A groundbreaking examination of how the act of drawing was a vital component of Ruth Asawa’s multifaceted art   Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), widely known for her looped-wire sculptures, was an inveterate drawer. She filled sketchbook after sketchbook and even stated that drawing was central to her sculpture. This volume is the first to consider the significance of drawing in Asawa’s oeuvre throughout her career, featuring essays that examine the range of Asawa’s aesthetic maneuvers across materials and techniques; how Asawa’s drawing intertwined with the Bay Area arts community and her contributions to public education as a teacher and organizer; and the influence of Josef Albers’s pedagogy and Asawa’s lifelong adoption of his type of paper folding. Tracing Asawa’s artistic journey from her first formal art lessons in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II through her time at Black Mountain College and beyond, this comprehensive overview of the artist’s drawings includes reproductions of more than one hundred works—many of which have never been published—organized into eight thematic sections that cut through time, reflecting an art-making practice that was more circular or cyclical than linear.   Distributed for the Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art   Exhibition Schedule:   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (September 16, 2023–January 15, 2024)   The Menil Collection, Houston (March 22–July 21, 2024)  

The extraordinary life of a captivating American artist, beautifully illustrated with his dreamlike drawings Much of Joseph Elmer Yoakum's story comes from the artist himself-and is almost too fantastic to believe. At a young age, Yoakum (1891-1972) traveled the globe with numerous circuses; he later served in a segregated noncombat regiment during World War I before settling in Chicago. There, inspired by a dream, he began his artistic career at age seventy-one, producing some two thousand drawings over a decade. How did Yoakum gain representation in major museum collections in Chicago and New York? What fueled his process, which he described as a "spiritual unfoldment"? This volume delves into the friendships Yoakum forged with the Chicago Imagists that secured his place in art history, explores the religious outlook that may have helped him cope with a racially fractured city, and examines his complicated relationship to African American and Native American identities. With hundreds of beautiful color reproductions of his dreamlike drawings, it offers the most comprehensive study of the artist's work, illuminating his vivid and imaginative creativity and giving definition and dimension to his remarkable biography. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The Art Institute of Chicago (June 12-October 18, 2021) Museum of Modern Art, New York (November 28, 2021-March 18, 2022) Menil Collection, Houston (April 22-August 7, 2022)

A New York Times best art book of 2022 An A to Z exploration of the Enlightenment's quest for understanding and change, as revealed in the era's prints and drawings Are volcanoes punishment from God? What do a fly and a mulberry have in common? What utopias await in unexplored corners of the earth and beyond? During the Enlightenment, questions like these were brought to life through an astonishing array of prints and drawings, helping shape public opinion and stir political change. Dare to Know overturns common assumptions about the age, using the era's proliferation of works on paper to tell a more nuanced story. Echoing the structure and sweep of Diderot's Encyclopedie, the book contains 26 thematic essays, organized A to Z, providing an unprecedented perspective on more than 50 artists, including Henry Fuseli, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Francisco Goya, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, William Hogarth, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Giambattista Tiepolo. With a multidisciplinary approach, the book probes developments in the natural sciences, technology, economics, and more-all through the lens of the graphic arts. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums Exhibition Schedule: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (September 16, 2022-January 15, 2023)

One of the most imaginative and fascinating artists of eighteenth-century France,Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) was instrumental in the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and in the artistic rediscovery of classical antiquity. Much celebrated in his time, Bouchardon created some of the most iconic images of the age of Louis XV. His oeuvre demonstrates a remarkable variety of themes (from copies after the antique to subjects of history and mythology, portraiture, anatomical studies, ornament, fountains and tombs), media (drawings, sculptures, medals, prints), and techniques (chalk, plaster, wax, terracotta, marble, bronze).With five essays by experts on Bouchardon's sculpture and graphic arts, more than 140 catalogue entries, and a detailed chronology, this book aims to demonstrate the originality of Bouchardon's art within the cultural and social context of the period, while suggesting the subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist's two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman.This lavishly illustrated publication represents anunprecedented and thorough survey on this major andunique artist from the Age of Enlightenment, offering in-depth scholarship based on unpublished material detailingthe subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist's two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman.

