University of Chicago Press: New Titles from 'Hirmer Publishers'

Kennedy in Berlin

Hans-Michael Koetzle; Ulrich Mack — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

“Ich bin ein Berliner.” With these words, John F. Kennedy made history. Addressing a crowd of several hundred thousand in West Berlin, two years after the erection of the Berlin Wall, the young and charismatic president conveyed solidarity and support for West Germany on behalf of the United States, marking the height of good relations between the two countries and a decisive moment in Cold War history as well.

The local media were poised to record this momentous event. Among the photographers and reporters covering the Kennedy visit was twenty-eight-year-old Ulrich Mack, whose never-before-published photographs feature the president in a variety of settings: a triumphal ticker-tape procession down the main street of West Berlin with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt, mayor of Berlin; a visit to the notorious Checkpoint Charlie where Kennedy stands atop the observation deck; a crowd of cheering West Berliners encircling the president following his impassioned speech. Mack’s photographs are technically superb but, more important, they are guided by an instinctive feel for capturing great moments—including those on the sidelines that, in their candor, often surpass the staged appearances. For the modern-day viewer, many of the photos are also remarkable for having been taken at very close range.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of this historic occasion, Kennedy in Berlin reproduces more than one hundred of Mack’s photos taken throughout the state visit in June 1963—selected by the photographer himself and editor Hans-Michael Koetzle, offering a look at this important event.

Dan Flavin

Isabelle Dervaux; Friedrich Meschede — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Minimalist artist Dan Flavin (1933–96) is best known for his brightly colored fluorescent light installations, which have captivated art lovers for decades. But he was also an accomplished draftsman, and this is the first book to fully explore the central role that drawing played in Flavin’s art.

Not only did Flavin produce numerous sketches for each of his light installations, he also regularly drew outdoors, primarily riverscapes and beach scenes. A number of those drawings are included in this volume, as are a group of remarkable pastels of sails, a subject he turned to when he was in his fifties. This book also draws on Flavin’s journals, in which he wrote about his passion for drawing, which he called “an intensely concentrated personal form of artistic relief.” Yet despite the importance of drawing in Flavin’s life, his drawings are little known, in part because he almost never sold—or even gave away—his drawings. Most of the works reproduced here were never shown publicly and are being published here for the first time.

Offering a surprising new angle on a major artist, Dan Flavin: Drawing will surprise—and delight—his many fans.

Modernism London Style

Christoph Rauhut; Niels Lehmann — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the 1920s, London was a city on the cusp of change. Just as dance halls and jazz-age decadence displaced wartime austerity, a new generation of artists and designers sought to enliven the city’s architecture, erecting dazzling buildings in the emerging art deco style. In contrast with the aging Victorian structures that dotted the city, these bright and colorful buildings—from the Hoover factory to the Ideal House by Raymond Hood, who later designed New York’s Rockefeller Center—communicated the city’s aspirations as a thriving, modern metropolis.

In the decades since, London’s art deco buildings have lost none of their appeal. Millions of visitors gaze up at the headquarters of the Daily Telegraph and the nearby Daily Express, take in the elegance of Eltham Palace, or sip a martini at the Savoy. The city’s most popular art deco attraction, however, is the London Underground, which boasts a series of art deco and modernist stations, designed throughout the 1920s and ’30s by noted architect Charles Holden. In Modernism London Style, architectural historian Christoph Rauhut, with the help of three hundred photographs by Niels Lehmann, captures the architectural art deco heritage of London in a thrilling photographic tour. A portrait of the city during the interwar years, it chronicles the creativity of the artists and designers of the period—and the currents in the city’s culture that helped shape their work.

Insightful essays and an introduction by architecture scholar Adam Caruso shed light on some of the key features that characterize art deco, from floral and animal motifs to Egyptian themes. For readers planning a trip to London and hoping to place these striking buildings, the book also includes a detailed register and maps.

Korean Lacquer Art

Patricia Frick; Soon-Chim Jung — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A traditional art form with a history spanning several thousand years, Korean lacquer art is prized for its inimitable artistic and technical perfection. Drawing on a display at the Museum of Lacquer Art in Münster, this beautifully illustrated book introduces readers to outstanding—and often extremely rare—examples of lacquer art, which involves adorning objects with tree sap and intricately inlaying them with shell, gold leaf, or pearl. Among the objects photographed for this book are works from the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, particularly valued periods in the history of lacquer art known for vivid pieces inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Each object in Korean Lacquer Art is described in considerable detail and extensively illustrated. Together with essays by renowned experts on the techniques used to create them, they present a picture of the multifaceted development of Korean lacquer art from its beginnings through the early twentieth century.

From Silverpoint to Silver Screen

James Hofmaier; Sydney Picasso; Daniel Blau — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Hear the name Andy Warhol and what comes most immediately to mind are iconic images of Campbell’s soup cans, the Velvet Underground’s ubiquitous banana cover art, and quirky color-adjusted panels of pop icons, including Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marilyn Monroe. But Warhol was also a skilled draftsman, who filled numerous sketchbooks with freehand drawings of still-life objects and friends.

