A groundbreaking insight into Gustave Courbet and his bold experiments in landscape painting Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and Cezanne. This series has long been neglected in favor of Courbet's paintings of rural French life. Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting explores these astonishing paintings, staking a claim for their importance to Courbet's work and later developments in French modernism. Ranging from the grottoes of Courbet's native Franche-Comte to the beaches of Normandy, Paul Galvez follows the artist on his travels as he uses a palette-knife to transform the Romantic landscape of voyage into a direct, visceral confrontation with the material world. The Courbet he discovers is not the celebrated history painter of provincial life, but a committed landscapist whose view of nature aligns him with contemporary developments in geology, history, linguistics, and literature.

What happens when the avant-garde grows old? Examining a group of writers and artists who continued the modernist experiment into later life, Scott Herring reveals how their radical artistic principles set out a new path for creative aging. Aging Moderns provides portraits of writers and artists who sought out or employed unconventional methods and collaborations up until the early twenty-first century. Herring finds Djuna Barnes performing the principles of high modernism not only in poetry but also in pharmacy orders and grocery lists. In mystery novels featuring Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas along with modernist souvenir collections, the gay writer Samuel Steward elaborated a queer theory of aging and challenged gay male ageism. The Harlem Renaissance dancer Mabel Hampton dispelled stereotypes about aging through her queer of color performances at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Herring explores Ivan Albright's magic realist portraits of elders, Tillie Olsen's writings on the aging female worker, and the surrealistic works made by Charles Henri Ford and his caregiver Indra Bahadur Tamang at the Dakota apartment building in New York City. Showcasing previously unpublished experimental art and writing, this deeply interdisciplinary book unites new modernist studies, American studies, disability studies, and critical age studies. Aging Moderns rethinks assumptions about literary creativity, the depiction of old age, and the boundaries of modernism.

A reassessment of self-taught artist William Edmondson, exploring the enduring relevance of his work This richly illustrated volume reintroduces readers to American sculptor William Edmondson (1874–1951) more than 80 years after his historic solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Edmondson began carving at the onset of the Depression in Tennessee. Initially creating tombstones for his community, over time he expanded his practice to include biblical subjects, the natural world, and recognizable figures including nurses and preachers. This book features new essays that explore Edmondson’s life in the South and his reception on the East Coast in the 1930s. Reading the artist through lenses of African American experience, the authors draw parallels between then and now, highlighting the complex relationship between Black cultural production and the American museum. Countering existing narratives that have viewed Edmondson as a passive actor in an unfolding drama—a self-taught sculptor “discovered� by White patrons and institutions—this book considers how the artist’s identity and position within history influenced his life and work. Distributed for the Barnes Foundation  Exhibition Schedule: The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (June 25–September 10, 2023)  

This book tells the story of how and why millions of Chinese works of art got exported to collectors and institutions in the West, in particular to the United States. As China's last dynasty was weakening and collapsing from 1860 into the early years of the twentieth century, China's internal chaos allowed imperial and private Chinese collections to be scattered, looted and sold. A remarkable and varied group of Westerners entered the country, had their eyes opened to centuries of Chinese creativity and gathered up paintings, bronzes and ceramics, as well as sculptures, jades and bronzes. The migration to America and Europe of China's art is one of the greatest outflows of a culture's artistic heritage in human history. A good deal of the art procured by collectors and dealers, some famous and others little known but all remarkable in individual ways, eventually wound up in American and European museums. Today some of the art still in private hands is returning to China via international auctions and aggressive purchases by Chinese millionaires.

Since the 1930s, Latin American writers have used magic realism to transcend the limits of the fantastic and illuminate social problems within the culture. The author considers five modern Latin American novels. Starting with two canonical texts of magic realism, Alejo Carpentier's "El reino de este mundo "(1949) and Garcia Marquez's "Cien a-os de soledad "(1967), the author argues that "Los Sangurimas" (1934), by the Ecuadorian Jos de la Cuadra, is a seminal work due to de la Cuadra's new approach to reality and his use of marvelous and hyperbolic elements. The author shows the continuation of this example in Ecuador in Demetrio Aguilera-Malta's "Siete lunas y siete serpientes "(1970) and Alicia Y nez Coss'o's "Bruna, soroche y los tios "(1972), which elucidate social problems of race, class, and gender through use of magic realism.
In selecting for her study well-known writers such as Carpentier, Garcia Marquez, and others, less well-known such as de la Cuadra, Aguilera-Malta and Y nez Coss'o, the author demonstrates that both canonical and noncanonical writers for many years have been working on this new way of writing to interpret in fiction the highly complex Latin American reality.

The story of a new style of art-and a new way of life-in postwar America: confessionalism. What do midcentury "confessional" poets have in common with today's reality TV stars? They share an inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, and also a sense that this book can never be finished. Christopher Grobe argues that, in postwar America, artists like these forged a new way of being in the world. Identity became a kind of work-always ongoing, never complete-to be performed on the public stage. The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed-with, around, and against the text of their lives. A blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and performance theory, The Art of Confession explores iconic works of art and draws surprising connections among artists who may seem far apart, but who were influenced directly by one another. Studying extraordinary art alongside ordinary experiences of self-betrayal and -revelation, Christopher Grobe argues that a tradition of "confessional performance" unites poets with comedians, performance artists with social media users, reality TV stars with actors-and all of them with us. There is art, this book shows, in our most artless acts.

