mystics are among the religious figures in Catholicism represented here-in exquisite turn-of-the-century depictions that are at times dramatic or disturbing, at times moving or comforting. Barbara Calamari and Sandra Di Pasqua, who also collaborated on Novena and Holy Places, explain the often enigmatic symbolism in these cards in a beautiful book that makes an ideal gift for first communion, confirmation, or graduation. Author Bio: Barbara Calamari is a freelance writer who has worked in both film and television. Sandra Di Pasqua is a graphic designer and art director. Both authors live in New York City.

The Complete Collection of Antiquities from the Cabinet of Sir William Hamilton


Sebastian Schütze - 2004
    Though the romance between his wife Lady Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson tends to eclipse Sir William s own activities, his work as a scientist and a classicist made major contributions to the study of Pompei, Herculaneum, and Mt Vesuvius.As an expert in ancient art, Hamilton also built up aninvaluable collection of ancient Greek vases, subsequently sold to the British Museum in London in 1772. Before the pieces were shipped off to England, Hamilton commissioned Pierre-Francois Hugues d'Hancarville, an adventurous connoisseur and art dealer, to document the vases in words and images. The resulting catalog, published in four volumes and known asLes Antiquites d'Hancarville, represents aneoclassical masterpiece. Never before had ancient vases been represented with such meticulous detail and sublime beauty.With this reprint, TASCHEN revives d'Hancarville s masterful catalog for a contemporary audience, reproducing in exacting detail the same pristine images that sparkedEurope's love affair with the classical style. About the Series: Bibliotheca Universalis Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing.Bibliotheca Universalisbrings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Bookworm s delight never bore, always excite! Text in English, French, and German "

Ed Ruscha and Photography


Ed Ruscha - 2004
    This volume thoroughly traces Ruscha's engagement with photography and reveals how his photographic works shed new light on his career as a whole. In preparing this volume and the related exhibition, the artist has worked closely with Whitney Museum curator Sylvia Wolf to share his artistic process and reveal the importance of photography to his art in other mediums. Wolf remarks, "Ed Ruscha's books are among the most original achievements in the art of the 1960s and 1970s, and are the photographic works he is most known for. There have, however, been pictures tucked away in boxes in his studio and photographs that are unpublished or rarely seen, which shed light on Ruscha's career as a whole." This volume considers all facets of Ruscha's photographic production, selecting from the Whitney Museum's exceptional recent acquisition of a major body of the artist's original photographic works and unique early pieces.Included are reproductions of original prints from Ruscha's photographic books Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires and Milk, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles, Royal Road Test, Babycakes with Weights, and Real Estate Opportunities, as well as several photographs Ruscha never published, in particular 16 images from Twentysix Gasoline Stations not included in the book. Unique vintage photographs from a seven-month tour of Europe in 1961 are featured; photographs from Austria, England, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia feature many motifs and stylistic elements that have marked Ruscha's work over the past 40 years, in particular his interest in typography and signage, and his strong graphic sensibility.

Book of Hours: Illuminations by Simon Marmion


Simon Marmion - 2004
    Commissioned by wealthy men and women for their private religious devotions, these beautifully decorated books contain prayers for the eight canonical hours of the day.This book reproduces seventeen jewel-like miniature paintings by Simon Marmion from one of the finest Books of Hours in the Huntington Library's collections. Marmion, one of the most accomplished illuminators of the fifteenth century, produced this example sometime between 1450 and 1475. The French manuscript Book of Hours displays a number of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary. The book's introduction discusses the history and meaning of Books of Hours, both as books of devotion and as works of art.

Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy


Andrea Bayer - 2004
    This heritage was of considerable importance in northern Italian art for two centuries, finding its greatest expression in the works of Caravaggio and influencing the course of Baroque painting in Rome and eventually elsewhere in Europe. Painters of Reality identifies the salient characteristics of this naturalistic strand in Lombard art. Building on the scholarship of renowned art historian Roberto Longhi, the authors reexamine the subject in light of subsequent literature. Essays range from broad discussions of naturalism in Lombard paintings and drawings (including a fresh consideration of works by Caravaggio) to more specialized treatments of Leonardo's influence, the schools of painting centered in Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and Milan, and Caravaggio's most notable successors in northern Italy. Moroni, and Ceruti and other significant but less widely known figures are represented. With its devotion to recording the unvarnished truth of daily life, its meticulously observed still lifes and landscapes, and its dramatic use of highly focused light to define form, Lombard art was hugely influential in its time and still holds much appeal today. This book is the catalogue of an exhibition jointly organized by the Associazione Promozione Iniziative Culturali di Cremona and The Metropolitan Museum of Art and held in Cremona (February 14 to May 2, 2004) and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (May 23 to August 14, 2004).

Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics


Gottfried Semper - 2004
    A richly illustrated survey of the technical arts (textiles, ceramics, carpentry, masonry), Semper's analysis of the preconditions of style forever changed the interpretative context for aesthetics, architecture, and art history. Style, Semper believed, should be governed by historical function, cultural affinities, creative free will, and the innate properties of each medium. Thus, in an ambitious attempt to turn nineteenth-century artistic discussion away from historicism, aestheticism, and materialism, Semper developed in Der Stil a complex picture of stylistic change based on scrutiny of specific objects and a remarkable grasp of cultural variety. Harry Francis Mallgrave's introductory essay offers an account of Semper's life and work, a survey of Der Stil, and a fresh consideration of Semper's landmark study and its lasting significance."

Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind


Charles Nicholl - 2004
    At times a painter, sculptor, inventor, draftsman, and anatomist, Leonardo's life cannot easily be summarized. And yet, Nicholl skillfully traces the artist's early days as an illegitimate child in Tuscany; his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in Florence; his service with some of the most powerful Renaissance families; his relationships with Michelangelo and Machiavelli; and his final days at the French royal court. In addition, Nicholl looks beyond the well-known stories of Leonardo's famous masterpieces, and gives us a glimpse into the artist's everyday life. We learn of Leonardo's penchant for jokes, his fascination with flight, his obsessive note making, and even what he ate. Nicholl weaves these details together in a fascinating portrait that goes far towards revealing the enigmatic figure who continues to fascinate present-day readers.

The Reformation of the Image


Joseph Leo Koerner - 2004
    The text of the Bible, the Word of God itself, Luther argued, revealed the only true path to salvation—not priestly ritual and saintly iconography.But if words—not iconic images—showed the way to salvation, why didn’t religious imagery during the Reformation disappear along with indulgences? The answer, according to Joseph Leo Koerner, lies in the paradoxical nature of Protestant religious imagery itself, which is at once both iconic and iconoclastic. Koerner masterfully demonstrates this point not only with a multitude of Lutheran images, many never before published, but also with a close reading of a single pivotal work—Lucas Cranach the Elder’s altarpiece for the City Church in Wittenberg (Luther’s parish). As Koerner shows, Cranach, breaking all the conventions of traditional Catholic iconography, created an entirely new aesthetic for the new Protestant ethos.In the Crucifixion scene of the altarpiece, for instance, Christ is alone and stripped of all his usual attendants—no Virgin Mary, no John the Baptist, no Mary Magdalene—with nothing separating him from Luther (preaching the Word) and his parishioners. And while the Holy Spirit is nowhere to be seen—representation of the divine being impossible—it is nonetheless dramatically present as the force animating Christ’s drapery. According to Koerner, it is this "iconoclash" that animates the best Reformation art.Insightful and breathtakingly original, The Reformation of the Image compellingly shows how visual art became indispensable to a religious movement built on words.

A World of Necklaces: Africa, Asia, Oceania, America


Anne Leurquin - 2004
    The collection attests to the rigour and taste with which each item was selected during a long quest in pursuit of the most beautiful, authentic and original pieces of jewellery. The forms, colours and materials of these necklaces never cease to astonish and enchant, and the modernity of certain pieces has not escaped the notice of contemporary jewellers. The book takes us on a long journey from Africa to Asia, and Oceania to America.Describing necklaces means entering a universe that is both feminine and masculine. Although generally only women wear necklaces, as in the Maghreb, in other societies like the Fulani-Bororo of Mali, men paint and adorn themselves, for ritual ceremonies, as well. The inherited function of jewellery in these traditional societies helps to explain these differing attitudes. Jewellery rarely serves a solely aesthetic purpose as it is primarily moored in the social, religious and political contexts which lend it meaning. In North Africa, for example, necklaces constitute part of a bride's dowry, but in most Oceanic societies they can serve as the stakes in an extremely sophisticated bartering system. Furthermore, it is sometimes difficult for us to imagine that in the practice of ancient Hinduism, devotees might hang their most precious jewellery on trees next to the temple of their chosen god.Throughout this book the author endeavours to unravel the intricate uses of these necklaces, describes their materials, and emphasizes the originality of artisans whohave enriched a cultural patrimony long threatened by extinction, which the Ghysels collection is helping to preserve.The book includes more than 350 annotated photographs, a glossary, an index, maps and a general bibliography.

