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Abundantly illustrated, this catalogue is a fascinating and comprehensive reevaluation of the French modernist sculptor Camille Claudel. Camille Claudel (1864–1943) was among the most daring and visionary sculptors of the late nineteenth century. Although much attention has been paid to her tumultuous life—her affair with her mentor, Auguste Rodin; the premature end to her career; her thirty-year institutionalization in an asylum—her art remains little known outside of France. Memorably praised by critic Octave Mirbeau in 1895 as “a revolt of nature: a woman of genius,” Claudel was celebrated for her brilliance during a time when women sculptors were rare. Featuring more than two h...
"George Maciunas is typically associated with the famous art collective Fluxus, of which he is often thought to have been the leader. In this book, critic and art historian Colby Chamberlain wants us to question two things: first, the idea that Fluxus was a "group" in any conventional sense, and second, that Maciunas was its "leader." Instead, Chamberlain shows us how Maciunas used the paper materials of bureaucracy in his art-cards, certificates, charts, files, and plans, among others-to subvert his own status as a "figurehead" of this collective and even as a biographical entity. Each of the book's chapters situates Maciunas's artistic practice in relation to a different domain: education,...
Monuments and Site-Specific Sculpture in Urban and Rural Space presents a collection of essays discussing works of art whose formal qualities, content and spatial interactions expand our idea of creation and commemoration. By addressing projects that range from war memorials to commemorations of individuals, as well as works that engage real and virtual environments, this book brings to light new aspects concerning twentieth and twenty-first century monuments and site-specific sculpture. The book addresses the work of, among others, Günter Demnig, Michael Heizer, Thomas Hirschhorn, Dani Karavan, Costantino Nivola, Melissa Shiff and John Craig Freeman, Robert Smithson, and Micha Ullman. A lucid, thought-provoking discussion of creative processes and the discourse between site-specific sculpture and its publics is provided in this collection. As such, it is vital and indispensable for historians, art historians and artists, as well as for every reader interested in the interrelations of art, urban and rural spaces, community and the makings of memory.
This book proposes that the performance of archival research is related to the experience of tourism, where an individual immerses herself in a foreign environment, relating to and analyzing visual and sensory materials through embodiment and enactment. Each chapter highlights a particular set of tangible objects including: pocket diaries, portraits, drawings, magic lanterns, silhouettes, waxworks, and photographs in relation to actresses, authors, and artists such as: Elizabeth Inchbald, Sally Siddons, Marguerite Gardiner the Countess of Blessington, Isabella Beetham, Jane Read, Madame Tussaud, and Amelia M. Watson. Ultimately, operating as an archival tourist in my analyses, I offer strategies for thinking about the presence of women artists in the archives through methodologies that seek to connect materials from the past with our representations of them in the present.
This book opens a window onto a fascinating and understudied aspect of the visual, material, intellectual, and cultural history of seventeenth-century Amsterdam: the role played by its inns and taverns, specifically the doolhoven. Doolhoven were a type of labyrinth unique to early modern Amsterdam. Offering guest lodgings, these licensed public houses also housed remarkable displays of artwork in their gardens and galleries. The main attractions were inventive displays of moving mechanical figures (automata) and a famed set of waxwork portraits of the rulers of Protestant Europe. Publicized as the most innovative artworks on display in Amsterdam, the doolhoven exhibits presented the mercanti...
Ingenuity in the Making explores the myriad ways in which ingenuity shaped the experience and conceptualization of materials and their manipulation in early modern Europe. Contributions range widely across the arts and sciences, examining objects and texts, professions and performances, concepts and practices. The book considers subjects such as spirited matter, the conceits of nature, and crafty devices, investigating the ways in which ingenuity acted in and upon the material world through skill and technique. Contributors ask how ingenuity informed the “maker’s knowledge” tradition, where the perilous borderline between the genius of invention and disingenuous fraud was drawn, charting the ambitions of material ingenuity in a rapidly globalizing world.
In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890-1962) a young African American elevator attendant at Boston's Hotel Vendome. McKeller became the principal model for Sargent's murals in the new wing of the Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, among the painter's most ambitious works. Sargent's nude studies and sketches from this project attest to a close collaboration between the two men that unfolded over nearly ten years. Featuring drawings given by Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner and published in full for the first time, a portrait of McKeller, and archival materials reconstructing his life and relationship with Sargent, this book opens new avenues into artist-model relationships and transforms our understanding of Sargent's iconic American paintings. Essays offer the first biography of Thomas McKeller and a window into African America life in early 20th century Roxbury. They address the artist's sexuality, his models, and consider questions of race and gender.
An extraordinary history of Netherlandish drawing, focused on the training and skill of artists during the long 17th century With a lively narrative thread and thematic chapters, this book offers an exceptional introduction to Dutch and Flemish drawing during the long 17th century. Victoria Sancho Lobis discusses the many roles of drawing in artistic training, its function in the production of works in other media, and its emergence as a medium in its own right. Beautifully illustrated with some 120 drawings by artists including Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick Goltzius, Gerrit von Honthorst, and Jacob De Gheyn, this book surveys current methodologies of studying these works and features a brief history of Dutch papermaking and watermarks as well as a glossary. Paying careful attention to materials and techniques, and informed by recent conservation treatments, Lobis explains how to look at these drawings as records of experimentation and skill, true windows into the artist’s mind.
A visually stunning examination of El Greco’s work that considers the artist’s constant reinvention and professional drive Renowned for a singular artistic vision, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco (1541–1614), developed his distinctive painting style as he assiduously pursued professional success. This fresh and engaging survey of El Greco’s work explores varied aspects of the artist’s career—his aesthetic education in Italy, the mixed reception of his mature works in Spain, his uncompromising approach to business, and the baroque logistics of his Toledo workshop—and reveals the depth of El Greco’s astounding ambition. The impressive volume focuses in particular on...