University of Chicago Press: New Titles in Art: Art--General Studies

Power to the People

Geoff Kaplan — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Though we think of the 1960s and the early ‘70s as a time of radical social, cultural, and political upheaval, we tend to picture the action as happening on campuses and in the streets. Yet the rise of the underground newspaper was equally daring and original. Thanks to advances in cheap offset printing, groups involved in antiwar, civil rights, and other social liberation issues began to spread their messages through provocatively designed newspapers and broadsheets. This vibrant new media was essential to the counterculture revolution as a whole—helping to motivate the masses and proliferate ideas. Power to the People presents more than 700 full-color images and excerpts from these astonishing publications, many of which have not been seen since they were first published almost fifty years ago.

From the psychedelic pages of the Oracle, Haight-Ashbury’s paper of choice, to the fiery editorials of the Black Panther Party Paper, these papers were remarkable for their editors’ fervent belief in freedom of expression and their DIY philosophy. They were also extraordinary for their graphic innovations. Experimental typography and wildly inventive layouts reflect an alternative media culture as much informed by the space age, television, and socialism as it was by the great trinity of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Assembled by renowned graphic designer Geoff Kaplan, Power to the People pays homage in its layout to the radical press. Beyond its unparalleled images, Power to the People includes essays by Gwen Allen, Bob Ostertag, and Fred Turner, as well as a series of recollections edited by Pamela M. Lee, all of which comment on the critical impact of the alternative press in the social and popular movements of those turbulent years. Power to the People treats the design practices of that moment as activism in its own right that offers a vehement challenge to the dominance of official media and a critical form of self-representation.

No other book surveys in such variety the highly innovative graphic design of the underground press, and certainly no other book captures the era with such an unmatched eye toward its aesthetic and look. Power to the People is not just a major compendium of art from the ’60s and ’70s—it showcases how the radical media graphically fashioned the image of a countercultural revolution that still resounds to this day.

'Avant-garde' Art Groups in China, 1979-1989

Paul Gladston — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book gives a critical account of four of the most significant avant-garde Chinese art groups and associations of the late 1970s and ’80s. It is made up largely of conversations conducted by the author with members of these organizations that provide insight into the circumstances of artistic production during the decade leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The conversations are supported by an extended introduction and other comprehensive notes that give a detailed overview of the historical circumstances under which the groups and associations developed.

Nanoart

Paul Thomas — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Examining art that intersects with science and seeks to make visible what cannot ordinarily be seen with the naked eye, provides thorough insight into new understandings of materiality and life. It includes an extensive overview of the history of nanoart from the work of Umberto Boccioni right up to present-day artists. The author looks specifically at art inspired by nanotechnological research made possible by the Scanning Tunneling Microscope and Atomic Force Microscope in the 1980s, as well as the development of other instruments of nanotechnological experimentation. Nanoart is a sustained consideration of this fascinating artistic approach that challenge how we see and understand our world.

Mao's Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution

Alfreda Murck — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In August 1968, the Pakistani foreign minister visited Beijing and presented Chairman Mao Zedong with a crate of mangoes as a diplomatic gesture. The next day, Mao sent the mangoes to the “Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong though Propaganda Teams,” who had been stationed at Quinghua University to put down warring factions of Red Guards ten days previously. The message of this gift was to dismiss the Student Red Guards, who had been leaders of the proletarian movement in China, and in their stead to install workers as the permanent guardians of China’s education system. During the following weeks, the mangoes were distributed to several factories, where they were treated as though they were religious relics. The golden mango was thus a powerful emblem of the power and respect accorded to the proletariat under Mao’s rule.

Mao’s Gold Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution is the catalog for an exhibition of the same title at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich, which explores the golden mangoes’ reverberations throughout Chinese culture for years to come. Included texts focus on the historical narrative of the golden mangoes’ rise to fame; first-person accounts of both students and factory workers; an examination the National Day Parade in 1968, which used the symbol of the mangoes prominently; a critical essay on the 1976 film The Song of the Mango; and an in-depth comparative study of working conditions in China from the late 1960s and today.

Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art

Vinzenz Hediger; Barbara Le Maitre; Julia Noordegraaf; Cosetta G. Saba — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This vibrantly illustrated introduction to the emerging field of the preservation and presentation of media art brings together the contributions of authors from all over Europe and the United States. This volume can serve as a textbook for students in advanced degree programs in media art and museum studies, as well as an invaluable introduction for general readers. A potent combination of incisive scholarly articles and focused case studies, Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art offers a comprehensive overview of the history, theory, and practical skills of preserving media art.

Pop Goes the Avant-Garde

Rossella Ferrari — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China is the first comprehensive review of the history and development of avant-garde drama and theater in the People’s Republic of China since 1976. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives in the fields of comparative literature, theater, performance, and culture studies, the book explores key artistic movements and phenomena that have emerged in China’s major cultural centers in the last several decades.

It surveys the work of China’s most influential dramatists, directors and performance groups, with a special focus on Beijing-based playwright, director and filmmaker Meng Jinghui—the former enfant terrible of Beijing theater, who is now one of Asia’s foremost theater personalities. Through an extensive critique of theories of modernism and the avant-garde, the author reassesses the meanings, functions and socio-historical significance of this work in non-Western contexts by proposing a new theoretical construct—the pop avant-garde—and exploring new ways to understand and conceptualize aesthetic practices beyond Euro-American cultures and critical discourses.

Illustrating Shakespeare

Peter Whitfield — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For centuries, artists have been drawn to the plays of Shakespeare, translating his lines into brushstrokes and interpreting his characters and scenes in their own vision. From Henry Fuseli’s Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head and William Blake’s Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar to Eugène Delacroix’s Othello and Desdemona and John Millais’s Ophelia, these works will forever influence our reception of the Bard.

In Illustrating Shakespeare, Peter Whitfield draws on an extraordinary array of historical evidence to chronicle the way artists have embraced Shakespeare over the years. Whitfield shows how some artists succeeded in capturing the psychological truth of the dramas, while others merely dressed them up to suit the taste of their time. In addition, he reveals how the history of Shakespearean art parallels that of theater production. The artistic tradition spawned by Shakespeare’s plays is extremely important to his legacy, making this gorgeous volume a must-read for scholars and fans alike.

David Nash

Michelle Payne — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Over a forty-year span, a select group of trees has found new life beyond their natural ones as part of David Nash’s stunning sculptures. Using only materials that have met an organic end, Nash has shaped and scorched, chiseled and chopped to create fascinating and often epic sculptures. Thanks to a year-long residency at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the public had a unique chance to see Nash in action as he worked to create an evolving exhibition in one of the world’s greatest gardens.

Capturing all of this and more is the retrospective David Nash: A Natural Gallery. It serves as a visual interpretation of Nash’s work, both during his residency at the Gardens and his artistic career as a whole. The book chronicles the exhibits Nash created over his year at Kew, with rich photographs that show the works developing over time and their interplay with the changing seasonal background. Older works are also featured with explanations that detail Nash’s process, including where the source materials were found, what tools were used, and interpretations of the work. The book also includes essays that explore different facets of Nash’s art and practice, in which academics and critics offer their analysis of the methods used by Nash and his commitment to the environment, which he calls our “outer skin.” Together, the striking images and insightful analyses give readers a special glimpse of the creative processes as Nash creates his ethereal statements about humanity’s relationship with nature.

Colossal

Peter Mason — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Peter Mason takes a bold, multidisciplinary approach in this account of the idea of the colossal in culture. He gathers instances of the colossal throughout history—including the obelisks of Egypt, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Roman Colosseum, the heads of the Olmecs, and the stone statues of Easter Island—using historical and archaeological evidence to position them within the context of time and culture. Mason establishes a vision of the colossal that encompasses both the colossal in scale and another, overlooked sense of the word: the archaic Greek kolossos, a ritual effigy, and its modern equivalents.

