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 Morris Graves: Selected Letters draws on a vast cache of the his unpublished correspondence, dating from his teenage years until his death in 2001.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.

Giuseppe Vasi's Rome

Giuseppe Vasi's Rome
Author: James Tice
Publisher: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Arts
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780871142979

Giuseppe Vasi's Rome: Lasting Impressions from the Age of the Grand Tour serves as the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name, organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon and curated by Professors Harper and Tice. On view in Eugene, OR, from September 25 through January 2, 2010, the exhibition will also be shown at the Princeton University Art Museum in spring 2011. In a set of eight scholarly essays and more than one hundred catalogue entries and images by Vasi, his predecessors and his contemporaries, this richly illustrated volume examines the eighteenth-century printmaker Giuseppe Vasi and his world. Subject areas addressed include printmaking, patronage networks, cartography, contemporary architecture, early tourism and the Grand Tour, social history, the festival life of the papal city, and Vasi's complex relationship with his student, Piranesi. The publication offers a comprehensive treatment of the artist and his major works, the first ever in the English language, while also elucidating the political, social, and artistic worlds in which Vasi moved.

Critical Landscapes

Critical Landscapes
Author: Kirsten J Swenson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520285484

From Francis AlØs and Ursula Biemann to Vivan Sundaram, Allora & Calzadilla, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, some of the most compelling artists today are engaging with the politics of land use, including the growth of the global economy, climate change, sustainability, Occupy movements, and the privatization of public space. Their work pivots around a set of evolving questions: In what ways is land, formed over the course of geological time, also contemporary and formed by the conditions of the present? How might art contribute to the expansion of spatial and environmental justice? Editors Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson bring together a range of international voices and artworks to illuminate this critical mass of practices. One of the first comprehensive treatments of land use in contemporary art, Critical Landscapes skillfully surveys the stakes and concerns of recent land-based practices, outlining the art historical contexts, methodological strategies, and geopolitical phenomena. This cross-disciplinary collection is destined to be an essential reference not only within the fields of art and art history, but also across those of cultural geography, architecture and urban planning, environmental history, and landscape studies.

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"--

George Johanson

George Johanson
Author: Roger Hull
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN:

George Johanson - painter, printmaker, and teacher - was born in Seattle, studied art in Portland, Oregon, and lived in New York in the early 1950s before returning to Portland. Whether in New York jazz clubs and slaughterhouses, in Mexican villages, at the Rose Festival held each year in Portland, at rehearsals of the Oregon Symphony, or in life drawing sessions with artist friends, making images on paper has been a basic element for Johanson throughout his life. The haunting power of Johanson's art originates, almost always, in drawing. Johanson's art is concerned with memory and recollection, dream and fantasy, biography and autobiography, physical and imaginative detachment yet sensual engagement. He is also the painter of fires that break out in city buildings or spew from volcanoes, and he often sets fire's rampage alongside human lassitude and seeming indifference.

Oregon Painters

Oregon Painters
Author: Ginny Allen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2021-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9780870710537

The book is an expanded, pictorial review of the history of painting in Oregon from 1859-1959. The first edition was published as an encyclopedia and index of Oregon painters with historical data about the evolution of painting styles, educational institutions, and exhibition venues in the Northwest; this book expands the focus on the history of painting in Oregon, adding essays on Impressionism and Modernism while using more and better visual examples to illustrate the strength of the state's early painters. In addition, the original indexed content has been edited and condensed. Oregon Painters fills an important niche, as little has been written about the early history of Northwest art and this volume serves as a valuable resource for discovering artists who remain largely unknown but whose works continue to gain in reputation and value.

String, Felt, Thread

String, Felt, Thread
Author: Elissa Auther
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780816656097

String, Felt, Thread presents an unconventional history of the American art world, chronicling the advance of thread, rope, string, felt, and fabric from the "low" world of craft to the "high" world of art in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence today of a craft counterculture. In this full-color illustrated volume, Elissa Auther discusses the work of American artists using fiber, considering provocative questions of material, process, and intention that bridge the art-craft divide. Drawn to the aesthetic possibilities and symbolic power of fiber, the artists whose work is explored here-Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Claire Zeisler, Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, and others-experimented with materials that previously had been dismissed for their associations with the merely decorative, with "arts and crafts," and with "women's work." In analyzing this shift and these exceptional artists' works, Auther engages far-reaching debates in the art world: What accounts for the distinction between art and craft? Who assigns value to these categories, and who polices the boundaries distinguishing them? String, Felt, Thread not only illuminates the centrality of fiber to contemporary artistic practice but also uncovers the social dynamics-including the roles of race and gender-that determine how art has historically been defined and valued.

Sterling Ruby - WIDW.

Sterling Ruby - WIDW.
Author: Sterling Ruby
Publisher:
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN: 9789491245213

Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present a two-venue exhibition of new paintings and collages by Los Angeles-based artist Sterling Ruby.0Ruby?s DRFTRS and WIDW series are two ever-evolving bodies of work that bear witness to the artist?s intense relationship with materials and his interest in issues such as sociocultural evolution, popular culture, and violence. 0The WIDW paintings (an acronym for ?window?), are executed in acrylic, oil paint, and collaged fragments of cardboard and textile on canvas. In their composite nature, they closely relate to the DRFTRS works on paper. But the materials used in this series reflect yet another form of archaeology: the excavation of the artist?s studio.00Exhibition: Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (07.09.-20.10.2018).