Best of
Visual-Art

2003

Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings


Frank Zöllner - 2003
    This XXL-format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and all-around genius. With huge, full-bleed details of Leonardo's masterworks, this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes. * Part I explores Leonardo's life and work in ten chapters. All of his paintings are interpreted in depth, with The Annunciation and The Last Supper featured on large double-spreads. * Part II comprises a catalogue raisonn? of Leonardo's paintings, which covers all of his surviving and lost painted works and includes texts describing their states of preservation. * Part III contains an extensive catalogue of his drawings (numbering in the thousands, they cannot all be reproduced in one book); 663 are presented, arranged by category (architecture, technical, anatomical, figures, proportion, cartography, etc). This sumptuous TASCHEN offering is the most thorough and beautifully produced Leonardo book ever published, and this special edition offers it for a third of the usual price.

Diane Arbus: Revelations


Diane Arbus - 2003
    Her bold subject matter and photographic approach have established her preeminence in the world of the visual arts. Her gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our understanding of ourselves. Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world. The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, “The Question of Belief,” by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “In the Darkroom,” a discussion of Arbus’s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist’s eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three- hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist’s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer’s friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus’s controversial and astonishing vision.

Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors


Jane Kallir - 2003
    However, limited access to the fragile works on paper and dispersion among several collections have made for an unbalanced representation of his work as a draftsman.This book assembles drawings and watercolors from public and private collections and reproduces work from every year of the artist's career, beginning with the juvenilia and early academic studies. The focus means that work that is rarely reproduced is represented extensively, providing a unique opportunity to study the rapid artistic development of Schiele over the course of his brief twelve-year career.The book is organized chronologically and divided into year-by-year sections. Each section includes a text that discusses the major events in Schiele's life and the interrelation between the artist's drawing and developments in his oil painting. Features a previously unpublished Schiele watercolor and several works that have never been reproduced in color.

Avedon at Work: In the American West


Laura Wilson - 2003
    Yet in 1979, the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, daringly commissioned him to do just that.The resulting 1985 exhibition and book, In the American West, was a milestone in American photography and Avedon's most important body of work. His unflinching portraits of oilfield and slaughterhouse workers, miners, waitresses, drifters, mental patients, teenagers, and others captured the unknown and often-ignored people who work at hard, uncelebrated jobs. Making no apologies for shattering stereotypes of the West and Westerners, Avedon said, "I'm looking for a new definition of a photographic portrait. I'm looking for people who are surprising—heartbreaking—or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as part of yourself."Photographer Laura Wilson worked with Avedon during the six years he was making In the American West. In Avedon at Work, she presents a unique photographic record of his creation of this masterwork—the first time a major photographer has been documented in great depth over an extended period of time. She combines images she made during the photographic sessions with entries from her journal to show Avedon's working methods, his choice of subjects, his creative process, and even his experiments and failures. Also included are a number of Avedon's finished portraits, as well as his own comments and letters from some of the subjects.Avedon at Work adds a new dimension to our understanding of one of the twentieth century's most significant series of portraits. For everyone interested in the creative process it confirms that, in Laura Wilson's words, "much as all these photographs may appear to be moments that just occurred, they are finally, in varying degrees, works of the imagination."

Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Things


Wendy Weltman - 2003
    Smith emerged in the early 1980s as one of a generation of artists who returned to figurative imagery after a period in which American art had leaned to the abstract and conceptual. In Smith's case the interest in the figure was literal: She is fascinated by the anatomy of the human body, which is an immediate and emotionally powerful presence in much of her work. She is equally concerned with the natural world, and animals have become increasingly important in her recent imagery. The heart of printmaking is the ability to create more than one example of an artwork, and this appeals to Smith's interest in the public dissemination of imagery and information. Her work is politically sensitized but she is also fascinated by craft and is constantly exploring and experimenting with her materials. Her prolific body of printed art incorporates techniques extending from elaborate etchings to crude rubber stamps and images ranging from wall-sized lithographs and deluxe artist's books to screen-printed giveaway posters and removable tattoos. Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Other Things accompanies an exhibition devoted to this underacknowledged but crucial dimension of her art.

Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay. . .Eterniday


Lynda Roscoe Hartigan - 2003
    Lavishly illustrated with more than seventy-five boxes andcollages, as well as images of the fascinating source material that the artistcollected to create his exquisitely crafted worlds, it communicates to thereader the sense of surprise and delight that one experiences on viewingthe actual boxes with their toys, stuffed birds, maps, clay pipes, marbles,shells, and other paraphernalia of daily life.The book’s essays bring together the expertise of Lynda Roscoe Hartigan,former director of the Joseph Cornell Study Center; the compelling commentaryof Walter Hopps, art dealer, museum curator and director, and theartist’s personal friend; the wide-ranging scholarship of Richard Vine; andthe sensitivity of Robert Lehrman, a leading Cornell collector whose firsthandexperience lends this publication its distinctive intimacy. Among thetopics explored are the role of dualities in the artistic process, the dominantthemes of Cornell’s oeuvre, and the importance of his Christian Science faith.

The Devil's Playground


Nan Goldin - 2003
    Since the 1980s, Goldin has consistently created photographs that are intimate and compelling: they tell personal stories of relationships, friendships and identity, while chronicling different eras and exposing the passage of time.This book features a significant body of the latest work by Goldin, including photographs from new series such as Still on Earth (1997-2001), 57 Days (2000) and Elements (1995-2003), many of which are previously unpublished. Laid out in diary-like sequences by Goldin herself, the material is both courageously candid and affirmative. The photographs are grouped into themed chapters, between which are interspersed texts, poems and lyrics by prominent writers, including Nick Cave, Catherine Lampert, Cookie Mueller and Richard Price. The Devil's Playground is the first major book to be published on Goldin's work since 1996 and it is by far her most important to date.This monograph brings to light both the sources of Goldin's inspiration and her life as a prominent contemporary artist: she is internationally recognized as one of today's leading photographers. Born in Washington DC, Goldin grew up in Boston where she began taking photographs at the age of 15. She has since lived in New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, amassing an extensive body of work that represents an often disconcertingly seductive photographic portrait of our time.

The Book of Dreams


Federico Fellini - 2003
    His insights into the world of dreams have contributed to his many famous cinematic creations, including La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and La Strada. A unique combination of memory, fantasy, and desire, this illustrated volume is a personal diary of Fellini’s private visions and nighttime fantasies. Fellini, winner of four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, kept notebooks filled with unique sketches and notes from his dreams from the 1960s onward. This collection delves into his cinematic genius as it is captured in widely detailed caricatures and personal writings. This dream diary exhibits Fellini’s deeply personal taste for the bizarre and the irrational. His sketches focus on the profound struggle of the soul and are tinged with humor, empathy, and insight. Fellini’s Book of Dreams is an intriguing source of never-before-published writings and drawings, which reveal the master filmmaker’s personal vision and his infinite imagination.

Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, The Northwest


Janice Schofield Eaton - 2003
    Learn all about the interesting and delicious wild harvest of Alaska, western Canada, and the Northwest in this significant illustrated volume on 147 wild plants.

I Believe: The Nicene Creed


Pauline Baynes - 2003
    325 under the auspices of the Roman emperor Constantine, is the most widely accepted statement of Christian beliefs, used by Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, and other churches all over the world. Pauline Baynes, the much-loved illustrator of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, here transforms this creed into a joyous hymn to God. Her breathtaking images of the sun, moon, and stars, creatures great and small, mythical beasts, death and resurrection, judgment and everlasting life are based on a lifetime's passion for Anglo-Saxon and Persian manuscripts. She brings these images together here in a spirited affirmation of faith that will delight and inspire readers everywhere.

