Art. Art Criticism. This monograph traces Sonia Boyce's trajectory from early graphic work to her recent mixed-media pieces which draw on elements of British popular culture and cinema to address society's positioning of individuals in terms of race, class and gender. Unquestionably serious and with an unquestionable sense of humor, Boyce's work, ranging from photography to painting and installations, is here widely represented, and well-complemented by three intelligent essays by Gilane Tawadros, a biography of the artist, and, alongside the essays, excellently chosen excerpts from Boyce's working diaries. Tawadros' essays address cultural, racial, gender and visual/art historical issues raised over the trajectory of Boyce's artistic development, using such theorists as Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Italo Calvino, and Stuart Hall to contextualize the artist's magnificent and provocative work.

Richard Demarco co-founded the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1963 and ran the vibrant Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh for almost 30 years. He promotes crosscultural dialogues and was the first person to introduce Joseph Beuys in the UK. Joseph Beuys was a German sculptor and creator of action performances, political activist and teacher. This book explores the works, lectures and 'Actions' which resulted from the mutual hopes, inspirations and shared values of Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys, the innovative and inspirational German postwar artist, from 1970 until Beuys' death in 1986. Demarco, an avant-garde gallerist in Edinburgh, was an early proponent of Scotland taking its place within the European art world; Demarco recognised the visionary quality of Beuys' work and visited him in Oberkassel in January 1970. In the hope of focusing Beuys' attention on Scotland, he presented him with a set of postcards depicting typical Scottish scenes. Beuys responded with, 'I see the land of Macbeth, so when shall we two meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?' They reunited in thundery Edinburgh later that year and Demarco led him northwards along the ancient track he calls 'The Road to Meikle Seggie'. This initial experience of the Scottish landscape inspired Beuys, who felt a strong connection with Celtic culture, and laid the foundation for a remarkable artistic friendship which enriched the work of both men. With photos from Demarco's personal collection and essays spanning from 1970 to the present, this is an intimate and intellectually rigorous look at a friendship seminal to the development of art in Scotland over the last 40 years.

Henry McBride (1867-1962) became a towering figure in art criticism during a long career that began in 1913 -- the year of the famous Armory Show in New York that opened American eyes to avant-garde developments in European art -- and continued until the advent of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A sensitive and discerning observer of the changing cultural landscape, McBride not only wrote prolifically for publication but also corresponded extensively. In this remarkable collection of selected letters, Henry McBride describes some of the most important events and figures of twentieth-century modernism. Written in a characteristically charming, gossipy, and warm-hearted style, these letters reveal McBride's responses to revolutionary changes in the world of art and in the world at large.

Closely allied to the pivotal circles that shaped modern culture, McBride counted among his correspondents such friends as Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, the Stettheimer sisters, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keefe, and Marianne Moore. His letters, along with the biographical introduction, headnotes, and rich annotation provided in this volume, present a unique perspective on twentieth-century modernism by one of its most ardent supporters.

Monumental cares rethinks monument debates, site specificity and art activism in light of problems that strike us as monumental or overwhelming, such as war, migration and the climate crisis. The book shows how artists address these issues, from Chicago and Berlin to Oslo, Bucharest and Hong Kong, in media ranging from marble and glass to postcards, graffiti and re-enactment. A multidirectional theory of site does justice to specific places but also to how far-away audiences see them. What emerges is a new ethics of care in public art, combined with a passionate engagement with reality harking back to the realist aesthetics of the nineteenth century. Familiar questions can be answered anew: what to do with monuments, particularly when they are the products of terror and require removal, modification or recontextualisation? And can art address the monumental concerns of our present? -- .

