This monograph brings together works by the two artists, not only shedding light on the richness of their individual practices, but also offering an opportunity to clearly see some shared interests and how much these artists actually had to say to each other. Contributions by Sarah Hamill and Elizabeth Hutton Turner inform about these artists' paths and their encounters and collaboration with photographer Ugo Mulas. Hamill looks closely at the many photographs Mulas took of Calder' and Smith's sculpture at the 1962 Festival of the Two Worlds, in Spoleto. Turner explores how and why Calder and Smith found common ground in their shared identification with the American culture of invention. Exhibition: Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland (12.06.-16.09.2017).
A massive compendium on the multimedia art of Rashid Johnson, tackling themes of Black history, literature, philosophy and material culture Rashid Johnson (born 1977) is renowned for challenging the assumptions often present in collective notions of Blackness. Based in New York, Johnson is among an influential group of American artists whose work employs a wide range of materials and images to explore themes of art history, literature, philosophy, and personal and cultural identity. After beginning his career working primarily in photography, Johnson has expanded into a variety of mediums, including text work, sculptural objects, installation, painting, drawing, collage, film, performance and choreography. Drawing on a dizzying array of historical, cultural, literary and musical references, Johnson ultimately invites audiences to find connections to their own lives. Rashid Johnson: The Hikers presents works from his highly acclaimed shows at the Aspen Art Museum, Museo Tamayo and Hauser & Wirth. This dynamic and unprecedented collection of his work features a conversation between Rashid Johnson and choreographer Claudia Schreier, as well as essays by curators Heidi Zuckerman and Manuela Moscoso.
The concluding volume to the first biography of one of the most important, influential, and beloved twentieth-century sculptors, and one of the greatest artists in the cultural history of America--is a vividly written, illuminating account of his triumphant later years. The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder--known to all as Sandy--and his wife, Louisa, opened their home to a stream of artists and writers in exile from Europe. In the postwar decades, they divided their time between the United States and France, as Calder made his first monumental public sculptures and received blockbuster commissions that included Expo '67 in Montreal and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Jed Perl makes clear how Calder's radical sculptural imagination shaped the minimalist and kinetic art movements that emerged in the 1960s. And we see, as well, that through everything--their ever-expanding friendships with artists and writers of all stripes; working to end the war in Vietnam; hosting riotous dance parties at their Connecticut home; seeing the "mobile," Calder's essential artistic invention, find its way into Webster's dictionary--Calder and Louisa remained the risk-taking, singularly bohemian couple they had been since first meeting at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The biography ends with Calder's death in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight--only weeks after an encyclopedic retrospective of his work opened at the Whitney Museum in New York--but leaves us with a new, clearer understanding of his legacy, both as an artist and a man.
An insightful new look at one of the 20th century's most celebrated artistic visionaries Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is one of modernism's most captivating and influential figures. First trained as a mechanical engineer, Calder relocated from New York to Paris in the mid-twenties where his acceptance into the city's burgeoning avant-garde circles coincided with the development of his characteristic form of kinetic sculpture. His early work Cirque Calder, which was presented throughout Paris to great acclaim, prefigures the performance and theatrical aspects that dominate Calder's pioneering artistic works and are situated as a primary subject of intrigue in this publication. Rather than simply refashion sculpture's traditional forms, Calder envisioned entirely new possibilities for the medium and transformed its static nature into something dynamic and responsive. Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture provides detailed insight into that pioneering process through reproductions of personal drawings and notes. Also featured is new research from a wide range of renowned scholars, furthering our understanding of the remarkable depth of Calder's beloved mobile sculptures and entrenching his status as an icon of modernism.
This book presents an overview of the development of sculpture by artists who were inspired by the goals and methods of Surrealism. Surrealist Sculpture delineates a dialogue between the two dominant modes of sculpture that evolved in tandem within the Surrealist movement: found-object assemblages and nature-inspired biomorphism. The book offers a continuous narrative of contributions by both European and American Surrealist artists from the early 1920s through the early 1950s. Artists from France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States established Surrealism as transnational from the outset. Key artists who incorporated found objects in their works include Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Hans Bellmer, and Joseph Cornell. The biomorphists encompass Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Henry Moore, and Isamu Noguchi. In addition, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and David Smith are highlighted for their game-changing innovations that influenced the evolution of modern sculpture. Nearly two hundred illustrations and a selection of historical texts accompany the insightful essay and chronology by Valerie Fletcher. Fans of Surrealism and those new to the genre will appreciate this book's in-depth approach to its innovative and influential three-dimensional masterpieces.