Philip Guston Retrospective


Michael Auping - 2003
    His uncompromising late paintings, which broke taboos, baffled his admirers, and shocked the art establishment, ultimately inspired succeeding generations of artists, invigorating painting with a new sense of mission. This book, the most comprehensive survey of Guston's art to date, was originally published on the occasion of a major international exhibition. It brings together for the first time the different bodies of the artist's work, exposing the connective threads between each of his developmental stages. In-depth essays by a noted group of critics and art historians explore Guston's early influences and the emergence of symbols that resurfaced and played prominent roles in his late work. They provide insight into Guston's philosophy regarding abstraction, his role within its development, and the social and art historical context from which his so-called Klan paintings emerged. 197 illustrations, 158 in color.

Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective


Lee Bontecou - 2003
    1931) became widely known in the 1960s and 1970s for her welded steel sculptures and plastic and epoxy molded assemblages—powerful constructions that evoked natural phenomena and organic biological life as well as machines and instruments of war.   This critically acclaimed book—available for the first time in paperback— reevaluates the career of this highly influential artist and focuses not only upon the impact of her early work but also on the import she has exerted on a generation of younger artists. Featuring some 50 sculptures and more than 100 drawings from the late 1950s to 2003, the book presents four essays that reposition Bontecou’s work within the history of recent art, examine its shifting critical reception, discuss the artistic context in which her work was made, and analyze how science underpinned some of her earliest explorations.

Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress


Kara Walker - 2003
    1969) has emerged as one of her generation's most important artists. Best known for her provocative black paper cutout silhouettes, she confronts stereotypes, sex, violence, and power relationships through Civil War-era parodies, narratives, and a mastery of craft and installation.This book, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and the Williams College Museum of Art, presents a comprehensive overview of Walker's work, beginning with her first cut-paper wall installation, "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart" (1994). Other highlights include the 1996 series of twenty-four watercolor drawings, "Brown Follies," which is reproduced in full as an artist's book within the book, and installation views of many of Walker's exhibitions. Recent drawings and projections are also featured. Throughout the book are a selection of the Walker's writings reproduced as they were created typed on index cards. These writings reveal a rarely seen side of the artist, whose words are as provocative as her installations and drawings. The essays discuss Walker's place in art history, formal and narrative readings of her work, her relation to culture at large, and issues of race, sexuality, and representation addressed in her work.Copublished with the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and Williams College Museum of Art.

John Singer Sargent: The Later Portraits; Complete Paintings: Volume III


Richard Ormond - 2003
    Comprising over two hundred portraits and portrait sketches in oil and watercolor painted between 1900 and the artist’s death in 1925, this book completes the trilogy of portrait volumes. The catalogued works have been grouped into two chronological sections, each with an introduction that sets the particular group in context. There is also a section of undated portraits and an appendix listing previously unrecorded works. Each work is documented in depth: entries include traditional data about the painting or watercolor; details of the work’s provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography; a short biography of the sitter; a discussion of the circumstances in which the work was created; and a critical discussion of its subject matter, style, and significance in Sargent’s career. Most of the works are reproduced in color. There is also an illustrated inventory of Sargent’s studio props and accessories and a cross-referenced checklist of the portraits in which they appear.

Who I Am and What I Want


David Shrigley - 2003
    In this mock autobiographical collection his mischievous drawings capture life's anxieties and ambitions from the mundane to the surreal. Here, at last, is The Truth about beer, doctors, shadow puppets, lunch, dolphins, boredom, and supernatural forces. Seductively strange and addictively amusing, this edgy little book welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful.

