Synopses & Reviews
The scope and stature of Ruth Asawaand#8217;s work are brought into brilliant focus in this superb book, created to accompany the first complete retrospective of the artistand#8217;s career. Beginning with her earliest worksand#151;drawings and paintings created in the 1940s while studying at Black Mountain Collegeand#151;this beautifully illustrated volume traces Asawaand#8217;s trajectory as a pioneering modernist sculptor who is recognized nationally for her wire sculpture, public commissions, and activism in education and the arts.
The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa establishes the importance of Asawaand#8217;s work within the larger national context of artists who redefined art as a way of thinking and acting in the world rather than as merely a stylistic practice. A chronology and a collection of essays by noted scholars highlight Asawaand#8217;s complex relationship to American art and Asian American history and provide engrossing biographical information.
In her lifelong experimentations with wire, especially its capacity to balance open and closed forms, Asawa invented a powerful new vocabulary. Committed to enhancing the quality of daily life through art produced within the home, she contributed a unique perspective to the formal explorations of twentieth-century abstract sculpture. Working in a variety of non-traditional media, Asawa performed a series of uncanny metamorphoses, leading viewers into a deeper awareness of natural forms by revealing their structural properties. Through her artistic practice, Asawa reconnects with the Buddhist ethos of her parents, transforming the commonplace into metaphors for life processes themselves.
Essays by Daniell Cornell, Emily Doman, Mary Emma Harris, Karin Higa, Jacqueline Hoefer, John Kriedler, Susan Stauter, and Sally Woodbridge
Copub: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Review
and#8220;The first major efforts to reevaluate the art of Ruth Asawa. . . . This catalog will serve to give weight and purpose to Asawaand#8217;s lifetime of creative experimentation.and#8221;
Review
"This impeccable collection of art confirms Lynchand#8217;s position as a gifted polymathand#8212;and one of the countryand#8217;s most important artists working today."
Review
"Expands greatly the scope of our knowledge of auteur and impresario Lynch."
Review
"Lynchand#8217;s last Philadelphia canvases are brutally textural, integrating cigarette butts and filters, matted horse-hair, and bits of unidentifiable petrified organic matter. His more recent work, characterized by broad paint strokes and large-scale dramatic canvases, is more polished in its perversity."
Review
"Lynch is at his best when grasping just how unsavory we can find deterioration disrupting the mundane areas of our life, especially when evoking it as a reflection of human good and evil, and that holds true in his visual art. . . . Thereand#8217;s a definite vision and storytelling with the mix of text and image in the galleries."
Review
"He was, and remains, fond of biomorphic shapes, the incorporation of texts, working with textures, playing with dimensionality . . . David Lynch began as a painter and#8212; he still is a painter."
Review
"Late works find him tapping into primal fantasies of the psychotic annihilation of self and the other."
Review
"Impressively curated by Robert Cozzolino, The Unified Field makes a case for considering Lynch as 'an artist who happens to make film as part of his expression.'"
Review
"it is fascinating to see Lynch's noncinematic work, especially the earliest canvases . . . from January 1966 through the spring of 1967."
Synopsis
This beautifully illustrated catalogue accompanies the first major museum retrospective of the painter Norman Lewis (1909and#150;1979). Lewis was the sole African American artist of his generation who became committed to issues of abstraction at the start of his career and continued to explore them over its entire trajectory. His art derived inspiration from music (jazz and classical) and nature (seasonal change, plant forms, the sea). Also central to his work were the dramatic confrontations of the civil rights movement, in which he was an active participant among the New York art scene. Bridging the Harlem Renaissance, Abstract Expressionism, and beyond, Lewis is a crucial figure in American abstraction whose reinsertion into the discourse further opens the field for recognition of the contributions of artists of color. Bringing much-needed attention to Lewisand#8217;s output and significance in the history of American art,
Procession is a milestone in Lewis scholarship and a vital resource for future study of the artist and abstraction in his period.
Published in association with Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Synopsis
Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles in 1926, emerged in the 1960s as a powerful figure in the redefinition of African American art. Over the past forty years, she has injected African American visual histories into mainstream visual culture by blending spiritual, political, and cultural iconography to create complex works with universal impact. This beautifully illustrated book accompanies an exhibition of Saar's work, showcasing the extraordinary depth and breadth of her achievement. It provides multiple vantage points from which to gain a richer understanding of Saar's career, American art of the 1960s, feminism, contemporary art, and California culture and politics.
