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This book explores the portraiture of Elaine de Kooning, an enormously talented artist whose widely admired body of work—both abstract and figurative—is overdue for a contemporary reassessment. John F. Kennedy, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Merce Cunningham, and Fairfield Porter were just some of the figures who sat for portraits by Elaine de Kooning. Famous for her marriage to the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, Elaine was herself a groundbreaking artist and writer who challenged many conventions during her career. Although she portrayed women, she was most engaged with portraits of men, sometimes painting multiple portraits of her subjects in order to explore and capture th...
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This richly illustrated book features an introduction by the National Portrait Gallery's chief curator and nearly 150 insightful entries on key self-portraits in the museum's collection. "Eye to I" provides readers with an overview of self-portraiture while revealing the intersections that exist between art, life, and self-representation. Drawing primarily from the museum's collection, "Eye to I" explores how American artists have portrayed themselves since 1900. The book shows that while each individual's approach to self-portraiture arises under unique circumstances, all of their representations raise important questions about self-perception and self-reflection. Sometimes artists choose to reveal intimate details of their inner lives. Other times they use the genre to obfuscate their true selves or invent alter egos. Today, with the proliferation of selfies and the contemporary focus on identity, it is time to reassess the significance of the self-portrait. Exhibition: National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., USA (02.11.2018-18.28.2019).
Celebrates and reassesses the reinvention of portraiture in post-World War 2 American art.
A striking collection of presidential portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, this volume encapsulates the spirit of the most powerful office in the world. America's Presidents showcases the nation's largest collection of portraits of all the presidents beyond the White House's own, capturing the permanent exhibition that lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery's mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it. The book explores presidential imagery through portraits ranging from the traditional, such as the iconic and newly restored "Lansdowne" portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, to the contemporary, such as Elaine de Kooning's colorful dep...
Published on the occasion of an exhibition (April 24, 2020 through January 18, 2021) that celebrates a major gift of portraits to the National Portrait Gallery. The book traces the life of Ian M. Cumming who, with his wife Annette P. Cumming, commissioned portraits of several prominent artists, activists, scientists, businessmen, and other thought leaders.
"This book is mind-blowing. Nemerov is a groundbreaking thinker in his field."—John Wilmerding, Princeton University "This is a book for all serious Americanists."—Jay Fliegelman, author of Declaring Independence "Each haunting and delicately wrought canvas expands as Nemerov writes about it, so that his interpretive work both mirrors and supplements the wondrous intensity of the paintings themselves."—Ellen Handler Spitz, Museums of the Mind "Underneath their apparent simplicity, Raphaelle Peale's still lifes glow mysteriously in the dark light of their making. Peale transformed the common items of the early-nineteenth-century kitchen and market into explorations of the American uncon...
The commemorative tradition in early American art is given sustained consideration for the first time in Sally Webster's study of public monuments and the construction of an American patronymic tradition. Until now, no attempt has been made to create a coherent early history of the carved symbolic language of American liberty and independence. Establishing as the basis of her discussion the fledgling nation's first monument, Jean-Jacques Caffi?'s Monument to General Richard Montgomery (commissioned in January of 1776), Webster builds on the themes of commemoration and national patrimony, ultimately positing that like its instruments of government, America drew from the Enlightenment and its ...
Benjamin Franklin's portraits and colonial printing -- Phillis Wheatley and the durability of the author portrait -- Nationalist portraiture, magazines, and political books -- Picturing the seduction heroine in the U.S -- Gothic portraiture in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and Ormond
This fascinating study differentiates stage presence from charisma and stardom, to explore the co-presence of and relationship between performer and audience.