Gauguin Tahiti


George T.M. Shackelford - 2004
    A banker and "Sunday painter," he left behind family and homeland and sailed to the South Seas, seeking a life "in ecstasy, in peace, and for art." Gauguin Tahiti, the first major retrospective of the artist's work in fifteen years, offers an in-depth study of the fabled Polynesian years that have so defined our image of the painter. Alongside essays by leading American and French critics on every aspect of Gauguin's art, from the legendary canvases to his sculptures, ceramics and innovative graphic works, are discussions of the Polynesian society, culture and religion that helped shape them; an in-depth biographical narrative of the artist's life, with the many epiphanies, frustrations and discoveries that make his time in the South Seas one of the most mythologically potent episodes in the history of Western art; and a chronicle of his changing fortunes in the century since his death. At the center of it all is Gauguin's 1897 masterpiece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, the summation and crowning glory of his mature career, presented with unprecedented depth and authority. Over one hundred years later, Gauguin remains one of the most enigmatic and attractive figures of 19th-century art, the very pivot of modernism, and Gauguin Tahiti finally portrays this crucial period of his life in all its color and drama.

Panamarenko: For Clever Scholars, Astronomers And Doctors


Panamarenko - 2004
    He analyzes the secrets of the universe, gravity, and other energetic mysteries, and formulates both logical and well-considered solutions. His work is poetic, the result of a seamless coalescence of artistic skill and scientific research; the outcome of which can take the form of a flying saucer, backpack helicopter, flying carpet, zeppelin, solar powered car, submarine, or prehistoric mechanical bird. Each of his spectacular constructions possesses not only a peculiar beauty and naive playfulness, but also a degree of conspicuous consideration. In 2001, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent held a retrospective of Panamarenko's work, for which the artist designed and wrote this oversized catalogue--a work of art in its own right.

The Infinite Line: Re-making Art After Modernism


Briony Fer - 2004
    Examining the work of major artists of the period—including Mark Rothko, Piero Manzoni, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Blinky Palermo, and Louise Bourgeois—Briony Fer focuses on the overriding tendency toward repetition and seriality that occurred at the moment of modernism’s decline, gained ground in its aftermath, and continues to shape much of the art seen today.Although seriality is mainly associated with American artists and with Minimalism, Fer broadens our understanding of it, looking at Minimalist seriality as one crucially important strategy among several. She argues that repetition becomes generative of new modes and habits of making and looking; at stake is how we think about the artwork in relation to both temporality and subjectivity. Paying close attention to specific artworks, this timely critical reassessment offers a fresh perspective on a wide range of familiar and less familiar art.

Photographs


Gabriel Orozco - 2004
    His art has taken the form of sculpture, installations, drawing, photography, and video. Orozco photographs things as he finds them, "self-arranged" on the streets, or in found situations in which he has gently intervened. Previous publications of his work have highlighted the interconnectedness between the various aspects of his work, or have focused solely on his sculptures or videos. This book is the first ever to focus solely on his photographs, with an accompanying introductory text and biographical material on the artist. It clarifies the distinction between the photographs that Orozco considers as independent artworks and the often equally beautiful photographs which he regards as documentation of sculptures or performances pieces, wherein the latter are the actual artwork.

Gilbert Stuart


Carrie Rebora Barratt - 2004
    This handsome book highlights Stuart’s achievements by presenting more than ninety portraits of exceptional quality, ranging from the early works he produced in Newport, Rhode Island, to those he executed just before his death in Boston.Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles show how Stuart developed and maintained a distinctive portrait style, tailoring his portrayals to fit his subjects. They trace the development of his art from his hometown of Newport, where he proved his talent, to his years in London and Dublin, where he mastered the techniques of the English late-eighteenth-century Grand Manner, to his return to America (no longer the Colonies but now the United States), where he dealt with clients in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. The authors provide a short essay about Stuart in each of the sites of his production, which introduces the works painted there. There is also a special section devoted to Stuart’s famous and popular portraits of Washington, the so-called Vaughan, Athenaeum, and Lansdowne portraits. These works are discussed in terms of patronage, technique, chronology, and interpretation.The most comprehensive book on the artist’s work to date, Gilbert Stuart is essential for anyone who admires American art and history.