Louise Bourgeois


Robert Storr - 2003
    Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois spent most of her career receiving little recognition from the art community. She has worked closely to many of the century's key artistic moments, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism to feminist art, and yet she remains distinct from all of them. An extraordinarily influential sculptor, she has worked, often experimentally, with materials varying from alabaster, plaster, latex, bronze and marble. Bourgeois is equally admired for her intimate drawings, often combining fragments of text, and her highly personal writings, which often address her long and complex life story. With the backdrop of a conflicted and sexually complicated family upbringing, her struggles as an artist in a world reserved for men, as well as her experiences as a mother, the subject of her work is as broad as the materials in which she expresses them. As a figure of outstanding significance in contemporary art, her stature has been recognized by such awards as the American National Medal of the Arts (1991), the French Grand Prix National de Sculpture (1991) and the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion Prize (1999), among others.Critic Paulo Herkenhoff (with Thyra Goodeve) has been in discussion with Bourgeois for many years. Topics in their Interview range from her troubled relationship with her father, to men's fashions, to her recollections of Marcel Duchamp, whom she knew personally. Critic and curator Robert Storr's Survey chronicles the unique trajectory of Bourgeois' work and life from a highly personal point of view. In his Focus, critic Allan Schwartzman concentrates on Cell (You Better Grow Up) (1993), an intense cage-like space. For her Artist's Choice Bourgeois has selected extracts from the novel Bonjour Tristesse (1954) by Francoise Sagan, whose story about a young girl's response to her father's amorous relationships parallels to some degree the artist's own childhood experiences. The Artist's Writings include an early text, 'The Puritan', from 1947, alongside discussions of her own work, autobiographical writings and artist's projects.

Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe


Robin Kerrod - 2003
    Hubble uses hundreds of the latest, most spectacular images from the HST to illustrate a comprehensive astronomy reference. Stargazers will be astonished to see in color pictures what were once fuzzy photographs, dots on a star map or words in a textbook.Hubble explains how new discoveries are revising scientific understanding of the Universe. Detailed images of the Eagle Nebula show several fingers rising above a massive gas cloud. At the end of each fingertip -- the width of our solar system -- is the birth of a star.The book covers the observable universe in six sections:Stars in the Firmament Stellar Death and Destruction Gregarious Galaxies The Expansive Universe Solar Systems The Heavenly Wanderers Clear and concise text explains the fascinating history of astronomy and the development of the HST. Hubble transports readers to the planets of our solar system and on to galaxies millions -- even billions -- of light years away. These dramatic, unforgettable images will bring into sharp focus how the Universe is unfolding in new and astonishing ways.

Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art


Vincent Katz - 2003
    Its art teachers included Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell, and among their students were John Chamberlain, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, and Cy Twombly. The performing arts teachers included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Lou Harrison, Roger Sessions, David Tudor, and Stefan Wolpe, and among the literature teachers and students were Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, and John Wieners.

M C Escher


Sandra Forty - 2003
    This book has numerous examples of how his extraordinary pictures of logic fool the brain into believing the impossible--water can run uphill and steps that go upwards.

James Rosenquist: A Retrospective


James Rosenquist - 2003
    James Rosenquist has always known how to combine these seemingly disparate but always all-American elements into whirlwind, billboard-sized collages of airbrushed surreal euphoria, slamming colors, patterns and objects into one another with the eye of an advertising man and the heart of a Pop artist. This momentous catalogue, published to accompany the first in-depth survey of the artist's work since 1972, will give long-overdue, in-depth attention to Rosenquist's singular achievement in American art. Extensive illustrations cover major works in diverse media, including work on paper that reveals the artist's process, as well as extensive new and archival photography. Essays focus on areas that have only been superficially addressed in the literature to date, bringing the level of Rosenquist scholarship up to that of his Pop art contemporaries. Curator Walter Hopps provides an overview of the artist's career; Julia Blaut considers the artist's source collages in the context of twentieth-century collage; Ruth E. Fine addresses Rosenquist's prints; art collector and former aeronautics researcher Eugene E. Epstein relates the artist's work to scientific phenomena. Also included are a definitive biography, exhibition history and illustrated chronology.

African Textiles


John Gillow - 2003
    Author John Gillow traveled extensively throughout Africa, uncovering the dazzling range of traditional hand-crafted textiles from each region. Five sections detail the textile history and traditions within Africa's major geographical areas, examining materials, dyes, decorations, patterns, and techniques. From the stripweave cloth of the Ashanti in the West to Ethiopian embroidery in the East, from Berber rugs in the North to the Madagascan silk of the South - and everything in between - the breadth of coverage in African Textiles is peerless. Robustly illustrated with over 500 color photographs and drawings, this is an exciting new sourcebook for those interested in textile design and the traditional arts of Africa.