The New Press is proud to publish a new paperback edition of "Mixed Blessings," the first book to discuss the cross-cultural process taking place in the work of contemporary Latino, Native, African, and Asian American artists. Rich with illustrations of artworks in many different media, and filled with incisive quotes and unsettling reports, it is more than a book about art; it is a complex meditation on the relationships of people to their cultures. Lucy R. Lippard, one of our most original and insightful writers on art, challenges conventional approaches and explores the role of images in a changing society. Among her subjects are the uncertainty of exile; the confusion of identity in attempts to climb out of the melting pot; and art that speaks for itself, reversing stereotypes and reclaiming history and memory. The New Press edition features a new introduction by Lippard that reconsiders the issues first presented in "Mixed Blessings " when it appeared in 1990 and evaluates the state of multicultural art today.

Provides a counter history to conventional accounts of American art. Close historical examinations of particular events in Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s are interwoven with discussion of the location of these events, normally marginalized or overlooked, in the history of cultural politics in the United States during the postwar era. Contradictions both within dissident art practices and the mainstream avant-garde are explored. So, too, are the significance of cultural institutions in relation to the production of art, the function of cultural canons within national politics, the construction of collective memories, and the ways in which culture is embedded in ideology and politics. The book is based on detailed and new research from a range of sources including the alternative press, such as the Los Angeles Free Press; public and private archives; interviews and oral histories.

A richly illustrated celebration of the paintings of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama From the moment of their unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2018, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have become two of the most beloved artworks of our time. Kehinde Wiley's portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald's portrait of the former first lady have inspired unprecedented responses from the public, and attendance at the museum has more than doubled as visitors travel from near and far to view these larger-than-life paintings. After witnessing a woman drop to her knees in prayer before the portrait of Barack Obama, one guard said, "No other painting gets the same kind of reactions. Ever." The Obama Portraits is the first book about the making, meaning, and significance of these remarkable artworks. Richly illustrated with images of the portraits, exclusive pictures of the Obamas with the artists during their sittings, and photos of the historic unveiling ceremony by former White House photographer Pete Souza, this book offers insight into what these paintings can tell us about the history of portraiture and American culture. The volume also features a transcript of the unveiling ceremony, which includes moving remarks by the Obamas and the artists. A reversible dust jacket allows readers to choose which portrait to display on the front cover. An inspiring history of the creation and impact of the Obama portraits, this fascinating book speaks to the power of art-especially portraiture-to bring people together and promote cultural change. Published in association with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

Modern Art Culture: A Reader provides an essential resource for understanding the culture of modern art since the 1960s.

In recent years, media theorists and historians have asked whether works of imaginative art can have any impact in our image-saturated culture. Given the power of institutions, how do radical artists produce effective cultural interventions? In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, many argue that pressing questions about works of art and their meanings are inseparable not only from contemporary social and political issues but also from major debates and developments in the last four decades.

To explore such questions and issues, the Reader is divided into six related parts with articles from journals, magazines and exhibition catalogues that exemplify important interventions from the 1960s onwards: Histories, Representations and Remembrance; Art and Visual/Mass/Popular Culture; Institutions; Inclusions/Exclusions; Bodies and Identities; Power and Permissibility.

Texts range from artists? engagement with the veil and veiling as metaphors for post-colonialist understandings of representation and contemporary art to early debates about, for example, ?activist art?, discourses of the ?body?, civil rights, ethnicity, and cultural power. Importantly these selected texts offer examples of analysis that can enable readers to examine, critically, their own selection of representations produced in a variety of contexts.