Combining fascinating detail with a rigorous account that spans three millennia, The Colossal argues that the artist who best understood and tapped into the kolossos was Alberto Giacometti. Mason shows that the Swiss sculptor and painter’s work articulated themes of death and mourning in ways rarely seen since the art of archaic Greece, themes most evident in his enigmatic work, The Cube. From the monolithic sculptures of long-dead civilizations to Giacometti’s imposing and unsettling heads, The Colossal is an innovative book that traces unexplored thematic threads through visual history.

Clown Through Mask

Veronica Coburn; Sue Morrison — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Richard Pochinko (1946–89) played a pioneering role in North American clown theater through the creation of an original pedagogy synthesizing modern European and indigenous Native American techniques. In Clown Through Mask, Veronica Coburn and onetime Pochinko apprentice Sue Morrison lay out the methodology of the Pochinko style of clowning and offer a bold philosophical framework for its interpretation. Morrison is today a leading teacher of Pochinko’s Clown through Mask technique and this book extends significantly the literature on this underdocumented form of theater.

Creativity in the Classroom

Paul McIntosh; Digby Warren — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This volume contests the current higher educational paradigm of using objectives and outcomes as ways to measure learning. Instead, the contributors propose approaches to learning that draw upon the creative arts and humanities, including cinema, literature, dance, drama, and visual art. Such approaches, they argue, can foster deeper learning, even in subjects not normally associated with these forms of creativity. Drawing on their own practical experience in developing new educational methods, the contributors embody a refreshing alternative perspective on teaching, learning, and assessment.

John Moores Painting Prize 2012

Ann Bukantas — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The John Moores Painting Prize is one of the United Kingdom’s best-known painting competitions, going back to the 1950s. Previous winners have included David Hockney, Peter Doig, and Lisa Milroy. This 2012 catalog highlights the best of the UK’s painters for the year, featuring all the exhibition works of 2012 in fifty full-color plates, with a detail of the winning artwork, Stevie Smith and the Willow, by Sarah Pickstone, on the cover. It includes biographies of the artists, essays by the jurors—including BBC creative director Alan Yentob, Whitechapel Gallery director Iwona Blazwick, and artists Fiona Banner, Angela de la Cruz, and George Shaw—and images of works by all the previous John Moores main prizewinners. It also features the five winners of the 2012 John Moores Painting Prize in China.

Puss in Books

Catherine Britton — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Whether it’s a piano-playing cat, a surprised cat, or one that’s just plain adorable, some of the most-watched online videos these days feature funny felines. And it doesn’t end there; cats are ubiquitous on the Internet, inspiring meme after meme, speaking their own language, and even prompting the launch of a new film festival. But the omnipresence of the cat in pop culture is not novel. Feline references date from before 2000 BC in ancient Egypt, and since the introduction of cats to Western households they have inspired writers and artists—from the scribe of the Lindisfarne Gospels to poets of the present day.

Puss in Books is a celebration of feline wit, intelligence, aloofness, and charm as presented through cats in books, with examples from literature, folklore, and popular culture. Among the selections included in this gorgeous volume are nursery rhymes (“Hey Diddle Diddle”and “Ding Dong Bell”); poetry by Thomas Gray (“Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes”) and T. S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats); cats in fiction by Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, and Charles Dickens; and contemporary feline characters such as Splat the Cat and, of course, the ubiquitous Puss in Boots himself.

Wonderfully illustrated in color throughout, Puss in Books is an ideal gift for every cat lover.

Sahmat Collective

Jessica Moss; Ram Rahman — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Founded in 1989, the influential Delhi-based artists’ organization Sahmat has offered a platform for artists, writers, poets, musicians, and actors to create and present works that promote artistic freedom and secular, egalitarian values. A companion to an exhibit of the same name at the Smart Museum of Art, The Sahmat Collective explores the contemporary art scene in Delhi while meditating on the power of art as a tool for social change.

