Best of
Visual-Art

1991

Picasso


Carsten-Peter Warncke - 1991
    He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso's paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics, and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old's beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century. Carsten-Peter Warncke's study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso. Our study of Picasso, the most exhaustive record of his work to date, contains almost 1500 illustrations'from his earliest drawings to the master's very last painting. Extensive bibliography section as well as illustrated section about Picasso's life and work Index of Names

Hand to Earth Andy Goldsworth Scuplture 1976-1990


Terry Friedman - 1991
    Here nearly 200 illustrations--over 100 in color--make a fascinating collection.

Francesca Woodman


Francesca Woodman - 1991
    David Levi Strauss writes in his essay: "The constitutive facts of Francesca Woodman's life are by now well known. We know that she was born in 1958, that she began taking photographs seriously at age thirteen or fourteen and continued this involvement into her twenty-second year, building up, in this brief time, a remarkably coherent and affecting body of work. And we know that on January 19, 1981, just two and a half months before her twenty-third birthday, she took her own life, leaping from a window on the Lower East Side in Manhattan to her death". This volume, containing many unpublished images, finally allows us to discover the full body of work of this artist, created in Rhode Island, Rome, New York, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire: self-portraits, mise-en-scenes, nudes, and deeply emotional collage-like images. They all show her intense relation with the camera and her own self, long before this kind of picture-making became fashionable.

Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography


John Gruen - 1991
    By the time of his death in 1990 at the age of thirty-one, Haring's career had moved from underground New York to the most prestigious galleries and museums in the world. Here Keith Haring's story is told by those who knew him—and by the artist himself. He candidly reflects on all aspects of his life, including his approach to art, being gay, and how he came to terms with AIDS. John Gruen masterfully combines Haring's own words with the observations of those who knew him best, including art dealer Leo Castelli; Madonna; artists Roy Lichtenstein, Francesco Clemente, and Kenny Scharf; Claude Picasso; Timothy Leary; and William Burroughs, among others. Haring emerges as both a courageous and enigmatic personality—a champion of art for all people.

Martin Puryear


Neal Benezra - 1991
    His work is found in the collections of nearly every major US museum, and in 1989 he won first prize at the Sao Paula Bienal. Wood is Puryear's favourite medium, sometimes combined with tar, wire or other substances, and his abstract ensembles are often on an imposing scale. This volume aims to show the artist's full range of materials, techniques and influences, and the reasons for his international recognition.

Visual Merchandising and Display


Martin M. Pegler - 1991
    Pegler zeroes in on all aspects of visual merchandising and display, from classic techniques to the most avant-garde developments. Hundreds of textual and visual examples reveal how to add interest to window and interior displays, optimizing the retailer's image and the target market.

Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era


Rebecca Solnit - 1991
    This important though relatively little-documented 1950s avant-garde flourished on the West Coast, where the artists were free to create art that was as subversive as it was uncommercial. The story of these artists and their close associates — Beat Generation poets, experimental filmmakers, and musicians who were also breaking away from formalism and convention — is told here against the backdrop of the Korean and Vietnam wars, postwar growth, and the rise of a vigorous counterculture. With first-hand accounts by writers and artists, passages from letters, poems, and ephemeral publications, Secret Exhibition brings together a complex picture of an exciting era; and more than a hundred illustrations in black and white and color make it a visual record of an essential chapter in contemporary American art.