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Texas Abstract: Modern / Contemporary examines the development, establishment, and continued presence of abstraction in the art scene in Texas. Texas Abstract begins with a section that discusses the context of modernist abstraction and its place in the history of Texas art. The state's first abstract painters appeared in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. By the 1950s and 1960s, abstraction had been accepted by many of the most significant Texas artists working at that time. The book also includes a series of chapters devoted to individual contemporary abstractionists currently active in Texas. These artists have embraced in their efforts the wide range of cutting-edge abstract styles of our time. These contemporary abstractions are more international in their outlook than were those of earlier Texas artists, and thus Texas is today an important place for contemporary abstraction.
This unabashed tribute to the human body pairs lyrical photographs and poetry to express different aspects of the human experience.
Jane Culp's muscular paintings and drawings make palpable the rush she feels when on location interacting with nature. From her modernist perspective she conveys a powerful sense of the moment using surface tension and movement. "I'm interested in the life and language of form," she explains. "How form talks as it goes into space, how light and distance swallow and selectively magnify the forms, how a rhythmic movement in space releases forms that change direction, split, bulge, and fall back into space." Working in harsh weather conditions that force her to strap her easel to her knees, Culp explores wilderness terrain along the spine of the Sierra Nevada, transporting viewers from her home base north of the Anza-Borrego Desert, through Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, up to Tioga Pass, and into Yosemite Valley.
This interdisciplinary book brings into dialogue research on how different fluids and bodies of water are mobilised as liquid ecologies in the arts in Latin America and the Caribbean. Examining the visual arts, including multimedia installations, performance, photography and film, the chapters place diverse fluids and systems of flow in art historical, ecocritical and cultural analytical contexts. The book will be of interest to scholars of art history, cultural studies, environmental humanities, blue humanities, ecocriticism, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and island studies. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com
Kimberly Webber's paintings are meditations on the sacred vision of dreams, on the mystery, power, and magic of the natural world, and on the realms of the archetypes that reside in our collective super-consciousness.
The animals in Beth Cavener's work are better described as avatars, embodiments of persons or emotions that disguise her subjects. In this way she gives her subjects an expanded identity, pairing each with an animal that, to one extent or another, explains or parallels their behavior. The animal reveals the subject's primal roots and serves as the lens through which we see the evolution of the subject into a modern being. We ultimately come to understand that the human and the animal are inexorably linked together. The dynamism of Beth Cavener's figures comes from the constant shifting in our minds from human to animal. It is kinetic, releasing emotional energy caused by the disparity between what we see--the animal form--and what we know--that this is a human portrait. Thus the fascination in Cavener's art is perpetual.
Exploring the pathos and promise of the human experience, New Mexico artist Patrick Mehaffy creates sculptures, drawings, and, more recently, paintings that harken back to the timelessness of cultures past while affirming human relevance in a precarious world. Beneath the sensual surfaces of his works lies a keen understanding of the liminal spaces between nature and society and the impact of human activity on Earth, now known as the Anthropocene. Throughout his thirty-five-year career, Mehaffy has approached his art from the perspective of the unconscious. His work is informed by his education and training in anthropology and museology as well as his experiences in the wilderness and, ultimately, as an artist. He reveres animals while admiring how past cultures have done the same through their art and objects of veneration. Mehaffy's reveries are aesthetically perceptive and keep the past alive while interpreting it in new ways, reigniting our own need to appreciate and honor nature and culture, both past and present. --from the essay Beneath the Surface: The Work of Patrick Mehaffy byJulie Sasse, Chief Curator of the Tucson Museum of Art
"One of the most beautiful and dynamic subjects to photograph is the human body, especially when it is in motion."--photographer Steve Richard
The work of classical sculptor Jefferson D. Rubin, who died tragically at the age of 36, and his philosophy are illustrated here for all to appreciate.
Relational Undercurrents accompanies an exhibition by the same name that opens at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California in September, 2017. The exhibition and edited volume call attention to the artistic production of the Caribbean islands and their diasporas, challenging the conventional geographic and conceptual boundaries of Latin America.