From Silver Point to Silver Screen collects more than one hundred of these early drawings. Dating from the 1950s, the sketchbook drawings exhibit a profound technical ability and are completed in Warhol’s characteristic blotted-line technique, a rudimentary form of printmaking that involved tracing projected photographic images onto paper and then blotting the inked figures to create variations on a theme. Many of the drawings in the sketchbooks were produced during Warhol’s first years in New York and include award-winning commercial illustrations and assignments from his time spent studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, as well as a number of images depicting his take on the dark side of society, including gun-wielding stick-up men and adolescents shooting up. Accompanying the images are insightful essays on the young Andy Warhol and the contemporary art scene in which he worked and lived.

Together, the drawings in From Silver Point to Silver Screen reveal a lesser-known Warhol, while offering a thrilling glimpse into a moment of great uncertainty and excitement in his life and artistic career.

IntroSpection

Beate Reifenscheid — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Abstract art is poised for widespread popularity in China, its appeal in recent years increased by the artists like Xiao Hui Wang and Wang Xiaosong, whose work created a sensation as part of the Collateral Events of the 2012 Venice Biennale. The two-volume Introspection looks at both of these important Chinese artists. Photo artist Xiao Hui Wang creates digitally enhanced and seemingly abstract photographic works that are closely linked to the pictorial tradition of Chinese culture. Her most recent work explores the nanocosmos. Wang Xiaosong is an installation artist whose practice includes painting and video and whose most recent exhibition sees him addressing social issues, such as the collision between East and West and the crisis of faith in contemporary culture.

With one hundred full-color illustrations, Introspection analyzes the latest works by these two renowned artists.

Stephan Maria Lang

Harry Dirrigl; Petra Dirrigl — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A proponent of the slow architecture movement, Stephan Maria Lang designs homes that are mirrors of their inhabitants’ souls. Through this highly individualized approach, his work takes on a remarkable diversity. With one hundred full-color illustrations, this volume presents select projects by Lang from 2004 to 2011.

From the California Residence, which conveys the leisureliness of a holiday home on the American West Coast, to the lakefront Alpine Highway, for which Lang restored the surrounding land to its natural state, the homes in this book reveal thoughtful new facets at each turn, with charming hidden details, surprising vistas, interesting interplays of shadow and light, and the clever integration of landscape, garden, and interior decoration. Of course, the homes also change over time as they are inhabited—and that, argues Lang, is what allows them to radiate life.

An impressive pictorial introduction to Lang’s vintage-inspired state-of-the-art architectural work, Stephan Maria Lang will be of interest to scholars of design, architecture, and planning.

Raphael

Joachim Jacoby; Martin Sonnabend — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Raphael is among the defining artists of history. From magnificent portraits of the Virgin Mary to the enormous frescoes that dazzle visitors to the Vatican, Raphael’s prominence is undeniable, and his works, together with those of Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo da Vinci, epitomize the formal harmony and balance that characterized the High Renaissance ideal.

Drawing on the remarkable collection of Raphael’s works in the collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, as well as a number of important works on loan, Raphael: Drawings provides insight into this Italian master and his impressive technical versatility. Among the most able draftsmen of his time, Raphael made extensive use of drawings in preparation for his many large-scale works, and over four hundred such studies and sketches survive today. For their painstaking precision and attention to detail, these drawings often stand as works of art in their own right. Highlighting the clarity and careful composition of the drawings, the book sheds light on how Raphael developed and refined some of his best-known works. Sketches of the papal portraits and the Vatican’s Raphael Rooms, for instance, are shown alongside illustrations and close-ups of the completed work.

Through a focus on his drawings and how they informed some of the world’s most identifiable works, this book offers a fascinating new look at this enormously productive master of Renaissance art.

Nordic Art

David Jackson — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a defining moment in Nordic art. From the cozy domestic landscapes of Carl Larsson to Edvard Munch’s darkly beautiful The Scream, the diverse artwork of the period mirrored shifting literary and intellectual pursuits in their attempts to broaden the cultural conversation to incorporate the identities and traditions of the region.

Through more than two hundred paintings, Nordic Art tells the story of this important period. In conversation with both Scandinavian culture and the contemporary art of the time, turn-of-the-century artists developed distinctly Nordic interpretations of realism, impressionism, and symbolism. The book focuses on the transitions between these forms of expression, as well as the impact of Nordic art on mainstream European art. Featuring works by well-known artists, including Carl Larsson, Edvard Munch, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and Vilhelm Hammershøi, the book also introduces artists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland whose contributions, though crucial, may be less familiar to international audiences.

With Nordic Art, David Jackson offers the first comprehensive look at this critical period of cultural development in the Nordic countries and the extraordinary art that arose during this time.