Louise Nevelson, one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, was a beautiful woman who lived so audacious a life that by the time of her death she was a legend both inside and outside the art world. Born Leah Berliawsky in Czarist Russia in 1899, she grew up in Maine, ostracized as a Jew and a foreigner. At twenty she escaped to Manhattan as Mrs. Charles Nevelson, eventually leaving her husband for a life devoted to art. She lived and loved with lusty abandon, often in poverty and obscurity, until she finally achieved fame and fortune at sixty. “This biography of a monstre sacre is a tale of hard-tacks heroism and heedless swipes at those who dared to love her,” said Interview magazine. Nevelson found inspiration in cubism, primitive art, and her own unconscious, creating a rich iconography of images. With black, white, or gold paint and perfect placement, she transformed old pieces of wood picked up on the street into powerful sculptures. In later years she appeared in mink eyelashes and flamboyant costumes, all the while going to her studio every day before dawn to add to the astonishing body of work now in collections of museums around the world. Laurie Lisle interviewed Nevelson before the artist’s death in 1988, as well as her lovers, family members, artist friends, and many others. This biography provides fascinating insights and information discovered in archives and public records, letters and diaries, and the artist’s own prose and poetry. Now in a revised e-book edition, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life is the only biography of this important American sculptor. It is “impressive in its thoroughness, which nonetheless results in ‘good reading’ by virtue of its interweaving of personal and professional information, its eclectic introduction of psychological analysis, and a phraseology that appreciates both the pain and the joy surrounding Nevelson’s eccentric behavior,” according to Woman’s Art Journal.
Publication accompanies the inaugural exhibition at the new Frost Collection, Florida, which looks at the rise to prominence of the New York art scene in the two decades following the Second World War
An award-winning writer rescues seven first-rate twentieth-century women artists from oblivion--their lives fascinating, their artwork a revelation. Who hasn't wondered where-aside from Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo-all the women artists are? In many art books, they've been marginalized with cold efficiency, summarily dismissed in the captions of group photographs with the phrase "identity unknown" while each male is named. Donna Seaman brings to dazzling life seven of these forgotten artists, among the best of their day: Gertrude Abercrombie, with her dark, surreal paintings and friendships with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins; Bay Area self-portraitist Joan Brown; Ree Morton, with her witty, oddly beautiful constructions; Loïs Mailou Jones of the Harlem Renaissance; Lenore Tawney, who combined weaving and sculpture when art and craft were considered mutually exclusive; Christina Ramberg, whose unsettling works drew on pop culture and advertising; and Louise Nevelson, an art-world superstar in her heyday but omitted from recent surveys of her era. These women fought to be treated the same as male artists, to be judged by their work, not their gender or appearance. In brilliant, compassionate prose, Seaman reveals what drove them, how they worked, and how they were perceived by others in a world where women were subjects-not makers-of art. Featuring stunning examples of the artists' work, Identity Unknown speaks to all women about their neglected place in history and the challenges they face to be taken as seriously as men no matter what their chosen field-and to all men interested in women's lives.
An architect of light and shadow, Nevelson?s practice will be illuminated in Pace?s joint presentation of both black and white works together. The white sculptures metaphorically employ the light of dawn and expose all of their fragments by casting subtle shade, in stark contrast to Nevelson?s black sculptures, which absorb light and enfold their key elements in mystery. Among the black wall reliefs and standing wall sculptures featured in the exhibition, a particularly striking work will be the monumental installation Untitled (Sky Cathedral) (1964), encompassing 16 distinct elements and measuring nearly 11 feet tall and over 8 feet wide. 00Exhibition: Pace Gallery, New York, USA (01.02.-03.03.2018).
Uncover the artistic masterworks hidden across New York City in this charmingly illustrated exploration of one of the world's greatest creative treasure troves. There's so much to love about New York, and so much to see. The city is full of art, and architecture, and history -- and not just in museums. Hidden in plain sight, in office building lobbies, on street corners, and tucked into Soho lofts, there's a treasure trove of art waiting to be discovered, and you don't need an art history degree to fall in love with it. Art Hiding in New York is a beautiful, giftable book that explores all of these locations, traversing Manhattan to bring 100 treasures to art lovers and intrepid New York adventurers. Curator and urban explorer Lori Zimmer brings readers along to sites covering the biggest names of the 20th century -- like Jean-Michel Basquiat's studio, iconic Keith Haring murals, the controversial site of Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, Roy Lichtenstein's subway station commission, and many more. Each entry is accompanied by a beautiful watercolor depiction of the work by artist Maria Krasinski, as well as location information for those itching to see for themselves. With stunning details, perfect for displaying on any art lover's shelf, and curated itineraries for planning your next urban exploration, this inspirational book is a must-read for those who love art, New York, and, of course, both.
"...[P]rovides a rare opportunity to understand the city's artistic momentum through a series of interviews with some of the leaders of that world" --Back cover.
Pace Gallery is pleased to present Blackness in Abstraction, an exhibition curated by Adrienne Edwards tracing the persistent presence of the color black in art, with a particular emphasis on monochromes, from the 1940s to today. Featuring works by an international and intergenerational group of artists, the exhibition explores blackness as a highly evocative and animating force in various approaches to abstract art.--Pace website.
An important lost chapter in the history of modern art is now available in paperback. Prior to 1966, if artists wanted to create works larger than their studios or metalworking abilities allowed, they had to turn to industrial manufacturers, who were often unable to accommodate the creative process of making art. Large Scale tells the story of Lippincott, Inc., which, from 1966 to 1994, put the tools of industrial fabrication in the hands of artists, allowing them to produce at a scale they had previously only dreamed of on paper. Lippincott worked with artists from the conception of a project to the completed sculpture, displaying pieces in the field adjoining the shop before installing them all over the country and the world. Drawing on the vast collection of images in the Lippincott archive, Large Scale presents more than three hundred photographs of these artists and their iconic works.
"In response to the poor representation of women in art galleries and museums, Philadelphia-based collector Linda Lee Alter decided in the 1980s to focus on art by women. The result, now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, is an extraordinarily diverse and powerful collection of nearly 500 objects by some of the most influential female artists of the past 50 years. Emphasizing contemporary living artists, but including major works by Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth Catlett, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and others, Alter formed her collection with the intent of giving it to a public institution in order to make women artists more visible. This gorgeously illustrated volume celebrates the collection and its legacy by bringing together leading scholars of feminism, and modern and contemporary art to discuss how the artists in Alter's collection saw and transformed the world. Among the essays are discussions of the impact of feminism in Chicago, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay area; self-portraiture by women in the 1970s and 1980s; the legacy of Elizabeth Catlett on younger African American artists; collaborative practice among women; an interview with Linda Lee Alter; and an appreciation by artist Diane Burko." -- Publisher's description.