The Sahmat Collective documents the history of the organization through a series of case studies, each presenting new scholarship, vivid images, reprints of original articles, essays, and interviews with the artists and organizers of each project. Situating the collective within not only the political sphere in India, but also contemporary art trends from around the world, this beautifully illustrated volume offers both critical essays on the art produced by Sahmat and texts on the political, social, and artistic climate in India by Smart Museum staff members, philosophers, musicians, members of Sahmat, art historians, anthropologists, and artists.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Berlin-based artist Matt Saunders has in recent years captured the art world’s eye with a striking series of hybrid images and animated films produced using techniques from both photography and painting. Using movie stars such as German actress Hertha Thiele and British actor Patrick McGoohan as subjects, Saunders recasts historical film and television images into new discourses about portraiture, iconography, and spectatorship.

Matt Saunders: Parallel Plot is both an artist’s book and a catalog that documents and reflects on a 2010 exhibition held at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Reproducing the stunning artwork from that show, the book also includes two conversations between Saunders and artist Josiah McElheny and an essay by experimental film scholar Bruce Jenkins that tackles the relationship among painting, photography, and film, as well as the dynamics of Saunders’s iconography. Offering insight into Saunders’s sophisticated working methods, this book is an evocative introduction to the work of this intriguing artist and the intertwined histories of film and photography.

Afterall

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Afterall, a journal of art, context, and enquiry offers in-depth considerations of the work of contemporary artists, along with essays that broaden the context in which to understand it. Published three times a year, Afterall also features essays on art history and critical theory.

Issue 32 looks at pictorialism today and its role as an artistic strategy. Artists featured are James Welling, Pae White, Simryn Gill, Ahlam Shibli, David Claerbout and Saloua Raouda Chocair. Artist Trevor Paglen contributes an essay on image making as a form of communication, while film theorist Maxa Zoller writes about the haptic, or what is excluded by a too-tight focus on visuality.

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.

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.

Pre-Raphaelite Journey

Pamela Gerrish Nunn — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was an accomplished painter, illustrator, and designer during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But despite her huge popularity during her lifetime, her work has been neglected since her death in 1945. In A Pre-Raphaelite Journey, art historian and theorist Pamela Gerrish Nunn sets out to reestablish Fortescue-Brickdale as the important and fascinating figure in Western art that she was, offering the first dedicated book on her art and life in a biography peppered with fifty stunning color plates.

Living and working during the tremendous cultural changes in Britain and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, Fortescue- Brickdale represents a powerful bridge between the Victorian and modern worlds. She was heavily influenced by the pre-Raphaelite artists, whose love of detail, color, symbolism, and nature set a hallmark aesthetic for Victorian British culture. Indeed, she became known as “the last pre-Raphaelite,” particularly as an artist who drew from major literary figures, from Shakespeare to Tennyson, retelling their stories through her paintings and illustrations.

Employing extensive research and the knowledge acquired over a long career studying Victorian art, Nunn takes readers and viewers on a journey through Fortescue-Brickdale’s development—her training, career, and the achievements that should leave a lasting mark on art history.

Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan

Victoria Weston — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Offering a new perspective on global trade relations during the Age of Exploration, Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan explores the relationships between Portuguese merchants, Jesuits, and the Japanese during the nanban period (1543–1614). Created to accompany an exhibit of the same name at the McMullen Museum of Art, this catalogue is richly illustrated with full-page images of Japanese art and artifacts of the period, from and porcelain objects to furniture and weaponry. Victoria Weston has assembled a collection of nine essays by internationally renowned scholars from a variety of fields, which when taken as a whole create a comprehensive study of international relations during the period on a political, cultural, and spiritual level. The texts reflect upon a broad range of topics, from commercial contacts between shoguns and Iberian governments to close readings of the cultural implications of images depicted in nanban art. This volume explores the interactions between these three discrete groups through historical research, and the technological, political, and theological influence the West had upon the East and vice versa.

