abstract art

Softcover. Boston, Acme Fine Art, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 36 pages, color plates. Introduction by James Bennette, David Cowan. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. London, Tate Gallery, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 296 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Wonderfully written and illustrated account of the work of the Bloomsbury artists, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Contains detailed chronologies of their lives. Catalogue entries on two hundred works, all illustrated in color, bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting--domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France, as well as in the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. Portraits of family and friends--from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell--highlight the cultural and social setting of the group. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them, exploring friendships and relationships both within and outside of Bloomsbury, as well as the movement's wider social, economic, and political. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Houston, TX, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Exhibition catalog. 93 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. White stiff wrappers, black/red titles. Light wear to edges and spine, front cover slightly sunned, small tear to spine, else a very nice, clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 239 pages. The Harvard philosopher Donald C. Williams (1899-1983) was a key figure in the history of analytic philosophy. He played a crucial role in reviving metaphysics at a time when other philosophers ridiculed, criticized, and committed it to the flames. He constructed an explanatorily powerful and parsimonious ontology and cosmology founded on logic, science, and common sense. His most influential articles were on the metaphysics of properties ('The Elements of Being') and the meta-physics of time ('The Sea Fight Tomorrow', 'The Myth of Passage'). His ontology of abstract particulars or tropes and his four-dimensional manifold theory of time remain leading hypotheses in metaphysics. Because of his novel contributions and his defense of metaphysics he made a lasting impact on philosophers of the next generation who in turn believed in the substance of metaphysical inquiry. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to first 30 pages. Otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Prestel, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with yellow band, 248 pages. This beautiful book focuses on the distinctive and expressive power of Jackson Pollock's figurative paintings, drawings, and prints; a rarely studied aspect of his artistic career. Jackson Pollock's name has become synonymous with the abstract drip paintings that he famously created on the floor of his studio. Before these paintings, from the 1930s to the late 1940s, Pollock created figurative works, studying at one time under the painter Thomas Hart Benton and with the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Pollock took up figuration again after his famous drip paintings. This book starts with the early decades and also treats Pollock's re-adoption of the figuration after his renowned abstract paintings. The Figurative Pollock features 100 paintings and works on paper. From rolling landscapes to experiments in non-Western totemic painting to sketches and drawings fueled by Jungian analysis, the enormous range of Pollock's early and late work is presented here. Brimming with confidence and a sense of freedom, distinct yet so easily related to Pollock's most famous oeuvre, these works contribute to an understanding of how the artist found his voice.

Hardcover. Chicago, Playboy Press, 1st, 1975, Hardcover, purple cloth in an edgeworn dust jacket. An American figurative painter, specializing most often in paintings of female nudes, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Text by Elizabeth Claridge. 158 pages. Some light peeling of laminate on dust jacket. Otherwise very good, clean copy.

Hardcover. Algonquin Books, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. When Alizee Benoit, a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her arts patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends and fellow WPA painters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who, while working at Christie's auction house, uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner workings of New York's art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism.

Hardcover. NY, Picador, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 359 pages. Illustrated in color and b&w. Jon Schueler, the American abstract expressionist painter, worked on this book for 30 years. He writes about his struggle to uncover his artistic motivations and his conflict between solitude and intimacy. Clean copy.

Softcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, December 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 236 pages, b&w and color illustrations throughout. A very clean, tight copy. Resulting from a groundbreaking, four-venue exhibition, Theme & Improvisation features exquisite color reproductions of works from Kandinsky's abstract oeuvre as well as of works by thirty-eight remarkable American artists - some world-renowned, others less well known. Based on important new research into the art of the American avant-garde, and illustrated with many beautiful, often revelatory works of art, this book points the way to a new interpretation of the art of the first half of the twentieth century.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Benton (1889-1975) is a painter shrouded in paradox and misapprehension. Though pigeonholed as a regionalist chronicler of the Midwest, many of his finest on-site pictures are of Southern blacks and poor whites. Remembered best are his folksy rural scenes and aggressively three-dimensional murals, but the public tends to forget that he ran through the gamut of modernist styles (he was Jackson Pollock's teacher) and that his brilliant abstract color experiments ally him with the modernist movement. Some of Benton's crowded murals of the 1930s reflect his leftist sympathies, yet critics reviled him as politically conservative. These contradictions are illuminated in this catalogue of a touring exhibition curated by Adams. The text stands on its own as a wholly engaging biography, offering an unbuttoned look at a pugnacious, often reckless, artist who valiantly sought to preserve a rural America that was vanishing before his eyes. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Manchester, VT, Hudson Hills, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Adja Yunkers's life and career spanned six continents and nearly the entire 20th century with all its various art movements. Born in Lativia, he lived in St Petersburg, Berlin and Paris, before finally settling in New York. He lived through Russian constructivisim and suprematism, Italian Futurism, surrealism, and abstract expressionsism, absorbing everything in his own style. His painting, prints and pastels are currently housed in collections aroung the world, including the V&A in London, the MoMA in New York and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg.

Softcover. NY, Museum of Modern Art, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, oblong format. Replete with photographs and reproductions of Tony Smith's work. 200 pages including 237 illustrations (108 in color), Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Exhibition History. Tony Smith (1912-1980) was an American sculptor, architect, and painter best-known for his abstract, large-scale sculptures. As an architect, he worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and founded his own architectural firm during the 1940s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Hardcover. Madison WI, Borderland Books, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The title comes from the cover image, a building named as such. "Created as a poetic and visual journey, spans twenty-five years and four continents. These striking photographs capture 'found text': The sometimes mysterious, occasionally humorous, often cryptic presence of words in the everyday landscape. In Koch's lyrical sequencing, the images reveal obscure and eccentric voices in their various and distinctive roles on the daily stage of the world around us.

Hardcover. Amsterdam, Meulenhoff International , 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Large oblong hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY JOOF JOOSTEN on the front fly leaf. 84 pages with B/W reproductions of the sketchbooks on each page. Hand-written text transcribed in both Dutch and English. This book makes clear how the abstract art of Mondrian was conceived. A classic book, published in 1969, Measuring an impressive 14.3 x 11 inches. Published on the occasion of adding these TWO SKETCH BOOKS to the collection of the Haags Gemeentemuseum. Tape repairs to reverse of dust jacket, previous owner's embossed stamp and small sticker to front fly leaf. Otherwise a clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 207 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. This catalogue accompanies a major exhibition devoted to Vasily Kandinsky, held at the Neue Galerie from 3 October, 2013 until 10 February, 2014. It explores the evolution of his work from the Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus years. During this period, Kandinsky developed his revolutionary abstract style and began to move beyond conventional easel painting.

Hardcover. New York, Abrams, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 137 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Illustrated with full color photographs. Light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, National Gallery /Yale University, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 231 pages, numerous color and bw plates. Catalogue of a de Kooning exhibition, organized by the National Gallery in association with the Tate Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This illustrated survey of de Kooning's paintings covers the period from 1938 through 1986. The catalogue, by curator Prather, is preceded by two critical essays: Sylvester's "Flesh Was the Reason" and Shiff's "Water and Lipstick: De Kooning in Transition." 12'' x 9.75''. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury USA, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 159 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light wear to jacket, else like new. Tight, clean copy. Award-winning illustrator and graphic designer Nigel Holmes depicts the things we do every day like you've never seen them before. From how to hang a picture to how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue, form how to pour a beer to how to change a diaper, from how to keep a low-cut dress in place to how to French inhale, Nigel Holmes's striking diagrams will entertain and educate.