Painter and illustrator Edward Bawden's five scrapbooks, assembled over a period of more than 55 years, contain everything from stamps, photographs, cigarette cards, Christmas cards and letters to newspaper cuttings, drawings and autographs, amongst other fascinating ephemera. Beautifully designed and illustrated with over 250 images taken from these books, Edward Bawden Scrapbooks reveals this wonderful and at times eccentric collection and provides a new insight into one of the most popular artists of 20th-century Britain. The pages illustrated provide an alternative window into Bawden's world, showing his very conscious awareness of both Surrealism and the work of other contemporary designers and typographers. But it is not only aficionados of Bawden who will be beguiled by these scrapbooks: perusing them is like trawling through an almanac of art, design and literature of the inter- and post-war years and the work of other key artists of the era such as Ben Nicholson, David Jones, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Ravilious and Hugh Casson also appears. Some pages are beautiful, some instructive and others simply baffling but when taken in conjunction with Bawden's watercolours, prints, illustrations, murals and other designs, the scrapbooks are the closest thing we have to an autobiography of one of the 20th-century's most reclusive and English of artists.

A funny, nostalgic and strange glimpse at life behind the Iron Curtain - from the hit social media account with over 1 million followers WELCOME TO THE USSR PARADE in the latest fashions! MARVEL at the wonders of the space race! DELIGHT in the many fine delicacies of food and drink! REVEL in the fine opportunities for work and play!

This book sets out to explore the way, with the onset of a new and integral relationship between text and image, the modern poster is able to evolve distinctive persuasive strategies that will transform modern advertising. The book shows how this fundamental development is closely related to contemporary developments in the visual arts - in particular Futurism and Art Deco - and reflects the increasing cross-fertilisation and symbiosis between art and graphic design. The book focuses in particular on the way conventional textual strategies - metaphor, metonymy, rebus - are adapted by the modern poster to produce visual or textual/visual equivalents which, through their employment of combined pictorial and linguistic elements maximise their attractive or persuasive power over the viewer/reader. A key aim of the book is to clarify the assumptions on which semiology (the study of signs) is based in the context of modern poster artists' practice. The text/image relation is explored through five chapters focussing on (1) the rhetoric of image/text in general; (2) text and image in airline logos: British Airways and Air France; (3) visual metonymies in boxing posters; (4) text and image in posters expressing speed; (5) text/image in Swiss tourist posters. There are approximately 120 colour illustrations arranged in groups that reflect the different orientations of the chapters.

In 1925 the artists Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious moved to the Essex village of Great Bardfield, at first sharing lodgings. Over the course of several years and encouraged by Bawden and Ravilious' work, other artists came to live in the village, forming a community of artists and designers that has continued to the present. Among the first to join them were the Rowntrees, Kenneth and Diana, and Michael Rothenstein and his wife Duffy Ayers. They were followed by John Aldridge, painter and designer of wallpapers (printed, like Bawden's papers, by the Curwen Press); Walter Hoyle, printmaker and also a wallpaper designer; Marianne Straub, textile designer and weaver; illustrators and printmakers Bernard Cheese and his wife Sheila Robinson. Though the careers of Bawden and Ravilious are well-documented, many of the other artists are less well-known but equally talented, such as George Chapman, Stanley Clifford-Smith and Laurence Scarfe.This book tells the story of Great Bardfield and its artists, and their famous 'open house' exhibitions, showing how the village and neighbouring landscape nurtured a distinctive style of art, design and illustration from the 1930s to the 1970s and beyond. '..their shared artistic legacy is immediately obvious from this beautiful book.' --Country Life 16th 23rd December 2015'..Beautifully designed.' --Evening Standard 24th December 2015'..splendidly illustrated' -- The Spectator, 28th November 2015

Published for the first time in paperback, this best selling book shows London as represented by Edward Bawden (1903 - 1989) in prints, posters, drawings, paintings, murals and advertising material produced during his long career. The wide range of illustrations includes early work executed whilst a student in the early 1920s; the Morley College murals carried out in partnership with Eric Ravilious; advertising work for London Transport, Fortnum & Mason, Twinings Teas, Shell, Westminster Bank; the mural for the Lion & Unicorn Pavilion at the 1951 Festival of Britain; and a varied selection of his finest series of linocuts - including London Monuments and London Markets.

