Book Description

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are renowned for their dramatic and innovative public projects.Their installations often feature fabric - sometimes wrapped around existing structures or used to create large-scale temporary environments. Some of their most influential projects include Running Fence in Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, Surrounded Islands in Miami, the Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris, the Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, and The Umbrellas simultaneously in Japan and California. Now New York City, where they have lived and worked for forty years, will be the site for a much-anticipated Christo and Jeanne-Claude project. The Gates will consist of saffron-colored fabric panels suspended from the horizontal tops of over 7,500 sixteen-foot-tall vinyl gates, positioned at regular intervals throughout 23 miles of walkways of Central Park. The installation will be on view for sixteen days, beginning February 12, 2005 (weather permitting). This book, published in conjunction with a major exhibition that opens in April 2004 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, celebrates the culmination of the artists' vision for The Gates, a project that began in 1979.It includes an illustrated introduction by Jonathan Fineberg that surveys the career of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and assesses their contribution to contemporary art and culture. The heart of the book consists of beautiful reproductions of the various preparatory collages and drawings that Christo has created for The Gates project, many of which have not been previously published, and detailed documentation of the personalities and events that have led up to the project. This volume also features four highly engaging, unpublished interviews conducted by Fineberg with the artists, from the 1970s to a recent interview of July 2003. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude
This book depicts a project began by the authors circa 1979.
The presentation contains many full-color pictures i.e.
The Wrapped Coast of Sydney, Australia. The Wrapped Coast is
a spectacular presentation of a rock formation set in contrast
to the sea and sky. The work has a presentation by Da Vinci
in Milan and a panorama of umbrellas called the "Japan Gates".
The volume is well worth the price for art and world culture
enthusiasts. ... Read more

Book Description

A magisterial presentation of all the works of Barnett Newman, along with fascinating new insights into his artistic achievement

Barnett Newman (1905–1970), one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, has captivated critics, scholars, and the general public for decades. This highly anticipated catalogue raisonné presents Newman’s entire oeuvre—paintings, drawings, sculpture, graphics, an architectural model, lost and unfinished works, and ephemera—in one stunning and definitive volume. Featured elements include color reproductions of unparalleled quality; extensive provenance, exhibition, and publication histories; and a listing of the contents of the artist’s library at the time of his death.

In addition to the catalogue raisonné prepared by Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, the book offers revelatory essays on the artist, his career, and his working methods and features fascinating photographs of Newman, his studios, and his installations. Richard Shiff draws on new documentation to explain why Newman chose to create abstract art, how he achieved “fullness” in his paintings, and how his works exemplify the social functions of an artist. Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro reveals extraordinary details about Newman’s studio practice and materials and techniques, information not available to the public before because Newman only allowed his wife to observe him at work. Mancusi-Ungaro also discusses the fate of works that were damaged while traveling to exhibitions or by vandals.

Produced and designed to the highest possible standards, this magnificent catalogue raisonné is a critical purchase for anyone interested in twentieth-century art.

Richard Shiff is Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and Director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas; Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro is Director of Conservation at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and Heidi Colsman-Freyberger is an independent scholar, researcher, and bibliographer.
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Book Description

Out of the fantasies that enriched an often reclusive life, the enigmaticAmerican artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) created a world of enchantment with hisfamed shadow boxes and collages. Using common objects such as cordial glasses,marbles, and mirrors, Cornell beckons us into a realm vivid with half-remembereddreams, at once magical and tantalizingly, nostalgically "home." His work reminds us ofthe strangeness of the familiar, the odd familiarity of the strange, and the finalmysteriousness of the world we thought we knew.

The respected art historian Diane Waldman probes the elusive imagery that marksCornell's work. Interviews with Cornell and his family and access to the artist's lettersand papers inform her text. With Cornell's popularity soaring, this richly illustratedbook—one of the few to cover his entire career—will be essential reading. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An Excellent Primer On Cornell and His Work
Finally, a beautiful, comprehensive book about Joseph Cornell and his work. Diane Waldman knew Cornell intimately ever since she was an art student (and through doing gallery shows for him), and this affinity shows; this is ultimately a book of love and tribute to a friend.