Invisible Country

Teresa Murjas — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century marked a tumultuous period in Poland’s history, with artists and writers working under difficult sociopolitical conditions. This book contains the first English- language translations of four plays by Polish writers in the modernist tradition: Snow by Stanislaw Przybyszewski, In a Small House by Tadeusz Rittner, Ashanti by Wlodzimierz Perzynski, and All the Same by Leopold Staff. Well-chosen and carefully annotated, these translations provide important insight into this underexplored area of Polish dramatic history and practice and facilitate greater understanding of its role in the development of European theater. Also included is a broad discussion of the characteristics of translation for the theater.

Sunflowers / Meditations

Peter Coker; Carrie Etter — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The "Nobile Folios", published in association with Piano Nobile, a London art gallery, are gorgeous multidisciplinary explorations of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artworks. Each folio explores a single work, attempting to replicate the experience of seeing it with one's own eyes. New titles this year explore "Sunflowers" 1958/9, a painting by Peter Coker, with ten color images of the work supplemented by an essay by art critic Andrew Lambirth and poetic contemplations by Carrie Etter.

Golden Age of Flowers

Celia Fisher — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a surge in the study of and interest in botanicals that led to some of the greatest books of plant illustration ever made, including such outstanding examples as the Hortus Eystettensis, work by Maria Sibylla Merian, Thornton’s Temple of Flora, Banks’s Florilegium, and Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca. Culled from these masterpieces of botanical art, this lavishly illustrated new book reproduces one hundred of the most beautiful flower images from this period.

As Celia Fisher explains, during this time several developments took place that led to a significant increase in the popularity and output of botanical illustration, including the revolution created by the advancement of metal engraving, the development of the new Linnaean system for classifying types of plants, and the epic voyages of discovery that recorded and collected the exotic plants encountered in remote, uncharted lands. The historical illustrations presented here are arranged in alphabetical order by flower with an accompanying text that outlines their geographic and botanical origins, the derivation of their names, and the properties for which they were most valued.

This beautiful and informative book will appeal to gardeners and flower lovers as well as readers interested in the history of botany and illustration.

Influences

Mary Quinlan-McGrath — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices.

Influences is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also—perhaps even primarily—functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican’s Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays.

An original and intellectually stimulating study, Influences adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.

Bridget Riley

Eva Schmidt — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Bridget Riley is one of the foremost figures of the op-art movement. With Richard Anuszkiewicz and Victor Vasarely, she pioneered the patterned black-and-white style of painting that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the 1960s. In the years since, Riley’s reputation has continued to grow, with major retrospectives and works in the collections of museums worldwide, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Tate Modern. In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious Rubens Prize for her lifelong contribution to European art.

Bridget Riley: Painting 1980–2011 surveys the artist’s recent dynamic and productive career. Since the early 1980s, Riley has increasingly experimented with color in her art. With works like Echo and Red With Red, she explores the spatial effects of color, creating geometric patterns throughout her compositions that convey movement and three-dimensionality that change according to the viewer’s position. Riley also began to incorporate curves into her work in the form of radiant, rhythmic lines and arches that seem to make the surface of these painting vibrate. This book collects nearly fifty of Riley’s best-known works from the past three decades, including paintings, gouaches, and a series of studies. Renowned experts Michael Bracewell, Eric de Chassey, Lucius Grisebach, and Robert Kudielka provide critical commentary to these works, which are also accompanied by an interview with the artist by Michael Harrison.

Beautifully illustrated and broadly accessible, this book will renew interest in this remarkable twentieth-century artist.

Orient and Occident

Sabine Grabner; Agnes Husslein-Arco — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Throughout the nineteenth century, Austrian painters traveled to far-off lands, taking their inspiration from bustling street markets, serene temples, and landscapes saturated in light—or drenched by tropical downpour.

Drawing on works currently on display at the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, Sabine Grabner and Agnes Husslein-Arco offer an extraordinary selection of Austrian depictions of the Orient, including portraits, landscapes, and richly hued market scenes. Among the most prolific of the painters collected here was Leopold Carl Müller, who produced over the course of ten winters in Egypt numerous paintings, many of which are reproduced in the book. Orient and Occident also follows in the footsteps of artists like August von Pettenkofen, Otto von Thoren, and Johann Gualbert Raffalt in Hungary; Rudolf Swoboda and Hermann von Königsbrunn in India and Sri Lanka; and many others, including Alois Schönn, Alphons Mielich, and Bernhard Fiedler.

Together, the artworks in Orient and Occident offer an awe-inspiring glimpse of these lands through the eyes of a group of prolific Austrian painters, shedding light as well on how attempts to capture unusual motifs and unfamiliar patterns of light in these exotic surroundings impelled these artists to introduce new approaches within Austrian art.

Nude Men

Elisabeth Leopold; Tobias G. Natter — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Rodin’s Thinker. Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Pigalle’s controversial portrayal of the philosopher Voltaire. From its earliest days, art history has been rife with representations of nude men. But while there are many studies of art celebrating the female form, the male nude has suffered from relative neglect. This book seeks to correct that imbalance with a collection of paintings, sculptures, and photographs that challenge conceptions of the body and masculinity, many of which continue to have considerable cultural resonance today.

Nude Men takes readers on a fascinating tour of the male nude in art history, turning the focus on works from the Enlightenment to the present. Beginning with a look at art completed in the life-drawing classes once popular across European academies, the book moves on to representations of masculinity throughout the French Revolution, including works by Johann Heinrich Füssli and Antonio Canova; provocative Sturm und Drang paintings by Edvard Munch and his contemporaries; and late impressionist works. The unsettling self-portraits of Austrian artists Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl exemplify an extreme candor that characterized the early twentieth century. Other twentieth-century artists whose work is included in this book are Jean Cocteau, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, and Louise Bourgeois.

With nearly three hundred full-color illustrations, the book also includes insightful essays examining topics like male identity, depictions of desire in modern art, and the use of nude men in advertising.

Exhibitions

Tom Klobe — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

“Good exhibition design promotes thought and feeling through the creation of an emotionally charged space—an environment that engulfs visitors, pulls them forward, and draws them into the story and its meaning,” writes Tom Klobe in Exhibitions. Here, Klobe gets at the heart of the power of exhibition design to grip visitors on both an intellectual and emotional level. Exhibitions lays out the basics for achieving such a result: the elements and principles of design, use of space, budgets and resources, lighting and wall labels, and much more. To illustrate the realization of theoretical and interpretive concepts, Klobe provides fifty in-depth, fully illustrated case studies from a variety of exhibits. Not only an easy-to-use textbook for students of all stages in museum training programs, Exhibitions prvoides an essential new resource for veteran museum curators and designers.

“Tom Klobe is an artist who creates works of stunning beauty, discerning perception, and deep relevance. His sharp eye for simplicity of design is coupled with a concern for communication with the audience. . . . His exhibit design work often shows us new ways to see and new ways to think.”—Van A. Romans, president, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

Gustave Caillebotte

Karin Sagner; Max Hollein — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The paintings of Gustave Caillebotte depict striking Parisian street scenes, from Boulevard Haussmann and The Bridge of Europe looking out onto the Gare Saint-Lazare to Caillebotte’s best-known work, Paris Street, Rainy Day, which hangs in Chicago’s Art Institute today. Caillebotte has long been acknowledged as an important painter—and munificent patron—of the French impressionist movement. Yet his paintings, in their near-photographic precision, stand apart from the works of Renoir and Monet in important ways.