Pre-Raphaelite Painting Techniques


Jacqueline Ridge - 2004
    Extensively illustrated, this book includes previously unseen images and presents a unique opportunity for the reader to examine these paintings as closely as a conservator and to uncover the secrets of the Pre-Raphalite painters.

Aleksandr Rodchenko: Experiments for the Future, Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings


Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko - 2004
    The word "experiment" was a keyword for the artist, who conceived of his multimedia oeuvre as one huge experiment. Referred to by his friends and contemporaries as "a scout of the future." Rodchenko sought new paths in graphic design and painting, sculpture and architecture, poster design and cinema, photography and book design, and furniture and theatre design. The first chapter in this volume covers the early life of Rodchenko and relates to the time of his studies in the Kazan art school. His diaries from 1911-15 relate the vivid atmosphere of the school, explain the artist's early tastes for theatrical, oriental and medieval motifs, and recall the moments when he first met Varvara Stepanova, his lifetime partner and fellow artist. The second chapter covers the most active years of the Russian avant-garde movement: 1916-21. Here Rodchenko is linked to Vladimir Tatlin and his evolution as a non-objective painter comes about. His writings from this period explore his interest in the artistic process, in the way ideas are born, and often make comparisons with other artistic trends of the time: suprematism, cubism, and impressionism. The third chapter runs through the 20th and the height of the constructivist movement, when Rodchenko became one of the leading designers of the time. This chapter is the most comprehensive, featuring writings dedicated to industrial design education, graphic design, advertising, photomontage and photography. The fourth chapter reveals the artist's mood and the general Soviet culture situation of the 30s, a time of politicalchange, accusations of formalism, and great success in photography. The last chapter is dedicated to the war and postwar period and contains only diary texts in which the artist recounts his family's evacuation to the country, his subsequent hard living and working conditions, as well as his musings on the cultural politics of the time and life in general. Originally published in 1996 in Moscow by Rodchenko's family, "Experiments for the Future appears here in its first English edition. This new edition contains additional material and features a different design and images, but the content remains essentially unchanged.

In the Picture: Production Stills from the TCM Archives


Turner Classic Movies - 2004
    A unique photography book unto itself from the commanding archives of Turner Classic Movies, In the Picture collects 150 of these disarming and fascinating documentary images, imparting the delight of vintage Hollywood as well as a wealth of details for all movie lovers. Stills from beloved classics -- Ben-Hur, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz on up to Giant, The Dirty Dozen, and Bullitt -- reveal masterful set compositions and period details as well as images of actors between takes conferring with directors and crew. Capturing beloved movie moments both on- and off-camera from the silent era through the '60s, In the Picture provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood at work.

Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity


Christopher Reed - 2004
    Men's and women's roles came under scrutiny, class and social structures were transformed. This book casts new light on the notorious Bloomsbury Group and how the issues of their day influenced their interpretation and decoration of the home. Christopher Reed analyses the rooms designed by Bloomsbury artists as spaces in which to be modern. The book traces the development of Bloomsbury's domestic aesthetic from the group's influential promulgation of Post-Impressionism in Britain around 1910 through the 1930s. In detailed studies of rooms and environments created by Virginia Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, Reed challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from modernism. He presents their work as an alternative form of modernism, later suppressed by sexist and homophobic attitudes that disparaged the decorative arts and domesticity in general, as well as Bloomsbury in particular. The aesthetic and ideological implications of the Bloomsbury interiors were international in scope, Reed argues, and these domestic designs served as an important marker along the rout

Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art


Eleanor Heartney - 2004
    In this redesigned, re-edited, illustrated new edition of the classic study Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art, cultural commentator Eleanor Heartney offers a radically original interpretation of the extraordinary cultural and political battles that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Postmodern Heretics reexamines this period from the perspective of religion revealing how the most controversial artists of that time came almost without exception from Catholic backgrounds. This book clarifies for the first time how the culture of Catholicism shaped the 1990s Culture Wars. Postmodern Heretics also challenges conventional wisdom about the relationship between contemporary art and religion. By examining the myriad ways that Catholicism has worked its way into the creations of a wide swath of contemporary visual artists; this book undermines Modernist assumptions about the inherent antagonism between creativity and religious faith. A newly researched introduction brings this cultural history up-to-date for our current deeply conflicted times. The Culture Wars have flared up again, pitting Red against Blue, urban against rural, white against non-white and agnostic against believer. By revealing the Catholic roots of some of today's most important contemporary artists, "Postmodern Heretics" suggests how a more nuanced understanding of religion provides new insight into art while helping us heal our cultural divisions.