The biographical material is excellent. Most fascinating segments deal with Cornell's stranger sides, such as when at his brother Robert's funeral, Joseph put a sheet over his head and laughed, creeping everyone out, and explained it was only a side joke that Robert would have understood. Cornell was terribly timid in front of women (particularly the ones he fancied) and had a complete dependence on his mother (he died months after she did). Waldman probes these and other significant personal issues (such as his association with Surrealism, and how the younger artists that have passed through him have influenced his work) and examines how they factored in Cornell's art. The book is generous with illustrations - Waldman supports her points with not only Cornell's work, but with other artists that were influential to him.

However, it is the lonely and telling poetry of Cornell's work that is the heart of this book. The boxes that Waldman chooses to include are presented intelligently, and beautifully. The innocence and nostalgia of each box is lovingly portrayed. The Medici series - Cornell's especially heartbreakingly beautiful and mysteriously passionate work - is presented perfectly by Waldman with thoughtful commentary and context, capturing in full its yearning and ardor. Waldman has given us a book that speaks eloquently about why Cornell is an artists people will remember for generations hereafter. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Still working at the age of 91, Louise Bourgeois is recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century. This comprehensive study of Bourgeois’ work in marble includes pieces from the 1960s to the present, and offers the artist’s own reflections on the medium and its importance to her oeuvre.

In her seventy-year career Louise Bourgeois has worked in a wide variety of mediums, including latex, wood, plaster, and metal. Yet she returns again and again to marble, a material she "can wrestle with." As this volume reveals, the major themes of Bourgeois’ art—childhood, family, the body, sexuality, and innocence—are enhanced by the flesh-like tones and smooth, unforgiving surface. Oscillating continually between abstract figures and organic form, Bourgeois manages to imbue this inert material with extraordinary emotional intensity, from her mysterious and dramatic large-scale "cell" installations to her seductive and feminine "nature studies." ... Read more

Book Description

An in-depth look at the fascinating sculptural works of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986)—a German sculptorand performance artist—became one of the most influential figures in modern and contemporary art. His charismatic presence, extraordinary life, and unconventional artistic style (incorporating ritualized movement and sound, and materials such as fat, felt, earth, honey, blood, and even dead animals) gained him international notoriety during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Beuys’s innovative influence is particularly felt in the field of sculpture, whose definition he expanded to encompass performance art, vitrine cases, and site-specific environments.

This beautifully illustrated book investigates Beuys’s sculpture, arguably the most fundamental portion of his artistic work, as well as his extraordinary influence. Featured objects include a stunning selection of Beuys’s remarkable vitrines—sly cousins of standard museum presentations, featuring both hand-made and found objects serving as “exhibitions” on Beuys’s own topics; blackboards on which he recorded his lectures and performances; room-sized environments; and many other sculptural projects that frequently served as physical documentation for Beuys’s performances.

With a comprehensive chronology of Beuys’s activities as an artist and activist, this book is essential for those interested in the life, work, and legacy of one of the art world’s most intriguing figures.

Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments accompanies a major exhibition on view at The Menil Collection, Houston (October 8, 2004, to January 2, 2005) and the Tate Modern, London (February 2 to May 3, 2005).

Mark Rosenthal is adjunct curator at The Menil Collection; Sean Rainbird is curator at the Tate Modern; and Claudia Schmuckli, formerly assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art, is an independent critic of contemporary art.




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Book Description

Alberto Giacometti, one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, was also one of the most enigmatic. In this major new interpretation of Giacometti and his work, art historian and psychoanalyst Laurie Wilson demonstrates how the artist’s secret beliefs and emotional scars are reflected in his evocative sculpture, drawings, and paintings.

