The early surrealists attempted to create art directly from the unconscious, but the resulting art often reveals the stamp of its age. It is generally accepted that a certain macho sensibility prevailed within the movement, excluding queer sensibilities and reducing women to object status. In startling new readings of Breton, Bataille, Cocteau, Artaud, Crevel and others, Justin Vicari examines the intersections between surrealism and mental illness, deploying an interdisciplinary approach, which includes aesthetic theory, radical politics, and psychoanalysis. Of particular interest is the representation of the ideal woman as not only sexually available but mentally ill, a hysteric muse representing a kind of "authenticity" lost in modern life.

This illustrated history highlights the diversity and innovation of American ceramics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as artists responded to historical precedents and emerging modernist styles around the world Between the early 1880s and the early 1950s, pioneering American artists drew upon the rich traditions and recent innovations of European and Asian ceramics to develop new designs, decorations, and techniques. With splendid new photography, this book showcases these American interpretations of international trends, from the Arts and Crafts and Art Deco movements, through the modernism of Matisse and the Wiener Werkstatte, to abstracted, minimalist styles. Illustrations of more than 180 exemplary works-some of these never before published-accompany engaging essays by two of the foremost experts on American art pottery. The featured makers include Rookwood, Grueby, and Van Briggle potteries, as well as artists including Maija Grotell, George E. Ohr, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Rockwell Kent, Adelaide Alsop Robineau, and Leza McVey. A vivid and accessible overview of American ceramics and ceramists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this publication reveals how diverse and global sources inspired works of astonishing ingenuity and variety by artists working in the United States. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 2021-October 2022)

Focusing on his evocative and profound references to children and their stories, Children's Stories and 'Child-Time' in the Works of Joseph Cornell and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde studies the relationship between the artist's work on childhood and his search for a transfigured concept of time. This study also situates Cornell and his art in the broader context of the transatlantic avant-garde of the 1930s and 40s. Analisa Leppanen-Guerra explores the children's stories that Cornell perceived as fundamental in order to unpack the dense network of associations in his under-studied multimedia works. Moving away from the usual focus on his box constructions, the author directs her attention to Cornell's film and theater scenarios, 'explorations', 'dossiers', and book-objects. One highlight of this study is a work that may well be the first artist's book of its kind, and has only been exhibited twice: Untitled (Journal d'Agriculture Pratique), presented as Cornell's enigmatic tribute to Lewis Carroll's Alice books.

What does it mean for a sculpture to be described as 'organic' or a diagram of 'morphological forces'? These were questions that preoccupied Modernist sculptors and critics in Britain as they wrestled with the artistic implications of biological discovery during the 1930s. In this lucid and thought-provoking book, Edward Juler provides the first detailed critical history of British Modernist sculpture's interaction with modern biology. Discussing the significant influence of biologists and scientific philosophers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Julian Huxley, J. S. Haldane and Alfred North Whitehead on interwar Modernist practice, this book provides radical new interpretations of the work of key British Modernist artists and critics, including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash and Herbert Read. Innovative and interdisciplinary, this pioneering book will appeal to students of art history and the history of science as well as anyone interested in the complex, interweaving histories of art and science in the twentieth century. -- .

The first book-length feminist analysis of Eileen Gray's work, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In argues that Gray's unusual architecture and design - as well as its history of abuse and neglect - emerged from her involvement with cultures of sapphic modernism. Bringing together a range of theoretical and historical sources, from architecture and design, communication and media, to gender and sexuality studies, Jasmine Rault shows that Gray shared with many of her female contemporaries a commitment to designing spaces for sexually dissident modernity. This volume examines Gray's early lacquer work and Romaine Brooks' earliest nude paintings; Gray's first built house, E.1027, in relation to Radclyffe Hall and her novel The Well of Loneliness; and Gray's private house, Tempe A Pailla, with Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. While both female sexual dissidence and modernist architecture were reduced to rigid identities through mass media, women such as Gray, Brooks, Hall and Barnes resisted the clarity of such identities with opaque, non-communicative aesthetics. Rault demonstrates that by defying the modern imperative to publicity, clarity and identity, Gray helped design a sapphic modernity that cultivated the dynamism of uncertain bodies and unfixed pleasures, which depended on staying in rather than coming out.

