Belkis Ayon: Kname

Belkis Ayon: Kname
Author: Katia Ayón
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Art and mythology
ISBN: 9788475069166

This catalogue raisonné provides a complete account of the life and work of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967-1999). Working through the worst years of Cuba's post-Soviet economic crisis, Ayón developed her engraving and serigraph technique using collaged paper, and mined Afro-Cuban religious traditions to create an independent and powerful visual iconography.

Morris Graves

Morris Graves
Author: Vicki Halper
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2016-06-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0295806877

Morris Graves is a major American painter with roots in the Pacific Northwest. Morris Graves: Selected Letters draws on a vast cache of the his unpublished correspondence, dating from his teenage years until his death in 2001. Few visual artists of any era have left such a rich and wide-ranging collections of letters, which makes this body of work an unusual and valuable document in American art. The Graves correspondence is remarkable for its scope, variety, and depth. Written to many correspondents over long periods of time, the letters include the artist's reflections on his art, the art world, philosophy (Zen Buddhism and Vedanta in particular), architecture (Graves designed his homes and gardens), and relationships with family, friends, and lovers. Graves himself preserved most of the letters, or copies of them, and put no restrictions on their use. Other letters come from a wide range of private and institutional sources. Among the correspondents are Graves's family; Marian Willard, his art dealer; Richard Svare, his companion in the 1950s; and Nancy Wilson Ross, novelist and Buddhist scholar. Other notable figures with whom Graves corresponded are poet Carolyn Kizer, art critic Theodore Wolff, curator Peter Selz, choreographer Merce Cunningham (for whom Graves created a set design), and painter Mark Tobey. Recurrent themes in the Graves letters are the tensions between sociability and solitude; the desire to be free of the material world versus the need for material comfort; the dismissal of commerce and the desperate need for money; the pleasures and pitfalls of love; and the difficulties of the creative life. The letters are organized topically under the broad categories of people (family, friends, intimates), places (homes and travels), and art (finances and philosophy).

Rick Bartow

Rick Bartow
Author: Jill Hartz
Publisher: Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2018-04-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780999508022

Over forty years and across a variety of media, artist Rick Bartow has created a powerful body of work. His representations of humans, animals, hybrid creatures, and shadowy figures display such exquisite beauty or grotesque absurdity--sometimes both at once--that a viewer cannot help being pulled into the artist's world. The experience can be whimsical and troubling by turns, but is always undeniably transformative. Born in Oregon, Bartow is a member of the Wiyot tribe of the Humboldt Bay region, and his art carries influences of his heritage as well as his fine-art training, travels, and life events. This exhibition catalog accompanies the show Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain, which originated at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (University of Oregon, Eugene) and will be on view through 2018 at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM); the Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ); Washington State University Museum of Art (Pullman); and the Autry National Center (Los Angeles). Full-color images display key works from the show, supplemented by a comprehensive visual checklist of pieces. Essays by the show's co-curators and by Lawrence Fong, former curator of American and regional art at the JSMA, explore key themes in the artist's oeuvre.

American Decoration

American Decoration
Author: Thomas Jayne
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 1580933378

Interior designer and decorative arts and antiques expert Thomas Jayne follows up his essential 2010 compendium The Finest Rooms in America with this new collection of his own work. Thomas Jayne possesses a unique dual vision—he keeps one eye focused on the aesthetic traditions of the past, and the other looking forward: innovating, creating, and imagining interiors to suit modern sensibilities. His reverence for traditional ideas does not restrict Jayne’s understanding of what makes a beautiful room—rather than seeking to replicate and repeat the exact décor from past, Jayne finds inspiration in the distinctive histories of the spaces in which he works. In every project he undertakes, he draws on his rich academic background in the decorative arts to design interiors that harmonize with their historical settings, yet also connect intimately to the active and modern lives of families who call these remarkable buildings home. Jayne believes that American interior decoration is unique in its combination of elements from European and Asian cultural traditions with indigenous ideas and materials, in its emphasis on comfort and livability, and in its human scale. Presented here for the first time, his projects reflect this sensibility, drawing from established traditions and reinterpreting them for contemporary life. Drawing on the legacies of Albert Hadley and Sister Parish, Jayne insists on authenticity and comfort, incorporating elegant antiques and art with a subtle but warm palette and a welcoming setting. In this richly illustrated collection of both city and country residences, Jayne reveals the inspiration and thought behind each design, identifying elements from the architecture, the clients’ collections of art and antiques, and from the site itself that serves as the basis for the decoration of the rooms.

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich
Author: Nina Amstutz
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0300246161

A revelatory look at how the mature work of Caspar David Friedrich engaged with concurrent developments in natural science and philosophy Best known for his atmospheric landscapes featuring contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies and morning mists, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) came of age alongside a German Romantic philosophical movement that saw nature as an organic and interconnected whole. The naturalists in his circle believed that observations about the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms could lead to conclusions about human life. Many of Friedrich’s often-overlooked later paintings reflect his engagement with these philosophical ideas through a focus on isolated shrubs, trees, and rocks. Others revisit earlier compositions or iconographic motifs but subtly metamorphose the previously distinct human figures into the natural landscape. In this revelatory book, Nina Amstutz combines fresh visual analysis with broad interdisciplinary research to investigate the intersection of landscape painting, self-exploration, and the life sciences in Friedrich’s mature work. Drawing connections between the artist’s anthropomorphic landscape forms and contemporary discussions of biology, anatomy, morphology, death, and decomposition, Amstutz brings Friedrich’s work into the larger discourse surrounding art, nature, and life in the 19th century.

Eric Wert

Eric Wert
Author: Richard Speer
Publisher: Pomegranate Communications
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2018
Genre: Still-life in art
ISBN: 9780764981906

"Contains two essays about contemporary painter Eric Wert and more than 100 color reproductions of Wert's paintings and drawings. Also includes a step-by-step explanation of Wert's process, written by Wert himself, with photographs of each stage of the process"--

Corpse on the Imjin!

Corpse on the Imjin!
Author: Harvey Kurtzman
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-11-15
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1606995456

EC reprint series kicks off with war-story masterpieces from the legendary Harvey Kurtzman. The creation of MAD would have been enough to cement Harvey Kurtzman’s reputation as one of the titans of American comics, but Kurtzman also created two other comics landmarks: the scrupulously-researched and superbly-crafted war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. Here were finally war comics without heroic, cigar-chomping sergeants, wisecracking privates from Brooklyn, or cartoon Nazis and “Japs” to be mowed down by the Yank heroes, but an unflinching look at the horror and madness of combat throughout history.