Wilson’s Giacometti was an extremely imaginative child who entwined fantasy and real-life experiences. As he matured, the artist combined fact and fancy into evolving myths, part conscious and part unconscious. Drawing on biographical data uncovered during a decade of research, Wilson reconstructs traumatic events and issues in Giacometti’s life—including family births and deaths in early childhood, world wars and their aftermath, and his intense and ambivalent relationship with his parents—and examines their profound effects on his artistic evolution. These startling new interpretations will forever change the way we understand both the man and his work. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work
Laurie Wilson (Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, NYU Medical Center, New York Center) has written the definitive biography of the skilled and talented artist Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man. Tracing Giacometti's roots from his imaginative childhood the traumas in his early life, to surviving the hardships of world wars, and the effects of his life experiences on the nature, theme, and interplay of his art, Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man offers a excellent wealth of documented insights into the creation and message behind one man's great art. Alberto Giacometti is a meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work which is especially recommended for academic library collections.

Wilson's Giacometti and the vital necessity of art
This biographical work is an exquisite study of the artist and of the vital necessity of his work to himself and to us, his audience. Wilson traces his life with a sensitivity that matches its history of loss and trauma while weaving it into an emotionally attuned connection to his work. The effect is an indelibly affecting portrait of this quintessential 20th century artist. This portrayal blends the best traditions of the psychoanalytic method of examining a life with appreciation of the artist's work on aesthetic and art historical grounds. The author brings to it a richly textured language, which avoids the possible pitfalls of formulaic interpreting, and instead brings to life the artist's personal and artistic existence. This feels particularly satisfying because it echoes Giacometti's own accomplishment: a rendering of human fragility and yet transcending it, and helping us transcend it through art. ... Read more

Book Description

outstanding studies, including sketches for David, Sistine Ceiling, Last Judgment, etc. Nudes, figure studies, children, animals, mythical and religious works, more. New volume in Dover Art Library affords insight into mastery of proportion, anatomy, perspective, shading, contrast. Essential for artists, museum-goers.
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Reviews (3)

Inexpensive renderings of classic drawings.
A good buy for any student of art or anatomy.

Extraordinary Studies of the Great Master
In this thin but great book, you'll find 46 works of the great master - Michelangelo. Concentrating in Life drawings you'll see studies of the great marble - "David", for "The Battle of cascina",for various figures of the Sistine Chaplle Ceiling,and many more astonishing studies, all vivid in his great manner. Black & white. A real "Must Buy", especially in this price. Michelangelo. The Master.

definately worth the [price]
this is a collection of 46 figure drawings michelangelo did. michelangelo was a master painter and sculptor, he rendered figures more beautifully than any other artist ever has. most of the drawings in this book are studies he did for his paintings and sculptures. and he was a master draftsman. the book is in a workbook style binding so it takes up little space, but it is a hardy book. it is well worth the...price.
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Book Description

Published to celebrate the centennial of Joseph Cornell's birth in 1903, this book provides a fresh, multidimensional perspective on the pioneering modern artist. Lavishly illustrated with over seventy-five boxes and collages, as well as images of the fascinating source material that the artist collected to create his exquisitely crafted worlds, the book communicates to the reader the sense of surprise and delight that one experiences upon viewing the 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, chief curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and former director of the Joseph Cornell Study Center; the compelling commentary of Walter Hopps, art dealer, museum curator, and the artist's personal friend; the wide-ranging scholarship of Richard Vine, author and managing editor of Art in America; and the sensitivity of Robert Lehrman, a leading Cornell collector whose firsthand experience lends this publication its distinctive intimacy. Among the topics explored are the role of dualities in the artistic process, the dominant themes of Cornell's oeuvre, and the importance of his Christian Science faith.

