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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles
On the southern end of the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare that
runs through the center of Port-au-Prince, waits the Haitian
capital's automobile repair district. This veritable junkyard of
steel and rubber, recycled parts, old tires, and scrap metal might
seem an unlikely foundry for art. Yet, on the street's opposite end
thrives the Grand Rue Galerie, a working studio of assembled art
and sculptures wrought from the refuse. Established by artists
Andre Eugene and Celeur in the late 1990s, the Grand Rue's urban
environmental aesthetics-defined by motifs of machinic urbanism,
Vodou bricolage, the postprimitivist altermodern, and performative
politics-radically challenge ideas about consumption, waste, and
environmental hazards, as well as consider innovative solutions to
these problems in the midst of poverty, insufficient social
welfare, lack of access to arts, education, and basic needs. In
Riding with Death, Jana Braziel explores the urban environmental
aesthetics of the Grand Rue Sculptors and the beautifully
constructed sculptures they have designed from salvaged automobile
parts, rubber tires, carved wood, and other recycled
materials.Through first-person accounts and fieldwork, Braziel
constructs an urban ecological framework for understanding these
sculptures amid environmental degradation and grinding poverty.
Influenced by urban geographers, art historians, and political
theorists, the book regards the underdeveloped cities of the Global
South as alternate spaces for challenging the profit-driven
machinations of global capitalism. Above all, Braziel presents
Haitian artists who live on the most challenged Caribbean island,
yet who thrive as creators reinventing refuse as art and resisting
the abjection of their circumstances.
This stunning catalogue presents The Courtauld's outstanding
collection of works by Renaissance artist Girolamo Francesco Maria
Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540). This catalogue
accompanies a display of works by Parmigianino at The Courtauld,
including his famous and enigmatic painting of the Virgin and
Child, as well as drawn studies for his most ambitious projects
such as the Madonna of the Long Neck and the frescoes of the church
of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. The latter was the last and
most important commission of his life and would have been his
triumphal homecoming. Instead, Parmigianino became entangled in his
experimental processes and failed to complete it, leading to his
brief imprisonment for breach of contract. Fundamentally a
draftsman at heart, Parmigianino drew relentlessly during his
relatively short life, and around a thousand of his drawings have
survived. The Courtauld's collection comprises twenty-four sheets.
In preparation for the catalogue, new photography and technical
examinations have been carried out on all the works revealing two
new drawings that were previously unknown, hidden underneath their
historic mounts. They have also helped to better identify
connections between some of the drawings and the finished paintings
for which they were conceived. The catalogue illustrates the whole
Courtauld collection, which also includes two paintings and more
than ten prints. As a printmaker, Parmigianino is considered to
have been the first to experiment with etching in Italy and was a
pioneer of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique. His refined and
graceful compositions were much appreciated by his contemporaries
and exalted by the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-74).
This catalogue and display have been curated by Gottardo and
Rebecchini in collaboration with former and current research
students at The Courtauld, and technical research has been
conducted by members of The Courtauld Conservation Institute. A
truly collaborative project, the catalogue sheds light on an artist
who approached every technique with unprecedented freedom and
produced innovative works which were studied and admired by artists
and collectors for many years to come.
The myth of Van Gogh today is linked as much to his extraordinary
life as it is to his stunning paintings. His biography has often
shaped the way that his self-portraits have been (mis)understood.
Van Gogh. Self-Portraits reconsiders this aspect of his production
and places the artist's self-representation in context to reveal
the role it plays in his oeuvre. It also explores the power and
profound emotion of these highly personal paintings. Van Gogh.
Self-Portraits is the first time this theme has been exclusively
addressed. Self-portraits painted during Van Gogh's time in Paris
(February 1886 - February 1888) have been the subject of two
exhibitions (in 1960 at Marlborough Fine Arts in London and in 1995
at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg) but never has the full chronological
range been explored. The exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, which
this volume accompanies, features paintings from both the Parisian
and Provencal periods. It brings together half of Van Gogh's
thirty-five known self-portraits to examine the ways the artist
approached this particular subject-matter. On a practical level,
painting himself provided Van Gogh with the cheapest and most
patient of models and represented an important conduit for
stylistic experimentation. He also used self-portraiture as an
homage to his illustrious Dutch predecessor Rembrandt, as well as a
way of fashioning his own identity and presenting himself to the
outside world. Of particular interest is the striking way the
evolution of Van Gogh's self-representation over the short years of
his artistic activity can be seen as a microcosm of his development
as a painter. In addition to the world-famous Self-Portrait with
Bandaged Ear in The Courtauld's collection, the exhibition
showcases a group of major masterpieces brought together from
international collections, including the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam, the Muse d'Orsay in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago
and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.
This beautifully illustrated catalogue includes detailed entries on
each work, an appendix illustrating all of Van Gogh's
self-portraits and three insightful essays on the theme.
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