The most prolific photographer of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Russell Lee has never been canonised for his iconic images of mid-century America. With this insightful biography, historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel uncovers Lee’s rebellious life, tracing his journey from blue-blood beginnings to self-taught photographer through the body of work he left behind. Lee crisscrossed America’s back roads more than any photographer of his era, living out of his car from 1936 to 1942. Under the guidance of FSA director Roy Stryker, he captured arresting images of dust storms and punishing floods, and chronicled the Second World War home front and the heyday of small-town America—all the while focusing prophetically on themes like segregation and climate change. With more than 100 images spread throughout, Russell Lee speaks not only to the complexity of a pioneering documentary photographer’s work but to a seminal American moment captured viscerally like never before.

This study looks at the artists, designers and writers who formed the Independent Group in the early 1950s including such influential figures as Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson, William Turnball, Rayner Banham and Alison and Peter Smithson. As a group they aimed to raise the status of popular objects and icons within modern visual culture. The development of the Independent Group is mapped out against the changing nature of modernism during the Cold War era, as well as the impact of mass consumption on post-war British society. In this book, Massey examines the cultural context of the formation of the Group, covering the founding of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the meanings of modernism, and the creation of a national identity. Key exhibitions such as "Parallel of Life and Art" and "This Is Tomorrow" are also examined.

A survey of modern art from the Impressionists to the present, with a new chapter on the art of the seventies and eighties, and corrections and revisions in the text.

An overview of the work of 20th-century graphic design icon Tom Eckersley – packed with hundreds of his instantly recognisable designs. From iconic posters for the Post Office and London Transport to designs for brands such as Guinness, this richly illustrated book explores the work of influential British poster artist and design teacher Tom Eckersley (1914–1997). Part of the 'outsider' generation that transformed graphic design in Britain in the mid-century era, Eckersley’s instantly recognisable posters have become true icons of 20th-century style. Here, design writer and former Eckersley archivist Paul Rennie gives a fascinating exploration of Eckersley’s life and work, from his Northern upbringing and early career, through pioneering work during the Second World War, to his central role in mid-century graphic design in the decades that followed. Over 200 designs from throughout Eckersley’s career are featured. Made in his signature style combining bold, bright colours and flat graphic shapes, there are designs for clients such as the BBC, British Rail, Keep Britain Tidy, Gillette, BP and Shell. The book also examines Eckersley’s position at the forefront of the explosion of print culture in the 20th century, how he helped to transform design education in Britain, and the lasting legacy he left behind. A celebration of a true mid-century modern master, this is the first book on Tom Eckersley of its kind and will appeal to anyone interested in graphic design and visual communication.

Based on hitherto overlooked archival material, this book reveals Nell Walden's significant impact on the Sturm organisation through a feminist reading of supportive labour that highlights the centrality of collaborative work within the modern art world. This book introduces Walden as an ardent collector of modern and indigenous art and critically contextualises her own art production in relation to expressionist concepts of art and to gendered ideas on abstraction and decoration. Visual analyses highlight how she collaborated with professional and experimental women photographers during the Weimar era and how the circulation of these photographs served as a means to intervene in the public sphere of culture in interwar Germany. Finally, the book provides an analysis of Walden's continuing work for Der Sturm after her voluntary exile from Germany to Switzerland in 1933 and highlights the importance of women's supportive labour for the canonisation and institutionalisation of modern art in museums and archives. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, and gender studies.

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination explores the role of art in conceiving and reconfiguring the political, ethical and social landscape of our time. Understanding art as a vital form of articulation, Meskimmon argues that artworks do more than simply reflect and represent the processes of transnational and transcultural exchange typical of the global economy. Rather, art can change the way we imagine, understand and engage with the world and with others very different than ourselves. In this sense, art participates in a critical dialogue between cosmopolitan imagination, embodied ethics and locational identity.

