"The preeminent collector Norton Simon amassed more than 100 Italian paintings during his 35-year career, and today they stand among the treasures of the Norton Simon Museum. In this catalogue noted art historian Sir Nicholas Penny pairs 47 paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries with in-depth commentary, skillfully interweaving tales from the artists' lives, observations on the artists' influences and patronage, and technical notes"--
A Living Work of Art: The Norton Simon Museum Sculpture Garden tells the fascinating story of the evolution of the Museum property into the lush and inspiring garden it is today. After a rich history as a California landmark and art institution, the Museum and garden underwent a major renovation in the late 1990s under the direction of architect Frank Gehry. As part of the Museum's renovation, landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power reimagined the property, transforming it into a verdant park inspired by Monet's garden at Giverny. The spectacular pond and year-round palette of color delight visitors, as do the monumental sculptures that greet visitors at the entrance, and then surprise those exploring the meandering paths in the main garden: works by Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Robert Rauschenberg, and others. The lower garden, with Indian and Cambodian sculptures, provides a contemplative backdrop for the Museum's South and Southeast Asian collection. Contents: Acknowledgments; Foreword; Introduction by Sally A. Swaney; The Garden by Nancy Goslee Power; American and European Sculpture by Leah Lehmbeck, Tom Norris and Gloria Williams Sander; Indian and Southeast Asian Sculpture by Melody Rod-ari; Selected Bibliography; Index; Image Credits and Permissions.
A “thrilling, well-researched” account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist). In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum, and tell a story of outlandish characters and bad behavior that could come straight from the pages of a thriller. “In an authoritative account, two reporters who led a Los Angeles Times investigation reveal the details of the Getty Museum’s illicit purchases, from smugglers and fences, of looted Greek and Roman antiquities. . . . The authors offer an excellent recap of the museum’s misdeeds, brimming with tasty details of the scandal that motivated several of America’s leading art museums to voluntarily return to Italy and Greece some 100 classical antiquities worth more than half a billion dollars.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astonishing and penetrating look into a veiled world where beauty and art are in constant competition with greed and hypocrisy. This engaging book will cast a fresh light on many of those gleaming objects you see in art museums.” —Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting
This beautifully illustrated work brings together more than one hundred objects from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of European decorative arts. Included here is a generous selection of French and Italian furniture from the mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Masterpieces by André-Charles Boulle, Bernard (II) van Risenburgh, and others reveal the virtuoso craftsmanship that makes these objects such compelling examples of the furniture maker’s art. Many of the Museum’s finest pieces of porcelain, glass, and tin-glazed earthenware are also represented. Tapestries from Gobelins and Beauvais, bronze firedogs from Fontainebleau, and a lathe-turned ivory goblet of astonishing complexity from Saxony are among the other highlights of this handsome volume.
This publication explores Picasso’s portrayals of life with Gilot and their young family in the decade they spent together. Françoise Gilot was a young budding painter when she met Picasso by chance at a café in 1943. The subsequent ten years spent together was a time of transformation in Picasso’s paintings that coincided with revolutionary inventions in lithography, sculpture, and ceramics. Picasso: L’Epoque Françoise presents for the first time several of Gilot’s paintings and drawings from the period alongside Picasso’s when the young painter was maturing while the elder continued to change the face of modern art. The fully illustrated catalogue includes a historic dialogue between Richardson and Gilot celebrating Picasso’s innovation in every medium during the postwar years of renewal.
"This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Cagnacci's "Repentant Magdalene": An Italian Baroque Masterpiece from the Norton Simon Museum, organized by The Frick Collection and on view at the Frick from October 25, 2016, to January 22, 2017."
Alain Elkann has mastered the art of the interview. With a background in novels and journalism, and having published over twenty books translated across ten languages, he infuses his interviews with innovation, allowing them to flow freely and organically. Alain Elkann Interviews will provide an unprecedented window into the minds of some of the most well-known and -respected figures of the last twenty-five years.
An exploration of the fascinating parallels and differences between Picasso's Woman with a Book and Ingres's Madame Moitessier This publication examines, in detail, two extraordinary interrelated works: Picasso's Woman with a Book (1932) and Ingres's Madame Moitessier (1844-56). Each painting is explored in depth, illuminating the parallels and differences between the artists' techniques and creative ambitions. The first essay tells the story of the twelve-year gestation of Ingres's Madame Moitessier, focusing on the role of drawings in the elaboration of the composition, and of the sitter herself in determining how she was to be presented. The second essay traces the development of Picasso's Woman with a Book, among the most celebrated likenesses of the artist's young lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter. In contrast to Ingres's work, it was painted in just a day or two. The final essay explores, through these two works, the artists' shared interest in the relationship between nude and clothed bodies, revealing the depth of Picasso's engagement with Madame Moitessier, which motivates and animates Woman with a Book.
