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America is haunted. Ghosts from its violent history--the genocide of Indigenous peoples, slavery, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and traumatic wars--are an inescapable and unsettled part of the nation's heritage. Not merely in the realm of metaphor but present and tangible, urgently calling for contact, these otherworldly visitors have been central to our national identity. Through times of mourning and trauma, artists have been integral to visualizing ghosts, whether national or personal, and in doing so have embraced the uncanny and the inexplicable. This stunning catalog, accompanying the first major exhibition to assess the spectral in American art, explores the numerous ways American artists have made sense of their own experiences of the paranormal and the supernatural, developing a rich visual culture of the intangible. Featuring artists from James McNeill Whistler and Kerry James Marshall to artist/mediums who made images with spirits during séances, this catalog covers more than two hundred years of the supernatural in American art. Here we find works that explore haunting, UFO sightings, and a broad range of experiential responses to other worldly contact.
David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of LynchÕs career, this book documents LynchÕs first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artistÕs studio. Much like his movies, many of LynchÕs artworks revolve around suggestions of violence, dark humor, and mystery, conveying an air of the uncanny. This is often conveyed through the addition of text, wildly distorted form...
For decades now, the story of art in America has been dominated by New York. It gets the majority of attention, the stories of its schools and movements and masterpieces the stuff of pop culture legend. Chicago, on the other hand . . . well, people here just get on with the work of making art. Now that art is getting its due. Art in Chicago is a magisterial account of the long history of Chicago art, from the rupture of the Great Fire in 1871 to the present, Manierre Dawson, László Moholy-Nagy, and Ivan Albright to Chris Ware, Anne Wilson, and Theaster Gates. The first single-volume history of art and artists in Chicago, the book—in recognition of the complexity of the story it tells—d...
Russian American artist Peter Blume was one of the earliest practitioners of surrealist painting in the United States, and his elaborately detailed and dreamlike compositions helped define American Modernist art. Blume worked out the themes of his ambitious large-scale paintings through dozens of drafts in different media, slowly developing layers of allegory and imagery that dramatized the creative process, cultural memory, urban expansion, destruction, rebirth, and political power. Showcasing over a hundred paintings and drawings, as well as sketches, sculpture, and ephemera from all periods of his six-decade career, Peter Blume: Nature and Metamorphosis provides unprecedented insight into...
Chicago has for decades years been one of the most prominent cities where European surrealism is avidly collected and displayed. However, there has yet to be a scholarly exhibition and catalogue that addresses the local manifestations of this international mode of art. A Home for Surrealism focuses on a select group of painters whose work in the 1940s and '50s both transformed the domestic and domesticated the surrealist, particularly in Chicago. Working independently, but within a chain of social and artistic relationships, this group explored the interior as a site of projected imagination and fantasy, and the self as the generator of such altered perception. Including contributions by Robert Cozzolino, Adam Jolles, and Joanna Pawlik, the book provides a richly illustrated account of an international movement's unlikely--but somehow ever so fitting--home in America.
"This book offers the first critical reassessment of an artist whose mature oeuvre constitutes a rich and often disquieting critique that is equal parts wit, seduction, and bite. Honorae Sharrer (1920-2009) was a major figure in the years surrounding World War II, though her commitment to leftist ideals and an alternate trajectory of surrealism put her at increasing odds with the political and artistic climate of the time"--
"A biographical, historical, and reflective look at painter Bob Thompson (1937-1966). This publication situates Thompson within expansive historical narratives, recovering more of the historical specificity of his milieu through varied perspectives and through the inclusion of some unpublished archival materials. Illustrated throughout with dozens of Thompson's colorful paintings and drawings, alongside comparative works"--
"George Tooker first came to prominence for imaginative visions that expressed the uncertainity of the Cold War era. Over the past sixty years, using his own particular blend of figuration and abstraction, he has continued to create radiantly illuminated yet disquieting images. Imbued with moral, spiritual, and sensual power, they quietly demonstrate his passion for issues of social equality, and have garnered admiration from critics and peers alike for their acuity and virtuoso technique." "This book, the first representative overview of Tooker's work for thirty years, provides a much-deserved and comprehensive examination of the scope of his art. In essays comprising new research and offer...
Eminent art historian Charles C. Eldredge brings together top scholars to celebrate forgotten artists and create a more inclusive history of American art. Why do some artists become canonical, while others, equally respected in their time, fall into obscurity? This question is central to The Unforgettables, a vibrant collection of essays by leading experts on American art. Each contributor presents a brief for an artist deserving of new or renewed attention, including artists from the colonial era to recent years working in a wide variety of mediums. Histories of American art have traditionally highlighted the work of a familiar roster of artists, largely white and male. The achievements of their peers, notably women and artists of color, have gone uncelebrated. The essays in this volume provide a new and richer understanding of American art, expanding the canon to include many worthy talents. A number of these artists were acclaimed in their day; others, having missed that acclaim, may achieve it now. With contributions from major scholars and museum professionals, The Unforgettables rescues and revises reputations as it enhances and enriches the history of American art.
Among the most popular images in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' rich collection are self-portraits and depictions of studio life. This publication accompanies a landmark exhibition investigating the complex nature of artistic identity. Narcissus in the Studio features texts by scholars and prominent contemporary artists whose work has tirelessly explored life in the studio. It includes an enormous selection of self-portraits and portraits of fellow artists by more than 60 major American artists from the nineteenth century to the present: Gertrude Abercrombie, Robert Arneson, William Beckman, Joan Brown, Thomas Eakins, Joe Fig, Viola Frey, Gregory Gillespie, Red Grooms, George Grosz, Barkley L. Hendricks, Sarah McEneaney, Archibald Motley, Jr., Vik Muniz, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Violet Oakley, John Frederick Peto, George Tooker and Benjamin West.