The development of a cosmopolitan imagination is crucial to engendering a global sense of ethical and political responsibility. By materialising concepts and meanings beyond the limits of a narrow individualism, art plays an important role in this development, enabling us to encounter difference, imagine change and make possible the new. This book asks what it means to inhabit a globalized world how we might literally and figuratively make ourselves cosmopolitans, at home everywhere. Contemporary art provides a space for this enquiry.

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination is structured and written through four architectonic figurations foundation, threshold, passage and landing which simultaneously reference the built environment and the transformative structure of knowledge-systems. It offers a challenging new direction in the current literature on cosmopolitanism, globalisation and art.

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination explores the role of art in conceiving and reconfiguring the political, ethical and social landscape of our time. Understanding art as a vital form of articulation, Meskimmon argues that artworks do more than simply reflect and represent the processes of transnational and transcultural exchange typical of the global economy. Rather, art can change the way we imagine, understand and engage with the world and with others very different than ourselves. In this sense, art participates in a critical dialogue between cosmopolitan imagination, embodied ethics and locational identity.

The development of a cosmopolitan imagination is crucial to engendering a global sense of ethical and political responsibility. By materialising concepts and meanings beyond the limits of a narrow individualism, art plays an important role in this development, enabling us to encounter difference, imagine change and make possible the new. This book asks what it means to inhabit a globalized world ? how we might literally and figuratively make ourselves cosmopolitans, ?at home? everywhere. Contemporary art provides a space for this enquiry.

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination is structured and written through four ?architectonic figurations? ? foundation, threshold, passage and landing ? which simultaneously reference the built environment and the transformative structure of knowledge-systems. It offers a challenging new direction in the current literature on cosmopolitanism, globalisation and art.

What is the place of architecture in the history of art? Why has it been at times central to the discipline, and at other times seemingly so marginal? What is its place now? Many disciplines have a stake in the history of architecture - sociology, anthropology, human geography, to name a few. This book deals with perhaps the most influential tradition of all - art history - examining how the relation between the disciplines of art history and architectural history has waxed and waned over the last one hundred and fifty years. In this highly original study, Mark Crinson and Richard J. Williams point to a decline in the importance attributed to the role of architecture in art history over the last century - which has happened without crisis or self-reflection. The book explores the problem in relation to key art historical approaches, from formalism, to feminism, to the social history of art, and in key institutions from the Museum of Modern Art, to the journal October. Among the key thinkers explored are Banham, Baxandall, Giedion, Panofsky, Pevsner, Pollock, Riegl, Rowe, Steinberg, Wittkower and Woelfflin. The book will provoke debate on the historiography and present state of the discipline of art history, and it makes a powerful case for the reconsideration of architecture.

Explores contemporary art that challenges deadly desires for mastery and dominion. Amid times of emboldened cruelty and perpetual war, Rosalyn Deutsche links contemporary art to three practices that counter the prevailing destructiveness: psychoanalytic feminism, radical democracy, and war resistance. Deutsche considers how art joins these radical practices to challenge desires for mastery and dominion, which are encapsulated in the Eurocentric conception of the human that goes under the name "Man" and is driven by deadly inclinations that Deutsche calls masculinist. The masculinist subject-as an individual or a group-universalizes itself, claims to speak on behalf of humanity, and meets differences with conquest. Analyzing artworks by Christopher D'Arcangelo, Robert Filliou, Hans Haacke, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Martha Rosler, James Welling, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, Deutsche illuminates the diverse ways in which they expose, question, and trouble the visual fantasies that express masculinist desire. Undermining the mastering subject, these artworks invite viewers to question the positions they assume in relation to others. Together, the essays in Not-Forgetting, written between 1999 and 2020, argue that this art offers a unique contribution to building a less cruel and violent society.