A celebration of Robert Motherwell's drawings that provides new insight into the thematic continuities and techniques that informed the artist's working methods Throughout his long and prolific career, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) sustained a fascination with making art on paper. His multifaceted drawing practice was an integral part of his search for a personal, spontaneous language of mark-making. Presenting works spanning from The Mexican Sketchbook of the early 1940s to the Joyce Sketchbook of the 1980s, this overview of Motherwell's work on paper highlights the way the artist embraced the suggestive potential of his materials-blending the accidental and the intentional in the creative gesture. Large-scale reproductions encourage close looking and immerse the reader in details such as a stroke of the brush or a tear of paper, while an essay by Edouard Kopp examines how the artist's practice of "automatic drawing" dovetailed with his love of paper and ink in the creation of these unique and compelling works. The book closes with Motherwell's own "Thoughts on Drawing" (1970). Distributed for the Menil Collection Exhibition Schedule: Menil Drawing Institute, Menil Collection, Houston (November 18, 2022-March 12, 2023)

One of the most imaginative and fascinating artists of eighteenth-century France, Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) was instrumental in the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and in the artistic rediscovery of classical antiquity. Much celebrated in his time, Bouchardon created some of the most iconic images of the age of Louis XV. His oeuvre demonstrates a remarkable variety of themes (from copies after the antique to subjects of history and mythology, portraiture, anatomical studies, ornament, fountains and tombs), media (drawings, sculptures, medals, prints), and techniques (chalk, plaster, wax, terracotta, marble, bronze). This lavishly illustrated publication represents an unprecedented and thorough survey on this major and unique artist from the Age of Enlightenment, offering in-depth scholarship based on unpublished material detailing the subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist's two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman.

A celebration of the stunning collection of artworks donated in honor of the creation of The Menil Drawing Institute Featuring outstanding 20th-century drawings promised or bequeathed to the Menil Collection for the opening of the Menil Drawing Institute, this elegant volume is a testament to the growing significance of drawings as stand-alone artworks over the past century. The drawings come from the private collections of well-known connoisseurs Janie C. Lee, Louisa Stude Sarofim, and David Whitney, and include works by artists such as Bruce Nauman, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Eva Hesse, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. Its chief curator Edouard Kopp profiles the Drawing Institute's nature and scope, and noted scholars John Elderfield and Richard Shiff discuss historical aspects of drawing, while Terry Winters muses from an artist's viewpoint. Distributed for the Menil Collection

The odore Rousseau (1812-1867), arguably the most important French landscape artist of the mid-nineteenth century and a leader of the so-called Barbizon School, occupies a crucial moment of transition from the idealizing effects of academic painting to the radically modern vision of the Impressionists. He was an experimental artist who rejected the traditional historical, biblical, or literary subject matter in favor of "unruly nature," a Romantic naturalism that confounded his contemporaries with its "bizarre" compositional and coloristic innovations. Lavishly illustrated and thoroughly documented, this volume includes five essays by experts in the field. Scott Allan and Edouard Kopp alternately examine Rousseau's diverse techniques and working procedures as a painter and as a draftsman, as well as his art's mixed economic and critical fortunes on the art market and at the Salon. Line Clausen Pedersen's essay focuses on Mont Blanc Seen from La Faucille, Storm Effect, an early touchstone for the artist and a spectacular example of the Romantic sublime in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek's collection. This catalogue accompanies an eponymous exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from June 21 to September 11, 2016, and at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek from October 13, 2016, to January 8, 2017.

Dazzling works on paper from a vast and celebrated collection The Harvard Art Museums house one of the most significant collections of works on paper in North America. Among its many strengths are sheets by draftsmen of the French School, including notable masters such as Simon Vouet, Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Following an introductory essay that charts the formation of this group of drawings, this catalogue provides thorough entries on more than 100 outstanding examples from the 16th to 18th century that encompass a range of genres and motifs—from landscapes and figure studies to historical and mythological scenes—many of which were produced for major commissions or mark key moments in the development of style and taste in early modern France. Alvin L. Clark Jr. marshals his decades-long engagement with these works, pairing a discerning eye with perceptive readings that deepen our understanding of the drawings and their makers. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums