Weekly Perusables: Joy in People

New to the library is Jeremy Deller’s exhibition catalog Joy in People, which covers his artistic debut in 1993 (a secret exhibition in his parents’ house while they were away on vacation), up to 2012. Deller is a contemporary British artist, who makes unconventional work that doesn’t fit in with the mainstream gallery scene. He didn’t go to art school, yet won the Turner Prize in 2004. You can read reviews of the Joy in People exhibit here: Telegraph, Domus, Abitare, and find the book on our New Books shelf for the next month. Cheerio!

NX 180 .A77 D45 2012 stacks

image source: D.A.P.

(blog entry by Jessica Sowls)

Weekly Perusables: Graven Images

If you are as in love with folk art and old cemeteries as some of us around here are, you’ll be a fan of this book too. First published in 1966, Graven Images “played a critical role in the rise in interest in gravestone studies in the 1960s.” Who knew there was such a thing? Regardless, it is a fascinating history of Puritans, who shunned artistic expression except when it was on their tombstones. Ludwig also explains the evolution of certain recurring gravestone symbols in depth, such as winged skulls, peacocks, hooped snakes, and surprisingly, breasts. He makes an interesting argument that “in spite of the fact that rural stonecarving was in many ways a truly ‘primitive’ form of expression it did have moments of glorious attainment and revealed for the first time an American propensity for pure line and abstraction which have become a fundamental part of modern aesthetics.” Puritan ideas have permeated many aspects of American culture, so it’s not a stretch to see that they could have influenced the direction of modern art too.

Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650-1815

Allan I. Ludwig

NB1856 .N4 L8 1999 stacks

Quote and photo source: University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

(blog entry by Jessica Sowls) 

Weekly Perusables: Gathering Light, Richard Ross

Etruscan Tomb, Tarquinia, Italy, 1992

This book is a beautiful meditation on the essence of photography, which is quite literally the gathering of light. From a fluorescent lit warehouse to an ancient Asian temple to Las Vegas, light is the subject matter of these images. In the book’s introduction, David Hickey states, “By taking light itself as the subject of his new photographs, Ross addresses the central irony of photography: the fact that photography, which lives in and by light, can no more look directly at it than ancient believers could look upon the face of God.” 

Gathering Light

Richard Ross

TR654 .R665 2000  
stacks

image source

(blog entry by Jessica Sowls) 

Weekly Perusables: Shifting Paradigms

Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramics showcases the entire Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio collection from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  The collection, donated to the Museum in 2007, has examples from over five decades of modern and contemporary ceramics, with a focus on works that challenge the medium.  Included artists such as Ralph Bacerra, Marek Cecula, Ken Ferguson, Anne Kraus, Ron Nagle, Richard Notkin and Beth Cavener Stichter trace the developments in American ceramics.  A diverse group of international artists are also represented.

Stop in to take a look at this, and several other new titles on ceramics currently located on our new books shelf:

Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramics The Garth Clark & Mark Del Vecchio Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston

The Vase and Beyond: The Sidney Swindler Collection of the Contemporary Vessel, Daniels and Drexler Lynn

Clay's Tectonic Shift, 1956-1968: John Mason, Ken Price, Peter Voulkos, edited by Mary Davis McNaughton

Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945-1975, American Museum of Ceramic Art

Sources
Image: Aoki Katsuyo's "Predictive Dream" from MFAH Shifting Paradigms press release.

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Hanuman Miniature Books

Hanuman books published miniature books by well-known writers and artists from 1986 to 1993.  The press, created by editor Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Clemente, was based out of New York City, but the books were printed and bound in India.  Their small 3" x 4" format was modeled off of Hindu prayer books, and the covers were made with handmade Indian paper and vegetable dies.

With a total of 50 titles, the Hanuman series included works by William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac, and William de Kooning.  The Herron Library collection holds titles by artists Robert Frank, David Hockney and Francis Picabia, and critic and curator Henry Geldzahler.

Robert Frank One Hour
Henry Geldzahler Looking at Pictures
David Hockney Picasso
Francis Picabia Who Knows
Francis Picabia Yesno
All housed in secure area


Sources
Museu D'Art Contemporani de Barcelona's Col·lecció documental Hanuman Books 
University of Michigan Special Collections Library's Finding aid for Hanuman Books Records

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Mamma Andersson





Swedish painter Mamma Andersson creates ghostly, melancholic landscapes and interiors. Many of her interiors depict layers fading into each other, with inside and outside merging, bringing to mind a camera obscura and the work of Abelardo Morell. Painters will find her technique particularly interesting because of the way her oils and acrylics appear by turns washed out and rich. She also employs the decalcomania technique, once popular with Max Ernst and other Surrealists. You can see how her work progresses between the two books in our collection, with the compositions becoming more complex and colors more considered in her recent work.


Mama Andersson
ND793 .A54 A4 2010 (Stacks)
ND793 .A54 A4 2007 (Special Collection)

Image from David Zwirner

(blog entry by Jessica Sowls)

Weekly Perusables: elles@centrepompidou

In 2009 France's national museum of modern art, the Centre Pompidou, devoted the entire permanent collection to the work of women artists. Like the exhibition, the elles@centrepompidou catalog is arranged thematically with key female artists like Frida Kahlo, Sonia Delaunay, and Dorothea Tanning alongside major contemporary creators. More than 500 works by 200 artists are brought together under the themes Pioneer, Free Fire, Body Slogan, The Activist Body, A Room of One's Own, Wordworks, and Immaterials.

In addition to more than 300 pages of color images, elles@centrepompidou includes quotes from the artists and essays reflecting on gender and art. This book is an excellent collection of the multifaceted and diverse work by women that have, and continue to, create art history.


elles@centrepompidou: women artists in the collection of the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre de création industrielle
Centre Pompidou, 2009
N8354 .M8713 2009

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: The Faith of Graffiti

The Faith of Graffiti documents the early graffiti art of New York City. First published in 1974, the book includes full color photographs by Jon Naar and Mervyn Kurlanksy with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning writer Norman Mailer. Mailer's essay covers the origins of the movement and discusses graffiti as pure art, comparing it to celebrated works in the MoMA and the Met.

Kurlansky and Naar's photographs, shot in twelve days throughout the city's boroughs, depict both the birth of an art form, and the decay of 1970s New York. The pieces in Faith of Graffiti are mainly name tags and early developments of the more elaborate letting styles found in the 1984 book Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. Both titles trace the progression of early street art and serve as essential documentation of work long cleaned off or painted over.

The Faith of Graffiti
by Jon Naar, Mervyn Kurlanksy, and Norman Mailer
GT3913.N72 N44 1974

Subway Art
by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
GT3913.N72 N43 1984

Sources
"Off the Wall" by Hua Hsu on bookforum.com. Image from flavorwire.com 

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Art to Wear

Art to Wear by Julie Schafler Dale showcases wearable fiber arts made in the '70s and '80s. Dale began researching wearable art in the early '70s leading to her opening a gallery dedicated to the medium in NYC in 1973.

The works presented in this book are highly personal, exceptionally crafted, and represent a variety of methods including crochet, knitting, leatherwork, and mixed media. Some standouts include the knitted pieces by Susanna Lewis like the Oz Socks shown above, and the hats and coats with three-dimensional landscapes by Joan Steiner.

This beautifully photographed book is a must peruse for anyone interested in fashion, textiles, and dress as a form of personal expression.

Art to Wear by Julie Schafler Dale
Cross River Press, 1986
NK4860.5.U6 D34 1986 Special Collections

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Hand Book

Part of the Herron Library's artists' book collection, Damara Kaminecki's Hand Book combines collage and illustration in a hand-shaped book. The artist said about the work:

"The Hand book is a way for people to interact with art as an object. The book's hands mimics the viewers own hands as it lies in their palms. The images are a non-verbal poem relating to touch and how it can be received internally and externally."

A Chicago native, Kaminecki works mostly in illustration and collage under the name Damarak the Destroyer. For examples visit www.damarakthedestroyer.com.

Hand Book is now on display in our artists' book alcove.


Hand Book by Damara Kaminecki
Herron Library - Artists' Books
N7433.4.K355 H36 2005

Sources:
Image by Herron Library, book by Damara Kaminecki
The artist's website www.damarakthedestroyer.com

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)