This is the first anthology to bring transnational feminist theory and criticism together with women's art practices to discuss the connections between aesthetics, gender and identity in a global world. The essays in Women, the arts and globalization demonstrate that women in the arts are rarely positioned at the centre of the art market, and the movement of women globally (as travelers or migrants, empowered artists/scholars or exiled practitioners), rarely corresponds with the dominant models of global exchange. Rather, contemporary women's art practices provide a fascinating instance of women's eccentric experiences of the myriad effects of globalization. Bringing scholarly essays on gender, art and globalization together with interviews and autobiographical accounts of personal experiences, the diversity of the book is relevant to artists, art historians, feminist theorists and humanities scholars interested in the impact of globalization on culture in the broadest sense. -- .

Play and the Artist's Creative Process explores a continuity between childhood play and adult creativity. The volume examines how an understanding of play can shed new light on processes that recur in the work of Philip Guston and Eduardo Paolozzi. Both artists' distinctive engagement with popular culture is seen as connected to the play materials available in the landscapes of their individual childhoods. Animating or toying with material to produce the unforeseen outcome is explored as the central force at work in the artists' processes. By engaging with a range of play theories, the book shows how the artists' studio methods can be understood in terms of game strategies.

The Books That Shaped Art History provides an invaluable roadmap of the field by reassessing the impact of the most important texts of art history published during the 20th century. Each of the sixteen incisive chapters, focusing on a single book, is written by a leading art historian, curator or one of the promising scholars of today. In bringing these cross-generational contributions together, the book presents a varied and invaluable overview of the history of art, told through its most enduring literature. Each essay - with writers including John Elderfield, Boris Groys, Susie Nash and Richard Verdi - analyses a single major work, mapping the intellectual development of its author, setting out the premises and argument of the book, discussing its position within the field of art history, and looking at its significance in the context both of its initial reception and its legacy. Enlivening debates and questioning the very status of art history itself, this is a concise and brilliant study of the discipline and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in visual culture and its histories.

Painting is a continually expanding and evolving medium. The radical changes that have taken place since the 1960s and 1970s - the period that saw the shift from a modernist to a postmodernist visual language - have led to its reinvigoration as a practice, lending it an energy and diversity that persist today. In Contemporary Painting, renowned critic and art historian Suzanne Hudson offers an intelligent and original survey of the subject: a rigorous critical snapshot that brings together more than 250 renowned artists from around the world, whose ideas and aesthetics characterize the painting of our time. These luminaries include Cecily Brown, Theaster Gates, Josh Smith, Jenny Saville, Julie Mehretu, Takashi Murakami, Gabriel Orozco, Christina Quarles, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Zhang Xiaogang and many others. Organized into seven thematic chapters exploring aspects of contemporary painting, this is an essential volume for art history enthusiasts, students, critics and practitioners. With 245 illustrations in colour

Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain critically analyses the role that visual culture played in the early development of Mass-Observation, the innovative British anthropological research group founded in 1937. The group's production and use of painting, collage, photography, and other media illustrates not only the broad scope of Mass-Observation's efforts to document everyday life, but also, more specifically, the centrality of visual elements to its efforts at understanding national identity in the 1930s. Although much interest has previously focused on Mass-Observation's use of written reports and opinion surveys, as well as diaries that were kept by hundreds of volunteer observers, this book is the first full-length study of the group's engagement with visual culture. Exploring the paintings of Graham Bell and William Coldstream; the photographs of Humphrey Spender; the paintings, collages, and photographs of Julian Trevelyan; and Humphrey Spender's photographs and widely recognized 'Mass-Observation film', Spare Time, among other sources, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain positions these works as key sources of information with regard to illuminating the complex character of British identity during the Depression era.

