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Art & Architecture
Over the course of a career that spanned fifty years, Agnes Martin's austere, serene work anticipated and helped to define Minimalism, even as she battled psychological crises and carved out a solitary existence in the American Southwest. Martin identified with the Abstract Expressionists but her commitment to linear geometry caused her to be associated in turn with Minimalist, feminist, and even outsider artists. She moved through some of the liveliest art communities of her time while maintaining a legendary reserve. "I paint with my back to the world," she says both at the beginning and at the conclusion of a documentary filmed when she was in her late eighties. When she died at ninety-two, in Taos, New Mexico, it is said she had not read a newspaper in half a century.
Agnes Martin, the recipient of two career retrospectives as well as the National Medal of the Arts, was championed by critics as diverse in their approaches as Lucy Lippard, Lawrence Alloway, and Rosalind Krauss. The whole engrossing story, now available in paperback, Agnes Martin is essential reading for anyone interested in abstract art or the history of women artists in America.
This extraordinary catalogue accompanies a major traveling exhibition of 128 works of bronze, jade, and clay dating from the thirteenth century B.C. to the second century A.D. The majority of these stunningly sophisticated works of art--among the most unusual and spectacular produced anywhere in the ancient world--all come from a startling archaeological discovery made just fourteen years ago at the previously unknown site of Sanxingdui in Sichuan province. The discovery of this Bronze Age civilization fundamentally changes our understanding of Chinese history.
Representing fifteen hundred years of cultural production, these striking objects are extraordinarily varied, ranging from a monumental standing figure and an almost life-size bronze horse to ritual vessels, masks, and bronze heads of fantastic-looking supernatural beings, finely honed jade knives and ritual blades, and marvelous clay statuettes. Most have never before been seen in the United States. The exhibition and catalogue represent a unique international effort to continue the study of ancient Sichuan. Under the leadership of Robert Bagley, an international team of scholars contributes eight essays on the archaeological discoveries at Sanxingdui, the art historical importance of these objects, and the new history of ancient China they tell. Contributors are Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Jessica Rawson, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Alain Thote, Jenny F. So, Michael Nylan, and the Seattle Art Museum's Curator of Chinese Art, Jay Xu. In addition to the essays, there are individual entries for each object, nearly all of which have been newly photographed for this publication. Ancient Sichuan contributes to a revolutionary change in perceptions of ancient Chinese civilization, providing an unprecedented opportunity to explore the art, material culture, and spiritual life of ancient China. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: Seattle Art Museum, SeattleMay-August 2001 Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth
September 2001-January 2002 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
March-June 2002 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
August-November 2002
And the Pursuit of Happiness is beloved artist and author Maira Kalman's yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works. Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court.
As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection.
Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.
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--Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968 Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical canon and charged Black artists and writers with reshaping artistic traditions according to their own history. As he proclaimed in his essay "The Black Writer's Role," written in 1966, "Black writers must listen to the world with their whole selves--their entire bodies. Must make literature move people. Must want to make our people feel, the way our music makes them feel." The writer Allie Biswas, who selected the texts Neal wrote from 1964 to 1978 included here, introduces the volume, illuminating the rich and varied context in which he produced his work.
As the first volume in the new series Art &, this book signals a bold new vision for a more dynamic study of art
Each essay in this groundbreaking volume--the first in an exciting new series from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts--engages aesthetic and cultural debates that situate research on the arts at the intersection of various disciplines, including architecture, film, literature, curatorial and museum studies, and the arts of performance. Reflecting the series' goal to engage with different cultural contexts and time periods, newly commissioned essays from emerging and established scholars address subjects ranging from medieval dance and ancient Assyrian reliefs to expressions of gender embodiment and the art of the Afro-Atlantic. First-person narratives ground theoretical considerations of the theme. Reflecting a commitment to embracing the book form as a space for art itself, Art & Histories includes a detachable accordion-fold insert with a work from Miami-based artist Glexis Novoa. One of his signature horizon lines unites Washington, DC, and the artist's native Havana. Meticulous drawings executed on travertine marble entangle the two cities and their monuments, symbolizing both violent and triumphant histories and their ideological reversals. Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press
Art and Value focuses on the questions of history, methods, and nature of art theories, and on the value and evaluation of art. It serves as a valuable primer to aesthetics, as well as a summary and extension of Dickie's contribution to the field.
This informative guide to Chinese calligraphy features hundreds of examples including many masterpieces along with insightful text.
Chinese calligraphy is an ancient art form that utilizes Chinese characters as a vehicle to communicate the emotional and aesthetic world of the artist. During thousands of years of its development, Chinese calligraphy has evolved into five kinds of scripts, namely seal script, clerical script, regular script, running script and cursive script, presenting itself as a highly sophisticated art form.
The 192 pieces of Chinese calligraphy featured in this book are the most famous representatives, carefully selected and chronologically arranged from the Zhou (c.1046-221 BC) and Qin (221-206 BC) dynasties to the modern time. Browsing through the xtensive collection, readers will find the book to be a professional and practical manual of Chinese calligraphy, offering easy access to the historical development of the five kinds of scripts, the most celebrated calligraphers and their best works and a guided appreciated of the artistic merits of the works.