An exceptionally thoughtful and well-written biography of one of the most influential studio potters in Britain Widely recognized as the father of studio pottery, Bernard Leach (1887-1979) played a pioneering role in creating an identity for artist potters in Britain and around the world. Born in the East (Hong Kong) and educated in the West (England), throughout his life Leach perceived himself as a courier between the disparate cultures. His exquisite pots reflect the inspiration he drew from East and West as well as his response to the basic tenets of modernism-truth to materials, the importance of function to form, and simplicity of decoration. This outstanding biography provides for the first time a vivid and detailed account of Leach's life and its relation to his art. Emmanuel Cooper, himself a potter of international reputation, explores Leach's working methods, the seams of his pottery, his writings and philosophy, his recognition in Japan and Britain, and his continuing legacy, bringing into sharp focus a complex man who captured in his work as a potter the "still center" that always eluded him in his tumultuous personal life. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Claud Lovat Fraser - universally known as Lovat - is one of the great unsung heroes of twentieth-century British design. During his short life of just thirty-one years, five of which were disrupted by the Great War, he achieved an astonishing amount of work as draughtsman, watercolourist, caricaturist, publisher, illustrator, designer of stage-sets, toys and fabrics: he also designed silks for Liberty's, cretonnes for Foxton's, advertising material for Eno's, MacFisheries, Gurr Johns and Atkinson's, and book-jackets for Heinemann and Nelson, among others. His inimitable style and psychedelic palette became the hallmark of both the Curwen Press and the Poetry Bookshop, but he is best remembered today, by those who are aware of him at all, for his poster, costume and set-designs for Nigel Playfair's 1920 production of 'The Beggar's Opera' at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.

Artistic expression in the Middle East is experiencing something of a renaissance. Domestic patronage is flourishing, and an impressive array of new museums and art fairs across the region is helping to stimulate international interest in an increasingly influential movement. "Art of the Middle East" is an accessible overview of modern and contemporary art of the Middle East and Arab world from 1945 to the present, with an emphasis on artists active today. This new revised and expanded edition features the work of 12 additional artists, as well as a consideration of the impact of the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring, which erupted across the region in 2011. The featured works are divided into seven themed sections - including literature, portraiture and the body, and politics, conflict and war - while extended captions provide an engaging commentary on each artwork and the artist behind its creation. Lavishly illustrated throughout, this landmark publication is an authoritative guide to a challenging and exciting body of work.

Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art explores the transformation of Buddhism from the premodern to the contemporary era in Japan and the central role its visual culture has played in this transformation. Although Buddhism is generally regarded as peripheral to modern Japanese society, this book demonstrates otherwise. Its chapters elucidate the thread of change over time in the practice of Buddhism as revealed in temple worship halls and other sites of devotion and in imagery representing the religion's most popular deities and religious practices.

A fascinating journey through Western art from the 1910s to the 1960s, charting how artists wrestled with the headlong changes of a turbulent and conflict-ridden world From the chaos of the First World War to the ravages of the Second, from the Great Depression to the rise of consumer culture, artists we call "modern" faced the challenge of responding imaginatively to utterly new circumstances of life. Original thought, startling artistic techniques, and new attitudes to experimentation were required to produce exceptional and timely work. Make It Modern guides the reader through the art of the modern world. Works of celebrated artists, from Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky to Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Yayoi Kusama, alongside a panoply of undervalued or less-known figures, populate this decade-by-decade narrative. Make It Modern tells an unforgettable story of how art was changed forever.

From one-of-a-kind hand made fashion to commercially made highly decorative apparel, wearable art has become an important category for both collectors of vintage costume and of unique contemporary fashion. This book, with more than 500 color photographs, is the first to cover both vintage and new wearable art. Chapters on different categories of apparel present this compelling topic at its best. Not necessarily museum art, but real wearable creations, from the antique to the present, the creations presented in this book complimented by an extensive illustrated glossary, bibliography, and a value guide will delight anyone interested in fashion, art, and the unusual and beautiful.

Bringing together cultural history, visual studies, and media archaeology, Bruno considers the interrelations of projection, atmosphere, and environment. Projection has long been transforming space, from shadow plays to camera obscuras and magic lantern shows. Our fascination with projection is alive on the walls of museums and galleries and woven into our daily lives. Giuliana Bruno explores the histories of projection and atmosphere in visual culture and their continued importance to contemporary artists who are reinventing the projective imagination with atmospheric thinking and the use of elemental media. To explain our fascination with projection and atmosphere, Bruno traverses psychoanalysis, environmental philosophy, architecture, the history of science, visual art, and moving image culture to see how projective mechanisms and their environments have developed over time. She reveals how atmosphere is formed and mediated, how it can change, and what projection can do to modify a site. In so doing, she gives new life to the alchemic possibilities of transformative projective atmospheres. Showing how their "environmentality" produces sites of exchange and relationality, this book binds art to the ecology of atmosphere.

The exhibition Maison Sonia. Sonia Delaunay and the Atelier Simultane is dedicated to the applied work of Russian-French artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), with a focus on her textile design work. The accompanying catalogue includes the first scholarly essays on Sonia Delaunay's collaborations with silk industrialist Robert Perrier and couturier Jacques Heim, who were among her most important collaborators and previously unexplored. In addition, the publication provides the first overview of the role of Sonia Delaunay's simultaneous fabrics in the design of modern living and media spaces.