The work of Alex Colville, O.C. (1920-2013), one of the great modern realist painters, combines the Flemish detail of Andrew Wyeth, the eerie foreboding of George Tooker and the anguished confrontations of Lucian Freud. Behind the North Americans stands their common master, Edward Hopper. Colville's works are in many museums in Canada and Germany. He has affinities with Max Beckmann and appeals to the German "secondary virtues": cleanliness, punctuality, love of order. In a long life he resolutely opposed the fashionable currents of abstract and expressionistic art. In contrast to Jackson Pollock's wild action painting, Colville created paintings of contemplation and reflection. As Jeffrey Meyers writes: I spent several days with Colville on each of three visits from California to Wolfville. I received seventy letters from him between August 1998 and April 2010, and kept thirty-six of my letters to him. He sent me photographs and slides of his work and, in his eighties, discussed the progress and meaning of the paintings he completed during the last decade of his life. His handwritten letters, precisely explaining his thoughts and feelings, provide a rare and enlightening opportunity to compare my insights and interpretations with his own intentions and ideas. He also discussed his family, health, sexuality, politics, reading, travels, literary interests, our mutual friend Iris Murdoch, response to my writing, his work, exhibitions, sales of his pictures and of course the meaning of his art. His letters reveal the challenges he faced during aging and illness, and his determination to keep painting as health difficulties mounted. He stopped writing to me when he became seriously ill two years before his death. In this context the late paintings, presented in colour in this book, take on a new poignancy.

Art and Science in Word and Image investigates the theme of 'riddles of form', exploring how discovery and innovation have functioned inter-dependently between art, literature and the sciences. Using the impact of evolutionary biologist D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form on Modernist practices as springboard into the theme, contributors consider engagements with mysteries of natural form in painting, photography, fiction, etc., as well as theories about cosmic forces, and other fields of knowledge and enquiry. Hence the collection also deals with topics including cultural inscriptions of gardens and landscapes, deconstructions of received history through word and image artworks and texts, experiments in poetic materiality, graphic re-mediations of classic fiction, and textual transactions with animation and photography. Contributors are: Dina Aleshina, Marcia Arbex, Donna T. Canada Smith, Calum Colvin, Francis Edeline, Philippe Enrico, Etienne Fevrier, Madeline B. Gangnes, Eric T. Haskell, Christina Ionescu, Tim Isherwood, Matthew Jarron, Philippe Kaenel, Judy Kendall, Catherine Lanone, Kristen Nassif, Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, Eric Robertson, Frances Robertson, Cathy Roche-Liger, David Skilton, Melanie Stengele, Barry Sullivan, Alice Tarbuck, Frederik Van Dam.

Francis Bacon is considered one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. A major exhibition of his paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts, planned for 2020 but postponed because of the pandemic, explores the role of animals in his work – not least the human animal. Having often painted dogs and horses, in 1969 Bacon first depicted bullfights. In this powerful series of works, the interaction between man and beast is dangerous and cruel, but also disturbingly intimate. Both are contorted in their anguished struggle, and the erotic lurks not far away: ‘Bullfighting is like boxing,’ Bacon once said. ‘A marvellous aperitif to sex.’ Twenty-two years later, a lone bull was to be the subject of his final painting. In this fascinating publication – a significant addition to the literature on Bacon – expert authors discuss Bacon’s approach to animals and identify his varied sources of inspiration, which included wildlife photography and the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge. They contend that, by considering animals in states of vulnerability, anger and unease, Bacon was able to lay bare the role of instinctual behaviour in the human condition. Images below, left to right: Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950. Oil and cotton wool on canvas, 140 x 108.5 cm. Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo Hugo Maertens Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Study for Portrait (with Two Owls), 1963. Oil on canvas, 198.1 x 144.8 cm. Private collection. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Man with Dog, 1953. Oil on canvas, 152 x 117 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gift of Seymour H. Knox Jr, 1955, inv. K1955:3. Photo Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd All images © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020.

"London" and "Paris" are the first two titles in a unique new series of city guides focusing on modern and contemporary art - a genuine gap in the art and travel market. Never before has the contemporary art scene of each city been so comprehensively researched and presented. The guides follow a sound formula -each opens with an essay on the current contemporary art scene by a local art expert in that city, followed by an introduction which presents the art in the context of the city's history and geography to give the reader a feel for the places they might like to visit. The central portion of the books are a fact-packed,stunning, visual A-Z guide to 100 artists, each featuring a representative piece of that artist's work, with an expert commentary and details of everywhere their art can be seen in the city.The A-Z is cross-referenced throughout to the Directory,a comprehensive listing of public and private galleries, public art, art colleges, art tours and other sites where the art can be seen. These in turn are cross-referenced to the maps - one large map on the inside the front cover and ten close-up maps later in the book. The back inside cover has a transport map, making each guide not just inspirational and informative but also practical. Whether you are planning a weekend break, a longer trip or just want to get to know the contemporary art scene in your own city better this series has something for everyone.

