Authors: Magdalena Holzhey.
Paperback, 96 pages
Publisher: Taschen
Publication Date: 2005-05-01


Reviews :

    Influenced by the innovative use of color in Bauhaus art, Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) developed his own abstract-geometric visual language, exploring the relationship between pure form and pure color. Vasarely's experimentation with optical effects in the 1940s and 50s earned him a central role in the evolution of Op Art. By the late 50s and early 60s, he concentrated on the "democratization of art" by no longer producing his works as expensive originals but in large editions of affordable screen prints; this attempt to redefine the position and function of the artist in society was an important first step in the Pop Art movement. Vasarely's boldly colorful and eye-popping paintings are instantly recognizable and remain entirely modern and relevant today....

Authors: Edward Weston. Nancy Newhall.
Hardcover, 96 pages
Publisher: Getty Publications
Publication Date: 2007-09-10


Reviews :

    In 1953 the writer and curator Nancy Newhall assembled, with the cooperation of the photographer Edward Weston, a mock-up for an elegant book featuring Weston's photographs of the nude. It was the only book on this subject that Weston himself participated in creating. The sample book intersperses landscapes and still lifes with nude studies and includes an essay written by Newhall on the artist's aesthetic. The proposal was rejected in the 1950s, however, by publishers of fine art photographs, who were reluctant to address the subject. In 1985 the mock-up was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum with some pages and prints missing, yet it was only in 2006 that curator Brett Abbott recognized the key to reconstructing the unpublished book in its entirety. Now, in association with the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, the Getty has finally been able to realize Newhall and Weston's vision. The present volume has been produced with distinctions of paper and ink to indicate those elements that have been added-including a preface by the curator and thumbnail reproductions of the mock-up as it now exists-and those elements that were part of the original, including Newhall's essay and all thirty-nine photographs, arranged on the pages as Newhall and Weston had placed them....

Authors: John Wilmerding.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli
Publication Date: 2008-10-21


Reviews :

    Tom Wesselmann was the most unabashedly sexual of the canonical pop artists. Yet the blatancy of his highly stylized figures, in their cool, slick renderings, makes them subtle and opens up his images to multiple readings. This new volume with 270 illustrations covers the richness and wit of Tom Wesselmann’s career up to his death in 2004 and brings him into the limelight he deserves. Noted author John Wilmerding captures the spirit of the artist by interviewing family members and reviewing day-to-day journals. He discusses Wesselmann’s lifelong dialogue with Matisse; like Matisse, Wesselmann was a brilliant colorist and draftsman and fused together the two great traditions of color and line....

Authors:
Paperback, 32 pages
Publisher: Taschen
Publication Date: 2006-03-01
Edition: Mul

Reviews :

    Presents several Taschen portfolios, in each of which are tucked 14 large-format reproductions, along with a brief description. They are of interest to art lovers....

Authors:
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1995-12-12


Reviews :

    Chosen to represent the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale, Bill Viola, a New York artist living on the West Coast, is recognized internationally for his work in video and sound installations. This book brings together a selection of essays, notebook entries, drawings, and descriptions of projects that map Viola's personal course through the readings, observations, experiments, and associations that form the groundwork for his art. Each work illustrated is accompanied by a description by the artist, as well as comments on the work's origins from the artist's notebooks.

For the last 25 years, Viola has used innovative multimedia technologies to explore the phenomena of sense perception as a language of the body and avenue to self-knowledge, integrating many disciplines and philosophies to reveal contemporary art's relevance to the modern world. His views have deep roots in mysticism, poetry, philosophy, Eastern art, shamanism, Chinese Taoism, Sufism, and Zen Buddhism. Viola's chief concerns today are to draw attention to the upset ecological balance of nature by focusing on the connection between our inner and outer lives, on the conception of the self as part of the whole.

Published in association with the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London...

Authors: William Wegman.
Hardcover, 128 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
Publication Date: 1999-11-24


Reviews :

    With family photos, video and film stills, and studio photos never before published, Fay captures the collaborative spirit and amazing artistic outpouring of Wegman and his extraordinary companion. Their relationship spanned ten years during which time Fay became as well known to the art world as her canine predecessor, Man Ray. Motherhood brought Fay new concerns and Wegman a wealth of new characters. In 1989 she was joined in the studio by three of her puppies. What followed was a flowering of dramatic roles for Fay and her offspring in a wide range of books and videos for children....

    To a dog owner, each canine's personality is as uniquely defined as a human's. William Wegman knows this as well as or better than anyone. An artist best known for his photos of Weimaraner dogs, Wegman's work in the early '80s centered on his dog Man Ray. As Fay begins, Man Ray has died, and Wegman is resistant to the idea of replacing the irreplaceable Man Ray, named the Village Voice's "Man of the Year" in 1982.

When a fan of the artist meets him a few years later and invites him to choose a puppy from a litter of prize Weimaraners, Wegman is introduced to 6-month-old Fay, who immediately bewitches him with "the eyes of a jungle cat." Thus begins the story of Wegman's connection with the charming, shy, elegant Fay. Initially reluctant to feature her in his work, Wegman is content just to have a pet. But as he watches Fay's character develop into something quite different from Man Ray's, he finally decides to capture her personality in a photo shoot... then another... and another... until the two have developed a unique relationship on camera as well as off.

The book contains many striking photographs of Fay in anthropomorphic poses, as well as in several dresses and wigs--the result is sometimes humorous, sometimes seductive, but always hauntingly human and animal at the same time. Later photos feature Fay's pups Batty, Crooky, and Chundo as well. Pictures from a London Times photo spread feature the velvety dogs draped in diamond jewelry; photos from a Cinderella video incorporate the family into the cast, including Fay as the wicked stepmother and the fairy godmother; and stills from a Hardy Boys-type movie star (who else?) the Weimaraners.

Wegman and Fay's relationship is obviously an involved one--not just between a man and his dog, but an artist and his subject. And it is one that is lovingly captured in Fay's photos and story: here is a dog with a depth of personality equal to a human's, and a dignity and vulnerability expertly caught on film by one of our most original artists.--Kris Law ...

Authors: Joan Simon. William Wegman.
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 2006-03-06


Reviews :

    (20061009)...

Authors:
Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Publication Date: 2004-06


Reviews :

    An appraisal of the full range of accomplishments of this internationally popular contemporary artist....

Authors: Robert C. Morgan. Victor Vasarely.
Hardcover, 128 pages
Publisher: George Braziller
Publication Date: 2005-01-31


Reviews :

    Widely considered the father of Op Art, the Hungarian-born artist Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) was instrumental not only in provoking a school of thought based on the relationship between art and science, but in creating some of the most striking geometric paintings in the history of late Modernism. This book, which gathers together a generous selection of his most significant works, celebrates his immense intelligence, passion, and artistry. First coming to prominence in Europe, Vasarely's work was included in the groundbreaking 1965 exhibition "The Responsive Eye" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the years following this exhibit, Vasarely rose to international attention, opening art and culture to an imagery shaped by digital applications and creating, with his optical icons, a new direction for art. Robert C. Morgan's text provides fresh insight into Vasarely's startlingly precise and hallucinatory images, discussing the evolution of the artist's career and of the ideas that shaped his work. Considering Vasarely's work from today's perspective, Professor Morgan sees the artist as the innovator behind many of the most radical ideas in design, architecture, and painting at the turn of the last century. Vasarely - published on the occasion of a retrospective of the artist's work at the Naples Museum of Art in Florida - recognises his achievement as an artist and as the visionary who gave art to the computer....

Authors: Mary D. Sheriff.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 1997-10-24


Reviews :

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