Book Description

This rare, out-of-print book on Signac, published on the occassion of Marlborough Fine Art's (London) 40th Anniversary, explores the career of this great Post-Impressionist through his works on paper, especially his watercolors.Bosman's begins through examining the artist's biographic and art historic backgrounds, then follows the course of his career through 91 completely annotated reproductions.Also includes chronology and bibliography of Signac. ... Read more

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While Georges Seurat is the best-known pointillist, he wasn't the only one. Signac: 1863-1935 reintroduces a tireless advocate of neo-impressionism, a painter whose suburban imagery and leisured lifestyle belied his left-wing political views. Lively essays by scholars and curators portray different facets of Paul Signac's career. Virtually self-taught, he found the catalyst for his mature style in the small-scale brushwork of the slightly older Seurat, but replaced his serene, formal quality with overtly decorative patterning. As a yachtsman, Signac was drawn to marine subjects such as boats gliding on sparkling water at different times of day. After moving from Paris to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he took up watercolor, ideal for painting sunsets. Attempts at translating his political convictions into art (culminating with the monumental figure of a worker wielding a pickax) met with failure. But Signac's brilliance as a colorist is indisputable, infusing each of the 223 plates in this handsome book. --Cathy Curtis ... Read more

Book Description

J.M.W. Turner is one of the greatest artists the world has ever known. His output was prolific and astonishingly varied. Focusing on 125 paintings and drawings from the Tate, which owns the world's largest collection of Turner's work, this lavishly illustrated book provides a fresh and lively survey of his genius. Familiar masterpieces are reproduced along with less well-known prints and sheets from sketchbooks; subject matter ranges from landscapes and natural subjects to ancient and modern history; marine subjects; literary illustration; and images of contemporary life.

In his essay, David Blayney Brown reveals the paradoxes and contrasts that abound in Turner's life and work: as a painter he looked both backward and forward, bridging the gap between the 18th century and modernism, compelled constantly to reexamine and reinvent his own art, with astonishing success. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A bit unorganized for such a good reference book.
I cannot help giving this book not the best rating possible. What a pity for such a good reference book!
As an individual who practices oil painting myself, I am very interested in the techniques of the Old Masters, among whose Titian's is one of my favorites. In addition to discussions on the catalog, biography, collaboration, etc..., Titian's techniques are discussed in-depth based on scientific results (x-ray and gas-chromatography/mass spectrometry, to name a few. Unfortunately, the presentation of these results is rather unorganized, namely, pointing to painting in point without indicating page or plate number. Consequently, in order to be able to follow the text, I had to make some manual bookmarks myself or search through the book to look for the painting under discussion. Furthermore, some references refer to some paintings that are very difficult to look for throughout the book.

I understand the book is a product of heavy collaboration; therefore, coherence is a real challenge. However, that is no excuse for lack of a thorough index at the end of the book. To my surprise, there is none!

I feel miserable for there is such a flaw in this gem! What a pity!

The definitive work for our generation
This catalogue, complete with numerous essays about Titian's working methods, influences, and the like, is the definitive work on Titian for our generation. It contains lavish illustrations, copious commentary, and a comprehensive selection of the changes Titian's painting underwent during his long life. ... Read more

Book Description

Robert Smithson (1938-1973) produced his best-known work during the 1960s and early 1970s, a period in which the boundaries of the art world and the objectives of art-making were questioned perhaps more consistently and thoroughly than any time before or since. In Robert Smithson, Ann Reynolds elucidates the complexity of Smithson's work and thought by placing them in their historical context, a context greatly enhanced by the vast archival materials that Smithson's widow, Nancy Holt, donated to the Archives of American Art in 1987. The archive provides Reynolds with the remnants of Smithson's working life--magazines, postcards from other artists, notebooks, and perhaps most important, his library--from which she reconstructs the physical and conceptual world that Smithson inhabited. Reynolds explores the relation of Smithson's art-making, thinking about art-making, writing, and interaction with other artists to the articulated ideology and discreet assumptions that determined the parameters of artistic practice of the time.