Late in his life, confined to a chair or bed, Matisse transformed a simple technique into a medium for the creation of a major art. I have attained a form filtered to its essentials. Cutting dynamic shapes from painted paper, Matisse created his images. While producing pieces for Jazz, the artist used a large brush to write notes to himself on construction paper. The simple visual appearance of the words pleased Matisse, and he suggested using his reflective handwritten thoughts in juxtaposition with the images. The original edition of Jazz was an artist s book, printed in a limited quantity. This selection from the original is an exquisite suite of color plates and text that, like the music it was named for, was invented in a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity. These magnificent cut-outs of pure color celebrate the radiance and emotional intensity of the artist s oeuvre. "

This anthology of literary and dramatic works introduces writers from across Asia and the Asian diaspora. The landscapes and time periods it describes are rich and varied: a fishing village on the Padma River in Bangladesh in the early twentieth century, the slums of prewar Tokyo, Indonesia during the anti-leftist purge of the 1960s, and contemporary Tibet. Even more varied are the voices these works bring to life, which serve as testimony to the lives of those adversely impacted by poverty, rapid social change, political suppression, and armed conflict. In the end, the works in this anthology convey an attitude of spiritual and communal survival and even of hope. This anthology presents the complex dynamic between a diversity of Asian lives and the universalized concept of the individual "human" entitled to clearly specified "rights." It also asks us to think about what standards of analysis we should employ when considering a historical period in which universal human rights and civil liberties are considered secondary to the collective good, as has so often been the case when nation states are undergoing revolutionary change, waging war, or championing so-called Asian values. This book's use of the term Global Asia reflects an interest in rethinking "Asia" as more than an area determined by national borders and geography. Rather, this book portrays it as a space of movement and fluidity, where societies and individuals respond not only to their local frames of reference, but also to broader ideas and ideals. Many of the works anthologized here are the subject of scholarly analysis in the companion volume Human Rights and the Arts: Perspectives on Global Asia, also published by Lexington Books.

Omega has become the watchmaker with the highest name recognition in timekeeping for personal and sports events worldwide. If the father owned an Omega, so does the son. This important, color illustrated, new book presents, an illustrated description of all the watch movements manufactured by the Omega Watch Co. since the registration of its trademark in 1894. Over 400 watches are shown in 80 color and 334 black and white photographs. Started as a small watchmaker shop in Biel, Switzerland in 1848, the company expanded to Geneva and has made precision pocket and wristwatches including the world famous chronometer wristwatch Constellation, the diver's watch Seamaster, and the chronograph wristwatch Speedmaster Professional.

What happened in 1920s Cologne 'after Dada'? Whilst most standard accounts of Cologne Dada simply stop with Max Ernst's departure from the city for a new life as a surrealist in Paris, this book reveals the untold stories of the Cologne avant-garde that prospered after Dada but whose legacies have been largely forgotten or neglected. It focuses on the little-known Magical Realist painter Marta Hegemann (1894-1970). By re-inserting her into the histories of avant-garde modernism, a fuller picture of the gendered networks of artistic and cultural exchange within Weimar Germany can be revealed. This book embeds her activities as an artist within a gendered network of artistic exchange and influence in which Ernst continues to play a vital role amongst many others including his first wife, art critic Lou Straus-Ernst; photographers August Sander and Hannes Flach; artists Angelika Fick, Heinrich Hoerle, Willy Fick and the Cologne Progressives and visitors such as Kurt Schwitters and Katherine Dreier. The book offers a significant addition to research on Weimar visual culture and will be invaluable to students and specialists in the field. -- .