The author provides both practical instruction in Chinese calligraphy and an absorbing historical background -- from the pictographic beginnings of Chinese writing, more than 4,000 years ago, down to Kai, Hsing, and Tsao styles (each over 1,000 years old) that have endured to the present day. The basic construction of individual characters is explained, as are the many ways in which calligraphy is used by Chinese artists. Separate chapters are devoted to Chinese calligraphy as an art form, language as a way of understanding Chinese thought, Chinese porcelain and ceramics, calligraphic seals, and inscriptions on paintings.
The book's final chapters comprise a detailed, step-by-step guide to using Chinese painting equipment and to mastering the techniques needed to create stunning examples of brushwork calligraphy. This book will delight artists and calligraphers as well as all readers interested in Chinese art and culture or in the development of writing.
From renowned metaphysical healer Jessica Stone comes this elegant and sophisticated tarot deck and guidebook utilizes a minimalist aesthetic to inspire empowering insight.
In 1949, Walter and Eva Neurath founded Thames & Hudson with a clear aim: to make art and scholarship more accessible through independent publishing that was prepared to risk being ahead of the curve. Seventy-five years later, their original vision of creating a "museum without walls" still resonates. As well as publishing beautifully designed and produced books in collaboration with the world's leading artists, writers, museums, cultural institutions, and fashion houses, Thames & Hudson continues to evolve and innovate, remaining relevant and reflecting the times we live in.
This special publication, divided into three chronological chapters, provides a comprehensive view into the company's history. An introduction and three essays by historian Anna Nyburg take us from its origins in Vienna on the cusp of World War II to the 1960s and a change in management, and to the new millennium and beyond. Thames & Hudson's rich output of groundbreaking and award-winning titles--ranging across the subjects of art, archaeology and architecture, history, design, photography, and fashion--is celebrated in stunning pictorial spreads, as beautiful and compelling as the books themselves.
The Art of the Book will be a valuable resource for those interested in the history of bookmaking and T&H's impact over the years, and a must-have for collectors, enthusiasts, and anyone with an appreciation for the art and evolution of publishing.
A beautifully illustrated look at the paints and palettes used by many of the world's greatest artists from the sixteenth century to today
What can the palette an artist used or depicted tell us about their artistic process, preferences, and finished works? From traditional wooden boards to paint pots, ceramic plates, and studio walls, these deceptively simple yet potent tools provide vital evidence. The Artist's Palette presents fifty unique palettes alongside paintings by the celebrated artists who used them, gathering expert analysis of color, brushstroke, and technique to offer new histories of these artists and their work. Alexandra Loske pairs each artist's color palette with one or more of their paintings, revealing how the artist used paints and pigments. While Georges Seurat meticulously arranged the paints on his palette in prismatic order, a pointillist technique reflected on his canvases, Kerry James Marshall uses blots of zinc white and smears of pale pink on the surfaces of symbolically oversized white palettes held by the Black artists in his portraits, raising provocative questions about the role of color in Black history and Western art. Through these and other compelling accounts, Loske shows how, behind every great painting, there is a palette that tells its story. Featuring a wealth of original photographs of palettes, paints, and pigments of all kinds, The Artist's Palette takes readers into the studios of artists from Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and John Singer Sargent to Egon Schiele, Georgia O'Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler, Lucian Freud, and Keith Haring, revealing how the materials and tools they used hide secrets and are often reflections of the life and times of the artist who once held, prepared, and used them.
Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
Dancing lords and praying goddesses, swirling dragons and Buddhas atop lotus blossoms. We see these images in Asian art, but how can we learn to appreciate them? This guide introduces the history, artistry, and religious and literary symbolism of Asian art. Beautifully designed, the portfolio comes with twenty-four full-color reproductions of frameable quality and an accompanying booklet that covers three millennia of Asian art. The lush reproductions from the Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection highlight masterpieces from India to Japan, Indonesia to China, Korea to Thailand.
Exhibition Schedule:
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
(04/27/19-08/18/19)
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
(01/17/20-04/19/20)
An icon of 1980s New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) first made his name under the graffiti tag "SAMO", before establishing his studio practice and catapulting to fast fame at the age of 20. Although his career lasted barely a decade, he remains a cult figure of artistic social commentary, and a trailblazer in the mediation of graffiti and gallery art.
Basquiat's work drew upon diverse sources and media to create an original and urgent artistic vocabulary, biting with critique against structures of power and racism. His practice merged abstraction and figuration, poetry and painting, while his influences spanned Greek, Roman, and African art, French poetry, jazz, and the work of artistic contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly. The results are vivid, visceral mixtures of words, African emblems, cartoonish figures, daubs of bold color, and beyond.
This book presents Basquiat's short but prolific career, his unique style, and his profound engagement with ever-relevant issues of integration and segregation, poverty and wealth.
Slings and baby carriers can hardly be called new baby gadgets since they have been used in many cultures around the world for thousands of years. However, in today's world, they are sometimes perceived as new--or very old--and in any case not good for your baby's health. For decades now, we have been taught to believe that holding babies too much spoils them, even though in much of the rest of the world babies are and always have been carried or worn in a sling all day until they could walk. Recent research confirms that carrying infants develops their intelligence and their capacity for trust, affection, intimacy, love, and happiness. Intriguingly, research shows that the countries that are the least violent are the countries where babies are constantly carried or worn on the body of the mother or caregiver.
Beloved Burden shows that historically, and in a worldwide perspective, not carrying our babies is the exception. This abundantly illustrated book gives examples from around the world.