Through its innovative technology, the book's companion DVD-ROM delivers an encyclopedic compendium of the artist's works and source materials, the insights of numerous scholars and critics, access to Cornell's experimental films, and interactive opportunities that promote an utterly unprecedented investigation of his art. 231 illustrations, 205 in color; DVD-ROM. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

New Printing in March of 2004
For those of you who missed the first printing and are choking on the $120+ price tags of the "second" hand copies, please know that the Voyager Foundation is doing a second printing in March of 2004 - keep on top of the listings and snap one up as soon as it appears - for the low-low asking price of $60.

The DVD Alone would be worth the price
This is a wonderful way to examine Joseph Cornell's work up close, in a way that most people will never be able to do. We normally can not turn the boxes around, and look at them closely at every angle, unless we know a Cornell collector. With this DVD you can do that, and these works were intended to be seen that way. The book is beautiful and thoughtfully written; it fills in background needed to fully appreciate the works.

Great tribute to a Great Artist
This is a superlative tribute to and presentation of Cornell's beautiful work. I suggest the reviewer who said that there is no DVD included request a replacement and retract the above review. There IS a DVD, and it is wonderful.

The Attention to Cornell's Detail is Wonderful!
I don't think the Reader from Virginia Beach looked closely enough for the DVD. It's tucked away in the back cover of the book (lift the back flap of the book jacket to reveal it).

This book and DVD make Cornell, the person, come alive. His objects are beautiful but his motivations for making such wonderful work are brightly illuminated in Lynda Hartigan's well-written book and Robert Lehrman's DVD.

I am a developer of New Media and this has got to be one of THE BEST DVDs I have ever seen. The interface is beautiful and rich. And, most of all, it allows you to get close to Cornell's work (both physically and conceptually).

BEWARE! No DVD included!
The book is ok, I guess, but if you expected the much-lauded DVD to be included, you'll be disappointed. There is no DVD! The photos in the book, alone, do not do justice to Cornell's creations!(Especially for the cost...) ... Read more

Amazon.com

One of this century's preeminent artists, Louise Bourgeois recently was the subject of a major one-person exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and she represented the United States in the 1993 Venice Biennale. This exquisitely designed volume, which includes 133 color reproductions, is a testimony to the importance of the act of drawing to this highly autobiographical artist, who is known primarily for her sculptures.Produced over the course of 50 years, the drawings are seen side by side with Bourgeois' own observations about her personal life, her work, and the genesis and sources of certain works, offering a very intimate vision of Bourgeois as a woman and as an artist, as well as insight into the creative act of making art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A glimpse into the mind of a great artist...
Browsing through this book of sketches is like reading Bourgeois' personal diary. These drawings seem to be the ones she made only for herself, to figure things out and generate more ideas. This is not her "finished" work, so don't expect "LB's Greatest Hits", but any true fan of this artist will delight in seeing her sketchbooks come to life and reading her thoughts and memories of the drawings. Full of rich spontaneity & wit. ... Read more

Book Description

Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book showcases many of Michelangelo's artworks, architecture and even his poems. Learn about Michelangelo the man, his life, his exceptional varied talents, and the impact of his creative works in relation to those of his time. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Fantstic display of Michelangelo's greatest works
This book is great. I just got it and I love it! I flipped through the awesome pictures so fast, I couldn't get enough. Now I'm taking my time and reading all of the great facts about Michelangelo and his art. I recommend this book for anyone who loves art as much as I do. ... Read more