A central focus of Reynolds's analysis is Smithson's fascination with the blind spots at the center of established ways of seeing and thinking about culture. For Smithson, New Jersey was such a blind spot, and he returned there again and again--alone and with fellow artists--to make art that, through its location alone, undermined assumptions about what and, more important, where, art should be. For those who guarded the integrity of the established art world, New Jersey was "elsewhere"; but for Smithson, "elsewheres" were the defining, if often forgotten, locations on the map of contemporary culture. ... Read more

Book Description

Compares the common concerns and impulses behind the works of four artists and writers, and demonstrates that the verbal and visual sides of romanticism are parts of a coherent whole. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Gorgeous and Practical!
I've been carrying this book around in my purse all year, and friends are constantly admiring it. As a result, I've begun keeping a small supply of these little notebooks on hand for small rewards or gifts. They are a big hit with both children and adults, and make a wonderful, non-fussy thank-you present or remembrance. A great value! ... Read more

Book Description

In An American Lens, Jay Bochner looks at a series of milestones in the development of the American avant-garde that capture a pivotal period in artistic consciousness. He focuses on the multiple roles of Alfred Stieglitz -- as influential gallery owner, photographer, and impresario of the emerging art scene -- at a series of significant moments in his career. These close-ups offer a more intense and expanded understanding of the subject than the more familiar long view.

Bochner uses these scenes to recreate for today's readers the birth of modernism in America: what it was like to be an audience for the art of the early avant-garde. Moving from frame to frame, he shows us, for example, a single photograph by Stieglitz of a snowy night in 1893 and a short description by Stephen Crane of the same snowfall; the preparation, the reception, and the aftermath of the famous Armory Show of modern art in 1913; Gertrude Stein's portraits in prose; New York at the dawn of Dada, with Paul Strand, Francis Picabia, and others; and the intersecting paths of Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, and Marcel Duchamp in 1917. Bochner also examines Stieglitz's three great photographic series: his photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe, of clouds, and of skyscrapers. These sections of the book include many Stieglitz photos, including some rarely seen portraits of O'Keeffe.

Stieglitz as impresario and artist achieved an almost mythical status, which some recent critics have worked to deflate -- casting him, for example, as Svengali to Georgia O'Keeffe's spellbound Trilby. Engaging in neither idolatry nor demolition, Bochner looks instead for the truth about the man and the myth. The scenes from American art in An American Lens create a new version of Stieglitz's biography, allowing us to reread his life and the life of his times by focusing intently on what is visible and not so visible in the art he left behind. ... Read more

Book Description

These richly illustrated art books cover several centuries of great artists and their masterworks. From Rubens to Dali, each artist's life and times, influences, legacy, and style are explored in depth. Each book analyzes a particular painting with regard to the history surrounding it, the techniques used to create it, and the hidden details that make up the whole, providing a thorough look at each artist's career. Included is a bibliography, a chronological reading of principle works, a brief life history, and listings of public collections featuring each artist. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a crippled genius
Toulouse-Lautrec is my favorite artist. He has always fascinated me the most, both his life and his work. He had one or two accidents as a child where his legs were broken and they stopped growing. As a result, he became a dwarf. This must have created a deep-seated inferiority complex in him that caused him, consciously or unconsciously, to draw unflattering caricatures of his contemporaries. But the drawing style was completely original and his own. He soon became famous for his lithographs or posters depicting entertainers at the Moulin Rouge, etc. He was highly productive but always a heavy drinker and inexhaustible party animal. In fact, it was his frequenting of brothels and romantic friendships with prostitutes that eventually did him in. He caught syphilis, a deadly 19th century venereal disease for which there was no cure in those days. However, he left behind some of the most unique Impressionist paintings of Parisian night-life ever painted.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness" ... Read more

Book Description

Over a period of 30 years, J.M.W. Turner taught perspective to the students of the Royal Academy in London. To aid him in his lectures he produced a portfolio of striking diagrams in red and black watercolor on paper, demonstrating various artistic and critical theories on perspective. A selection of these extraordinary works, long held in the Turner archives at Tate and catalogued by John Ruskin, is published here for the first time, accompanied by an incisive and accessible essay by Turner scholar Andrea Fredericksen. AUTHOR BIO: Andrea Fredericksen has recently finished cataloguing J.M.W. Turner's perspective drawings in Tate's Turner Bequest. ... Read more