Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The enigmatic and charismatic John Graham (1886-1961) was an important influence on his fellow New York artists in the 1920s through 1940s. Graham and his circle, which included Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, helped redefine ideas of what painting and sculpture could be. They, along with others in Graham's orbit, such as Jackson Pollock and David Smith, played a critical role in developing and defining American modernism. American Vanguards showcases about eighty-seven works of art from this vital period that demonstrate the interconnections, common sources, and shared stimuli among the members of Graham's circle. Three essays by notable scholars investigate the complex relationships among Graham and his New York artist-colleagues during this formative period. William C. Agee positions Graham and his circle within the movement of New Classicism, which drew upon classical and Renaissance examples in an attempt to overcome the devastation of World War I. Irving Sandler focuses on the social, political, and intellectual dynamics among Davis, Gorky, Graham, and de Kooning in the mid-1930s. Karen Wilkin discusses the circumstances that brought these artists together, their common commitment to modernism, and the fascinating artistic cross-fertilization evident in their work. This critical reconsideration sheds new light on the New York School, Abstract Expressionism, and the vitality of American modernism between the two world wars.
Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 210 pages. Faint foxing to top edge, otherwise a clean, tight copy. Twenty-two essays on art with subjects ranging from Andrew Wyeth's Helga paintings to children's book illustrators to classic masters Vermeer, Monet, Degas and others.
Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 186 pages, 170 illustrations in color and b&w. An analysis of the spatial aesthetics of the work of Italian painter Giovanni Battista. Tiepolo. Alpers and Baxandall locate distinctive modes of Tiepolo's representation of the world and human action; follow his process of invention from first pen drawings, through small oil sketches, to great frescoes; and analyse his best and biggest painting, the Four Continents in the Stairway Hall of the Prince-Bishop's Residence at Wurzburg, illustrated with photographs specially taken for the book. The topics taken up include: painting's resistance to enacted narrative drama, its engagement with indeterminacies and repetitions, the senses in which a painter may 'perform' both past art and himself, the constructive roles of gestural drawing, exploitation of shifts of scale between design and finished work, dialogue between the changing natural site lighting and in-picture lighting, contributions made by the beholder's own mobility, the expressive scope of tensions between two and three dimensions, the deep rationale of rococo formal structure, and the sources of the moral force of pictures without an explicit moral.
Hardcover. US, Conran, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new hardcover in publisher's shrink-wrap. 336 pages. In this endlessly provocative volume, Stephen Bayley, design authority and cultural critic, takes on the female body, analyzing each crook and every curve as a sign, a symbol, and as a designed object. From Aphrodite to the industrialization of the breast, and from pin-ups to the future of sex, WOMAN AS DESIGN is a fascinating mix of design, cultural history, erotica, fashion, and fetishism.
Hardcover. US, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 348 pages, 169 illustrations. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. The depictions and roles of women in the paintings of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) typically give rise to conversations and presumptions about machismo and misogyny. Of course, these artists' portrayals of women cannot be dismissed so easily, and in fact all offer highly nuanced explorations of the theme. This publication explores their depictions of women as more than painterly projections of male longing and desire, treating them as reflections of social and political conflicts and upheavals. Contributions from art historians, sociologists and artists approach the figures of women in these bodies of work from a variety of perspectives: for Picasso, as a catalyst for a confrontation with the artist's own life and history; for Beckmann, as completely independent themes; and for de Kooning, as the force that makes artistic expression itself possible.