Originally published in 1998, The Handbook of Modern British Painting and Printmaking 1900-1990 has been designed for people who enjoy, study and buy British art. The only portable dictionary-style guide to the life and work of modern British painters and printmakers, the book provides information on some 2,000 artists, as well as entries on schools of art, on museums, galleries and collections, on societies and groups, and critics and patrons who have influenced the development of modern art in Britain. Compiled by scholars, the entries are cross-referenced and each concise biographical outline provides the relevant facts about the artist's life, a brief characterisation of the artist's work, and major bibliographic references. Wherever possible, one or two suggestions for further reading are cited.

A new survey of the best works by the elusive and spectacular Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla. Often compared to his contemporary, the American artist John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923) was a master draftsman and painter of landscapes, formal portraits, and monumental, historically themed canvases. Highly influenced by French Impressionism, the Valencian artist was a master plein-air painter known for his luminous seaside scenes of frolicking youths and for vivid depictions of Spanish rural life and its pleasures and customs. This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla's major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the foremost authority on the artist. Benefiting from close proximity to the artist and his personal archives, she presents an in-depth essay that explores Sorolla's life, work, and remarkable international legacy. With virtually all of the artist's previous publications now out of print, this much-anticipated volume is an important addition to the literature on this great Spanish master.

F.C.B. Cadell was born in Edinburgh, where he lived for most of his life, and studied in Paris and Munich. This book illustrates many of the works for which Cadell is celebrated, including stylish portrayals of Edinburgh New Town interiors, vibrantly coloured, daringly simplified still lives of the 1920s, and evocative landscapes of the Scottish west coast and the south of France. Based on new research, a special section concentrates on Cadell's relationship with Iona, where he painted nearly every year from 1912 until 1935. The book accompanies a major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the first retrospective exhibition of Cadell's work held at a public gallery since 1942.

This book is the only record of federally-funded art projects in Virginia during the Great Depression. It provides an historical overview of each city or town that is home to the artwork, information on federal structures housing the artwork, a photograph and description of the artwork itself, and a biographical sketch of the artist. More than 180 photographs are featured in this title.

This book presents over twenty authors' reflections on 'curating care' - and presents a call to give curatorial attention to the primacy of care for all life, and for more 'caring curating' that responds to the social, ecological and political analysis of curatorial caregiving. Social and ecological struggles for a different planetary culture based on care and respect for the dignity of life is reflected in contemporary curatorial practices that explore human and nonhuman interdependence. The prevalence of themes of care in curating is a response to a dual crisis: the crisis of social and ecological care that characterizes global politics, and the professional crisis of curating under the pressures of the increasingly commercialized cultural landscape. Foregrounding that all beings depend on each other for life and survival, this book collects theoretical essays, methodological challenges and case studies from curators working in different global geographies to explore the range of ways in which curatorial labour is rendered as care. Practicing curators, activists and theorists situate curatorial labour in the context of today's general care crisis. This volume answers to the call to more fully understand how their transformative work allows for imagining the future of bodily, social, and environmental care and the ethics of interdependency differently.

Painting, Politics and the Struggle for the Ecole de Paris, 1944-1964 is the first book dedicated to the postwar or 'nouvelle' Ecole de Paris. It challenges the customary relegation of the Ecole de Paris to the footnotes, not by arguing for some hitherto 'hidden' merit for the art and ideas associated with this school, but by establishing how and why the Ecole de Paris was a highly significant vehicle for artistic and political debate. The book presents a sustained historical study of how this 'school' was constituted by the paintings of a diverse group of artists, by the combative field of art criticism, and by the curatorial policies of galleries and state exhibitions. By thoroughly mining the extensive resources of the newspaper and art journal press, gallery and government archives, artists' writings and interviews with surviving artists and art critics, the book traces the artists, exhibitions, and art critical debates that made the Ecole de Paris a zone of aesthetic and political conflict. Through setting the Ecole de Paris into its artistic, social, and political context, Natalie Adamson demonstrates how it functioned as the defining force in French postwar art in its defence of the tradition of easel painting, as well as an international point of reference for the expansion of modernism. In doing so, she presents a wholly new perspective on the vexed relationships between painting, politics, and national identity in France during the two decades following World War II.