A spellbinding portrait of the Hampstead Modernists, threading together the lives, loves, rivalries and ambitions of a group of artists at the heart of an international avant-garde. Hampstead in the 1930s. In this peaceful, verdant London suburb, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson have embarked on a love affair - a passion that will launch an era-defining art movement. In her chronicle of the exhilarating rise and fall of British Modernism, Caroline Maclean captures the dazzling circle drawn into Hepworth and Nicholson's wake: among them Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Herbert Read, and famed emigres Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, and Piet Mondrian, blown in on the winds of change sweeping across Europe. Living and working within a few streets of their Parkhill Road studios, the artists form Unit One, a cornerstone of the Modernist movement which would bring them international renown. Drawing on previously unpublished archive material, Caroline Maclean's electrifying Circles and Squares brings the work, loves and rivalries of the Hampstead Modernists to life as never before, capturing a brief moment in time when a new way of living seemed possible. United in their belief in art's power to change the world, her cast of trailblazers radiate hope and ambition during one of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century.

Including both narratives and visual texts by and about Latina women, Amador Gomez-Quintero and Perez Bustillo address the question of how women represent themselves. Utilizing paintings, novels, photographs, memoirs, and diaries this work examines the depiction of the female body in 20th-century creative expression. From writers such as Julia Alvarez and Christina Garcia to artists including Frida Kahlo and Ana Mendieta, it provides both a broad outline and a finely detailed exploration of how a largely overlooked community of creative women have seen, drawn, photographed, and written about their own experience.

The authors discuss women as both agent and subject of artistic representation often comparing both fictional and nonfictional versions of the same woman. Not only do they analyze Elena Poniatowska's "Dear Diego," which centers on artist Angelina Beloff, but they also analyze Beloff's own memoirs. Continuing in this style, they make further comparisons between Frida Kahlo's "Diary" and visual images of her body. Connections such as these are what make their work not merely an articulation of imagery but an explanation of ideas.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was highly skilled in jewellery design, ceramics, enamels, and metalwork but he is best known for his beautiful stained-glass designs. Using opalescent glass in a variety of colours and textures, he created a stunning range of jewel-like Art Nouveau works that influenced much of American modern art. This sumptuous new book features page after page of astounding work, showing Tiffany's skill as a colourist and a craftsman, with works that still inspire artists and audiences today.

Pablo Picasso's artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. This handsome publication examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-colle experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional 'constructions', made of cardboard, paper and string. Sometimes, his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were hard to come by, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And, of course, his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings, among them Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937). With reproductions of more than 300 works of art and additional texts by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Johan Popelard and Claustre Rafart Planas, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso's genius seized the potential of paper at different stages throughout his career.

In an age of "ethnic cleansing" and forced migration, of contested borders and nations in turmoil, how have issues of place and identity, and of belonging and exclusion, been represented in visual culture? In "Terra Infirma," Irit Rogoff uses the work of international contemporary artists to explore how art in the twentieth century has confronted and challenged issues of identity and belonging.
Rogoff's dazzling and richly-illustrated study considers painting, installation art, film and video by a wide range of artists including Charlotte Salomon, Ana Mendieta, Joshua Neustein, Yehoshua Glotman, Mona Hatoum, Hans Haacke, Ashley Bickerton, Alfredo Jaar and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Structuring her argument around themes of luggage, mapping, borders and bodies, Rogoff explores how these artists have confronted twentieth century phenomena such as the horror of the Holocaust, the experience of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Balkan wars, and the policing ofthe U.S.-Mexican border. In the process, "Terra Infirma" reveals the complexity of contemporary art's engagement with issues of place and identity and the immense variety of alternative strategies through which we can reconsider our relationship with the spaces we inhabit.