Gustave Caillebotte: An Impressionist and Photography sets out to explore the development of the artist’s distinctive style. Though there is no evidence that Caillebotte practiced photography, he took an early interest in the art form, influenced perhaps by his brother, the photographer Martial Caillebotte. As a result, Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings show an emphasis on realism and often take on the composition and perspective of a photograph as well, with figures toward the center in sharp focus, while those in the foreground or background remain indistinct. Karin Sagner and Max Hollein have carefully chosen from among Caillebotte’s works a selection of paintings that exemplify this characteristic of the artist’s style. They are presented here alongside critical essays and works by photographers who were Caillebotte’s contemporaries and shared an affinity for documenting the nineteenth-century French capital, including André Kertész, Wols and László Moholy-Nagy, Édouard Baldus, Charles Marville, and Eugène Atget.

While there have been many studies of Caillebotte’s work, this is the first book to publish his paintings side-by-side with a selection of early photographs taken between 1850 and 1930. Together, they establish Caillebotte as the pioneer of a radically modern photographic form that added a new dimension to French impressionism and exerted an important influence on later photography.

Life in Museums

Greg Stevens; Wendy Luke — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

From the experienced leader or the midcareer professional hoping for a promotion to a recent grad applying for a first internship, A Life in Museums provides every museum professional, both experts and novices, with information for reaching their career goals. Providing sound advice, practical tips, and illuminating personal stories, the editors have ensured that the book spans an array of museum disciplines, making it an extraordinarily versatile guide to the profession. Topics include personal branding and resumes, management and leadership at all levels, professional writing and keeping career journals, and navigating within your institution and knowing when it’s time to move on. A Life in Museums has a place on the shelf of any museum professional and in the hand of any recent graduate.

Passage 2011

Christian Schoen — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

In May 2011, Munich-based artists Thomas Huber and Wolfgang Aichner set off with a seventeen-foot boat on a journey of a few hundred miles that would nonetheless take several weeks—because the route would take them across Italy’s Zillertal Alps. Destined for the 2011 Venice Biennale, Huber and Aichner conceived of this seemingly Sisyphean task, Passage 2011, as a metaphor for human hubris and the pursuit of success. As neither expected to complete the pass, Passage 2011 would also serve as a study of failure.

Passage 2011: An Actionistic Transalpine Drama draws on the artists’ photographs and detailed journal entries to reconstruct this epic journey, its moments of heartwarming success and its physically and mentally testing travails, including one instance in which they had to rappel the cheery red boat down a steep rock face that dropped more than two hundred feet. As a finale, Huber and Aichner launched the boat in the Venice Lagoon for a triumphant cruise along the Grand Canal, where, as expected, it rapidly sank and had to be retrieved in order to be installed in its place at the Biennale.

Stephan von Huene

Petra Kipphoff von Huene; Marvin Altner — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Stephan von Huene (1932–2000) was a pioneer in the sound art movement. Beginning in the 1960s, he produced sculptures that incorporated sound in novel ways—from Text Tones, a sleek series of works that record and recompose chance conversations within the exhibition space, to a pair of legs that perform a lively tap dance. But von Huene was also an accomplished draftsman, whose works on paper—collages, sketches, and prints—have been the subject of extensive solo exhibitions.

Combining interviews with von Huene and an essay by his partner, Petra Kipphoff von Huene, this book provides unparalleled insight into the artist’s processes and the mechanical complications involved in the creation of some of his works. The book also brings together for the first time all of von Huene’s Mind Maps, a series of meticulous compositions of images and words. In addition to illustrating how von Huene conceived of his sculptures, the Mind Maps series also reveals the artist’s keen interest in contemporary communications theory and the technical side of sound, both of which were central to the social function of his work.

A richly illustrated survey of von Huene’s remarkable four-decade career, this book explores both sculptural and graphic works and examines the artist’s continuing influence in his native America and adopted Germany.