Hannah H�ch: Album


Hannah Höch - 2004
    H�ch and such cohorts as George Grosz and Raoul Hausmann raised anarchic revolution through cutting photomontage, nonsensical performance, and biting visual satire. A singular and important work in the artist's oeuvre is the so-called "Sammelalbum," which she produced and pasted together from found imagery for her own pleasure and use, circa 1933. In it, she arranged a choice selection of newspaper and magazine photographs cut from popular German magazines of the time, such as the Berliner Illustrirte and Der Dame. A diverse, allusive group of images they are, representing everything from her favorite film stars to oddly captured animals and toy dolls, nudes, landscapes, scenic travel vistas and synchronized dancers. By combining the collected pictures in continuous and sometimes contradictory sequences and double-page spreads, H�ch created startling and often jarring photo collages. Never before published, Album can be considered to represent a heretofore unknown aspect of H�ch's work, since its style of collage differs strongly from her well-known photomontages. This publication presents the entire Album in an exquisite facsimile reproduction, maintaining the filmic quality of its order and layout. In an accompanying essay, Gunda Luyken considers the content and history of the Album, locating it in the wider context of H�ch's oeuvre.

Sensory Design


Joy Monice Malnar - 2004
    What would our built environment be like if sensory response, sentiment, and memory were critical design factors, the equals of structure and program? In Sensory Design, Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka explore the nature of our responses to spatial constructs—from various sorts of buildings to gardens and outdoor spaces, to constructions of fantasy. To the degree that this response can be calculated, it can serve as a typology for the design of significant spaces, one that would sharply contrast with the Cartesian model that dominates architecture today.In developing this typology, the authors consult the environmental sciences, anthropology, psychology, and architectural theory, as well as the spatial analysis found in literary depiction. Finally, they examine the opportunities that CAVE™ and other immersive virtual reality technologies present in furthering a new, sensory-oriented design paradigm. The result is a new philosophy of design that both celebrates our sensuous occupation of the built environment and creates more humane design.Joy Monice Malnar, AIA, is associate professor of architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Frank Vodvarka is associate professor of fine arts at Loyola University Chicago. They are coauthors of The Interior Dimension: A Theoretical Approach to Enclosed Space (1992).

Hats and Bonnets: From Snowshill, One of the World's Leading Collections of Costume and Accessories of the 18th and 19th Centuries


Althea Mackenzie - 2004
    Many of the items that have been specially photographed for these books have rarely, if ever, been seen by the public because of the vulnerability of the collection. These books give access to superb shoes and hats; forthcoming books will include funky buttons and beautiful embroideries. From bergeres to boaters, this book provides a unique journey through the styles of a period that saw major radical and social changes, from the French Revolution to the emancipation of women.

Hans Holbein the Younger: Painter at the Court of Henry VIII


Jochen Sander - 2004
    Forty paintings are then shown, including full-page colour details. The book is completed by a who's who in the life and times of Hans Holbein. This explains 40 essential figures and 15 essential ideas/movements.

Toward a Geography of Art


Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann - 2004
    Questions of identity, policy, and exchange make it difficult to determine the "place" of art, and often the art itself results from these conflicts of geography and culture. Addressing an important approach to art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann's book offers essays that focus on the intricacies of accounting for the geographical dimension of art history during the early modern period in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.Toward a Geography of Art presents a historical overview of these complexities, debates contemporary concerns, and completes its exploration with a diverse collection of case studies. Employing the author's expertise in a variety of fields, the book delves into critical issues such as transculturation of indigenous traditions, mestizaje, the artistic metropolis, artistic diffusion, transfer, circulation, subversion, and center and periphery. What results is a foundational study that establishes the geography of art as a subject and forces us to reconsider assumptions about the place of art that underlie the longstanding narratives of art history.

Ancient Jomon of Japan


Junko Habu - 2004
    This text presents an overview of the archaeology of the Jomon Period between 10,000 and 300 BC within the context of more recent complex hunter-gatherer societies. It bridges the gap between academic traditions in Japanese and Anglo-American archaeology and represents an invaluable source of reflection on the development of human complexity.