This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition Weatherspoon Art Museum: 70 Years of Collecting, on view from February 5-May 11, 2011. In 1941 Gregory D. Ivy, an artist, teacher, and the first head of the art department at Women's College, founded the Weatherspoon Art Gallery. Ivy was motivated by his belief that students should have firsthand experience of the art of their time. During the seven decades following his astute vision, the Weatherspoon has evolved from a small teaching gallery to a fully accredited museum with a national reputation that still places education at the heart of its mission. Ivy also felt the gallery would benefit the community, and he needed its support. This book, begins with a history spun from a collection of stories about the people who so generously heeded the call. Over the years, the Weatherspoon has been the most fortunate recipient of remarkable support, both moral and financial, from the university and the greater Greensboro community. It has also benefited from a host of dedicated employees and key events that have shaped it into a modern and contemporary art museum with a significant collection. Published on the occasion of the Weatherspoon Art Museum's seventieth anniversary year, this beautifully designed and illustrated book reproduces one hundred noteworthy works of art from the collection, each accompanied by a thoughtful essay. The objects included represent each decade from the turn of the twentieth century to the first decade of this century. Among those showcased are works by Henri Matisse, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, and Elizabeth Murray. Although the majority of the artists in the Weatherspoon's collection are recognized for their long, successful careers, the inclusion of a few younger artists demonstrates the museum's commitments to promising new voices. The first significant publication to focus on the Weatherspoon's collections, 70 Years of Collecting guarantees to be an informative and enjoyable read. Contributors in this book are K. Porter Aichele, George Dimock, Nancy M. Doll, Xandra Eden, Richard Gantt, Carl Goldstein, Ann Grimaldi, Elaine D. Gustafson, Heather Holian, Elizabeth Perrill, and Will South.
“An essential account of America’s greatest sculptor . . . [A] magnum opus.” —Marjorie Perloff, The Times Literary Supplement The landmark biography of the inscrutable and brilliant David Smith, the greatest American sculptor of the twentieth century. David Smith, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, did more than any other sculptor of his era to bring the plastic arts to the forefront of the American scene. Central to his project of reimagining sculptural experience was challenging the stability of any identity or position—Smith sought out the unbounded, unbalanced, and unexpected, creating works of art that seem to undergo radical shifts as the spectator moves from one point of view to another. So groundbreaking and prolific were his contributions to American art that by the time Smith was just forty years old, Clement Greenberg was already calling him “the greatest sculptor this country has produced.” Michael Brenson’s David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor is the first biography of this epochal figure. It follows Smith from his upbringing in the Midwest, to his heady early years in Manhattan, to his decision to establish a permanent studio in Bolton Landing in upstate New York, where he would create many of his most significant works—among them the Cubis, Tanktotems, and Zigs. It explores his at times tempestuous personal life, marked by marriages, divorces, and fallings-out as well as by deep friendships with fellow artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell. His wife Jean Freas described him as “salty and bombastic, jumbo and featherlight, thin-skinned and Mack Truck. And many more things.” This enormous, contradictory vitality was true of his work as well. He was a bricoleur, a master welder, a painter, a photographer, and a writer, and he entranced critics and attracted admirers wherever he showed his work. With this book, Brenson has contextualized Smith for a new generation and confirmed his singular place in the history of American art.
For nearly thirty years, starting in the 1960s, Franklin D. Murphy was a dominant figure in the cultural development of Los Angeles. As chancellor of UCLA and later as chief executive of the "Times Mirror "company, Murphy channeled more than a billion dollars into the city's universities, museums, concert halls, and libraries. The Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, one of his landmark projects, is also one of the UCLA campus's great treasures. Standing as a model for sculpture gardens internationally since its dedication in 1967, the Murphy Garden features seventy-two important modern and contemporary sculptures in a five-acre site designed by landscape architect Ralph Cornell. This fully-illustrated catalog documents the entire Murphy Garden collection and provides a scholarly entry for each artist--a sampling of which includes Deborah Butterfield, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Auguste Rodin, and David Smith. Three essays--by Victoria Steele, Cynthia Burlingham, and Marc Treib-- focus respectively on the role of Franklin Murphy in the garden's planning and execution, the acquisition of the sculptures, and the garden's significance within the history of sculpture garden design.