Book Description

When Michelangelo left Florence for Rome in 1534, the Medici tombs were unfinished, but there was never any question of another sculptor being brought in to finish them. They were already icons of artistic perfection, which it would be sacrilege for anyone else to touch. That eminence they retain to this day. The two seated Medici dukes and the reclining figures of Night, Day, Dawn, and Dusk are among the most famous sculptures in the world, endlessly copied and universally recognizable. Yet however familiar these images are, this superb collection--160 pages of exquisitely printed photographs by a master photographer--makes it a revelation to see the originals. We are able to appreciate their forms and dwell on their details in an unprecedented way. Particularly now, since the tombs have been cleaned and restored, it is possible to imagine Michelangelo's chisel at work, and to marvel afresh at the sheer physical power that for his contemporaries made him almost superhuman. Accompanying essays by Bruno Santi, Director of the Medici Chapel from 1982 to 1992, and by the art historians Antonio Paolucci and James Beck, provide the historical background to the Chapel, essentially the Medici family's mausoleum, and explain how the concept changed over the fifteen years when Michelangelo was working on it. Originally envisaged as commemorating four members of the family, including Lorenzo the Magnificent, with a huge freestanding tomb, it was eventually confined to only two--who might now be totally forgotten but for their monuments. The little building that contains them is as important in the history of Mannerist architecture as the figures are in that of sculpture: indeed, no other location, not even the Sistine Chapel, captures the essence of Michelangelo's genius so intensely. 201 duotone illustrations. ... Read more

Book Description

A beautifully produced monograph on one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, comprising a critical essay, a superb selection of colour plates, and invaluable documentation of the artist’s writings, interviews, bibliography and exhibition history. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Clas Oldenberg / An Anthology
I could not wait to get my hands on this book as Oldenberg (to me) is one of the great Contemporary Masters. To say the least it wasn't a dissapointment. It is "The" Bible of Oldenberg. I would reccomendthis Anthology to anyone that has any interest whatsoever in the BuildingBlocks of Contemporaty Art. ... Read more

Book Description

This study, now published in paperback, provides the most complete scholarly account yet published of the life and work of Alexander Calder. The son and grandson of acclaimed public sculptors, Calder was trained as an engineer. Working in Europe during the 1920s, he was exposed to a range of avant-garde art, including Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Constructivism, and works created at the Bauhaus. These sources, together with Calder's abiding interest in American folk art, were fundamental to the evolution of his wood and wire sculptures, which fundamentally challenged the principles of Western sculpture established in antiquity. Calder's creation of the mobile and stabile, two forms of sculpture that are synonymous with modernism, is also analysed in detail. Including a new plate section and 170 halftones, many published here for the first time, Marter's book is an absorbing study of Calder's special contribution to twentieth-century art and culture. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The early work of any artist is often startling, and Alexander Calder's is particularly so. We think of Calder's sculpture as the epitome of crisp, Modernist forms--sometimes moving gently, as the mobiles and stabiles do. And we think of his paintings as filled with abstracted, biomorphic shapes. But the 1998 Calder retrospective showed that this American in Paris between the world wars began as a specialist in smoky nocturnes. This book, the catalog of that exhibition, carries Calder past all that, to 1930, when he was "shocked" into complete abstraction, as he said, by a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian. The rest of the book details the development of an oeuvre, including bent-wire toys, carnival figures, and circus acrobats, that made Calder among the best-loved of 20th-century artists. It contains pictures of Calder and his beautiful wife Luisa, at home and in the studio in Connecticut and France, and 267 full-color plates of Calder's drawings, sculptures, and paintings. The chronology is interspersed with the chapter essays, which can be somewhat confusing, at first, for readers who like to jump to the back of the book looking for the time line. It is well worth it to slow down for Marla Prather's readable, instructive text, which is filled with quotes from Calder and his contemporaries, and for Alexander S.C. Rower's remarkable chronology, which includes even the Calders' 1972 New York Times advertisement calling for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon. With great economy, Rower covers every event of importance, in Calder's art and in his life. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Caulder 5 stars, Publication 5 stars, Writing Style 3.
Calders work leaves me speachless and in its place... inspired, to do more, better. The book(hardcover)itself is beautifully bound and constructed of the highest quality materials, making it a delight to page through. The writing style is rigid and impersonal. Perhaps the author was careful to provide a neutral background for the colorful, animated genius of Calder but it lacks rhythym, speed and ease of use. I loved the tactile experience of the book itself and of course, Calder for his fresh, brilliant and prolific inventiveness. ... Read more