The Abrams Guide to American House Styles


William Morgan - 2004
    Each style is described by author William Morgan, a Pulitzer Prizenominated architectural historian, in a short historical summary, alongside a list of its distinguishing features. Multiple examples of each house style are provided, the book includes 350 houses from more than 40 states, so the reader can see the region-specific variations. Complementing the beautiful color photographs is a selection of line drawings highlighting each style's key attributes. Both at the desk and in the field, for a wide audience of discerning house hunters, homeowners, and realtors; architects, builders, and students; and the ever-increasing public with a seemingly insatiable curiosity about residential design, this elegant, informative, portable volume will be an invaluable resource for years to come.

National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection


John Oliver Hand - 2004
    10,000 first printing.

The Language of Images in Roman Art


Tonio Hölscher - 2004
    A large role is played here by the reception of earlier images from Greek art. Roman art therefore appears to operate as a semantic system which, from an interdisciplinary perspective, can be compared with the forms of Roman literature as well as the language of images of other cultures.

Chinese Propaganda Posters


Taschen - 2004
    THE COMMUNIST SUPERHERO--MAO'S STARRING ROLE IN CHINESE PROPAGANDA ART.Over 300 posters produced during the rule Chairman Mao to promote Communist values and to portray the bright future of the People's Republic of China.With essays examining the history of Chinese propaganda and the experience of living in Mao's China.

The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche


George S. Williamson - 2004
    In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century.Through readings of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond.A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy.

Women of Ukiyo-e Coloring Book


Ming-Ju Sun - 2004
    This collection of 30 charming illustrations, adapted from authentic woodblock prints, features lovely ladies in elegant kimonos playing musical instruments, boating, dancing, strolling, and engaged in other activities.

The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830


Elena Phipps - 2004
    Within a generation, societies that had developed over thousands of years, including the great Inca Empire, had been irrevocably altered. The arts from the Spanish colonial period—those that drew on native traditions, such as textiles, silver, woodwork, and stonework, as well as painting, sculpture, and other genres introduced by the Spanish—preserve an unspoken dialogue that developed between Andean and European modes of expression.This beautiful book presents silver objects, textiles, and other masterpieces of colonial Andean culture. Essays discuss the artistry of this culture and explain how it has been recently reevaluated and celebrated for its vibrant energy reflecting the convergence of two essentially distinct cultural traditions.

Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Law: Cases and Materials


Patty Gerstenblith - 2004
    This book addresses artists' rights (freedom of expression, copyright, moral rights and rights in architectural works and historic preservation); the functioning of the art market (dealers and auction houses, warranties of quality and authenticity, transfer of title and recovery of stolen art works, and the role of museums), and finally cultural heritage (the fate of art works and cultural objects in time of war, the international trade in art works and cultural objects, the archaeological and underwater heritage of the United States, and indigenous cultures, focusing on restitution of Native American cultural objects and human remains, and appropriation of indigenous culture). This book is intended for the law school classroom but will also be useful to any lawyer or scholar interested in these timely issues and emerging fields of legal practice. The book provides an appendix of international conventions and national statutes the addresses the art market and disposition of cultural objects. Combining both legal and non-legal source materials and several very recent legal decisions, the book presents an interdisciplinary approach and addresses some of the most contentious ethical aspects of these issues. In addition, images of many of the art works that were at issue in the legal cases are presented so that the reader can gain an appreciation of the artistic and cultural values at stake.

Representing the Troubles: Text and Images, 1970-2000


Brian Cliff - 2004
    The authors analyze images of the Troubles in various media from theatre and film to murals and from to photography to literature.

Love & Death: Art In The Age Of Queen Victoria


Angus Trumble - 2004
    The English Victorians' lushly illustrative, sen- sual and romantic art borrowed themes from classical literature, ancient mythology and morality tales to explore concerns like infant mortality, divorce, burial and cremation.

Shifting Priorities: Gender and Genre in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting


Nanette Salomon - 2004
    Other recent works that deal with images of women in this field maintain the paradoxical combination of seeing the images as positivist reflections of “life as it was” and as emblems of virtue and vice. These reductionist practices deprive the works of their complex nature and of their place in visual culture, important frameworks that the book attempts to restore to them. Salomon expands the possibilities for understanding both familiar and unfamiliar paintings from this period by submitting them to a wide range of new and provocative questions. Paintings and prints from the first half of the century through to the second are analyzed to understand the changing social roles and values attributed to the sexes as they were introduced and reflected in the visual arts.

Rhythm And Verses: Masterpieces Of Persian Calligraphy: From The Collection Of The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia


Heba Nayel Barakat - 2004