Copub: University of Michigan Museum of Art
Synopsis
"Saar is undeniably one of the most visionary artists to emerge in the last forty years. A master storyteller, she gathers together materials bearing the weight of history to create new memories, recast old myths, and incite our imaginations. And like Saar's work, the accompanying essays by some of the nation's leading scholars are spectacular meditations on history, representation, memory, and the significance of Betye Saar's offerings."and#151;Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
Synopsis
Samella Lewis has brought African American Art and Artists fully up to date in this revised and expanded edition. The book now looks at the works and lives of artists from the eighteenth century to the present, including new work in traditional media as well as in installation art, mixed media, and digital/computer art. Mary Jane Hewitt, an author, curator, and longtime friend of Samella Lewis's, has written an introduction to the new edition. Generously and handsomely illustrated, the book continues to reveal the rich legacy of work by African American artists, whose art is now included in the permanent collections of national and international museums as well as in major private collections.
Synopsis
"Beginning with the arts produced in the Colonial period, Dr. Lewis documents and interprets the flow of creative productions of an important segment of the American population. Her book shows that the range of art produced by African American artists covers the entire spectrum of craft productions through painting, sculpture, and printmaking. There is a progressive development of style that not only reflects the trends in particular periods, but reveals an evolving pattern of indigenous qualities that are distinct. The art community in general and the African American community in particular are fortunate to have Dr. Samella Lewis, for she has developed unusual authority in the area of African American art. I know that African American Art and Artists will be of great value educationally and that it will offer a stimulating and rewarding experience to all who have the opportunity to share in its contents."and#151;Jacob Lawrence
Synopsis
David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of Lynchand#8217;s career, this book documents Lynchand#8217;s first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artistand#8217;s studio. Much like his movies, many of Lynchand#8217;s artworks revolve around suggestions of violence, dark humor, and mystery, conveying an air of the uncanny. This is often conveyed through the addition of text, wildly distorted forms, and disturbances in the paint fields that surround or envelop his figures. While a few relate to his film projects, most are independent works of art that reveal a parallel trajectory. Organized in close collaboration with the artist,
David Lynch: The Unified Field brings together ninety-five paintings, drawings, and prints from 1965 to the present, often unified by the recurring motif of the home as a site of violence, memories, and passion. Other works explore the odd, tender, and mincing aspects of relationships. Highlighting many works that have rarely been seen in public, including early work from his critical years in Philadelphia (1965and#150;70), this catalog offers a substantial response to dealer Leo Castelli's comment when he enthusiastically viewed Lynchand#8217;s work in 1987, and#147;I would like to know how he got to this point; he cannot be born out of the head of Zeus.and#8221;
Published in association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
About the Author
James Christen Steward is Director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Deborah Willis is Professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University. Kellie Jones is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Richard Cand#225;ndida Smith is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Lowery Stokes Sims is Director of the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York. Sean M. Ulmer is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at UMMA. Katharine Derosier Weiss is Exhibitions Assistant at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1619-1865: CULTURAL DEPRIVATION AND SLAVERY
The Craft Heritage as an Economic Resource
The Emergence of Professional Artists
Freemen and the Abolitionist Movement
Discrimination and the Problem of Patronage
1865-1920: EMANCIPATION AND CULTURAL DILEMMA
The First Major Landscape Painter
The Diverse Quests for Professional Status
American Reliance on the European Artistic Tradition
192-1940: NEW AMERICANISM AND ETHNIC IDENTITY
The Spread of the Harlem Movement
The Self-Taught Individualists
1940-1960: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL AWARENESS
Mural Art as Cultural and Social Commentary
The WPA and Its Legacy
1960-1990: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL AWARENESS
Painting
The Flag: A Symbol of Repression
Reality and the Dream
Symbolism: Geometric, Organic, and Figurative
Mixed-Media Assemblages
Sculpture: Additive or Direct
Art/Craft
Drawing
Graphic Processes: Economical and Aesthetic Approaches to Communication
Performances/Installations/Environments
1990-2002: FROM PAINTING TO TECHNOLOGY: ART BEFORE AND INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM
Painting
Sculpture
Installation Art
Mixed-Media Art
Digital/Computer Art
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index