Tag Archives: Women

Top Upcoming Art Books: “Leonor Fini – Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings”

Leonor Fini - Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings 2020Leonor Fini (1907–96) is one of the most important artists and personalities of the twentieth century. Her work came to prominence as part of the 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where her paintings were widely celebrated for their uniquely female approach to surrealism—although Fini never joined the surrealist movement.

0826a7ee73c580dba81b75756d38f812Self-made and self-taught, she preferred to work on her own and was known for her fierce independence and provocative panache. A prolific painter, Fini also wrote, worked extensively in book illustration and printmaking, and designed for plays, ballets, operas, and film.

Presenting the definitive catalogue raisonné of Leonor Fini’s more than 1,100 oil paintings, this book brings together more than one thousand color illustrations and essays on her work by Fini experts Richard Overstreet and Neil Zukerman and a concise, up-to-date biography by British art historian Peter Webb.

Richard Overstreet is an American artist and photographer. In 1998, he founded the Leonor Fini Archives in Paris.

Neil Zukerman is the owner of the CFM Gallery in New York. He is an expert of Leonor Fini’s work and author of several books about her.

Peter Webb is an art historian and has published extensively on art and artists of the 20th century. He formerly taught at the Coventry College of Art, the Hornsey College of Art and the Middlesex University in London.

Leonor Fini (1907- 1996) was an Argentinian surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author, known for her depictions of powerful women.

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Top New Art Books: “Alice Trumbull Mason – Pioneer of American Abstraction”

Alice Trumbull Mason Pioneer of American Abstraction - Rizzoli May 2020The first comprehensive publication exploring the life and art of pioneering American abstract artist Alice Trumbull Mason is perfect for audiences eager to discover unsung yet brilliantly talented women artists.

A groundbreaking artist, Alice Trumbull Mason (1904-1971) was one of the earliest painters of the twentieth century to embrace abstract painting in America. Mason’s early paintings have been compared to those of Gorky, Kandinsky, and Miró, and in 1936 she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and one of its leaders in the promotion of abstract work by artists such as Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt, Piet Mondrian, and many others. Mason was a true artist’s artist whose efforts helped lead to the great movements of later twentieth-century art, such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Post-Modernism, and Conceptual Art.

Rizzoli BooksAlice Trumbull Mason features essays that illuminate and contextualize the artist’s multifaceted work and personal life through her paintings, prints, poetry, and letters. The book reveals the full life story of a seminal abstractionist, making a sound argument for adding her to the annals of great twentieth-century artists.

About The Author

Elisa Wouk Almino is senior editor of Hyperallergic. Marilyn Brown is professor emerita of art history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tulane University. Meghan Forbes is a postdoctoral fellow in the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Will Heinrich writes about art for The New Yorker and the New York Times. Thomas Micchelli is an artist, writer, and coeditor of Hyperallergic Weekend. Christina Weyl is an art historian and curator with a focus on midcentury American printmaking and women artists.

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Interviews: American Poet & Writer Cynthia Zarin On Her New Book “Two Cities”

Cythia Zarin Two Cities VeniceA conversation with the acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin that transports us to two of her favorite cities, Venice and Rome, in a celebration of Italy as the country begins to loosen the longest coronavirus-related lockdown in Europe. The episode features evocative readings from her forthcoming book,Two Cities, which captures the meditative yet constantly surprising nature of travel from a deeply personal point of view. 

David Zwirner Books Logo

From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on two cities, Venice and Rome—each a work of art, both a monument to the past—and on how love and loss shape places and spaces.

Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.

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The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.

ekphrasis

Dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes the ekphrasis series is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.

Cynthia Zarin

Cynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Orbit (2017), as well as five books for children and a collection of essays, An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History (2013). Her honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Zarin teaches at Yale University.

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Interviews: Author Olivia Laing On Her New Book “Funny Weather – Art In An Emergency” (Podcast)

Monocle on Culture Monocle 24 podcastsNovelist and art writer Olivia Laing tells Robert Bound about ‘Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency’, her new collection of essays, columns and character studies from the past decade.

Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic.  She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018 was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She’s the author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.

 Her latest book is Crudo, a real-time novel about the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a New York Times notable book of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2019 it won the 100th James Tait Black Memorial Prize. 

Laing’s writing about art & culture appears in the Guardian, Financial Times and frieze, among many other publications.  

Her collected essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, will be published on 16 April 2020. She’s currently working on Everybody, a book about bodies & freedom.

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Podcast Interviews: “Exercise Is Medicine” Author Judy Foreman

Science Talk logoHealth journalist Judy Foreman talks about her new book Exercise Is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging

downloadThis is Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on April 24th, 2020. I’m Steve Mirsky. And under our current, often locked-down situation, it’s still really important to try to get some exercise. Judy Foreman is the author of the new book Exercise is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging. She’s a former nationally syndicated health columnist for the Boston Globe, LA times, Baltimore Sun and other places, and an author for the Oxford University Press.

Judy Foreman is the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014), “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine,” (2020), all published by Oxford University Press, and was a staff writer at The Boston Globe for 22 years and the health columnist for many of these years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun and others.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and has a Master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She spent six months as a guest reporter for The Times of London. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She was also host of a live, weekly call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com.

Judy has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a 1998 George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying of breast cancer and the 2015 Science in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers.

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Art: American Surrealist Painter Kay Sage – “Eerily Lit Landscapes” (1898-1963)

From Christie’s article (April 16, 2020):

Kay Sage Catalogue Raisonn book.Sage is renowned for her empty, enigmatic, eerily lit landscapes. Human figures are markedly absent — their presence felt only by the monolithic, architectural structures and unidentifiable, draped objects they seem to have left behind. In this respect, 1945’s Other Answers  is a quintessential Sage painting.

 

In 1939, with clouds of war hovering over Europe, Kay Sage returned to the United States after more than two decades away. Her lover and fellow Surrealist, Yves Tanguy, soon followed her across the Atlantic, despite the fact that both of them were married to other people. In Sage’s case to an Italian prince — her official title was La principessa di San Faustino.

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Christie'sIn the summer of 1940, Sage had her first solo show, at the influential Pierre Matisse Gallery in Manhattan. Then, in early 1943, she was part of the landmark Exhibition by 31 Women, curated and staged by Peggy Guggenheim in her Art of This Century Gallery.

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Top Artist Documentary: ‘PHYLLIDA’ – A Portrait Of The 76-Year Old British Sculptor Phyllida Barlow

This documentary is an intimate portrait of British sculptor Phyllida Barlow during her preparation for the major survey ‘cul-de-sac’ at the Royal Academy last Phyllida Barlow Cul-de-Sac Royal Academyyear. Directed by Cosima Spender, this film maps the roots of Barlow’s oeuvre, as she revisits childhood memories, domestic and urban spaces, and their subsequent role in her creative process.

Phyllida Barlow began studying at Chelsea College of Art in 1960, and went on to study and teach at Slade School of Art for more than twenty years, becoming Emerita Professor in 2009. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2011, and represented Great Britain in the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she created the ambitious installation, ‘folly’.

Hauser & Wirth Phyllida Barlow 2020

Watch this evolution and the artist’s influences in ‘PHYLLIDA’. ‘I want the work to be traversed in a way that your memory of it is tested, so that you keep forgetting what you’ve seen’, Barlow explains, ‘I think that is the nature of sculpture – not something that can be held as a whole image in your head, only as fragments… The spaces, the silences in between, are as much a component of the work as the thing itself.”

‘PHYLLIDA’ is produced by Hauser & Wirth, in association with Third Channel and Peacock Pictures.

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Interviews: “Courtyard Living” Author Charmaine Chan – “Domestic Solitude Solution” (Podcast)

Monocle on Design PodcastCharmaine Chan, design editor for ‘South China Morning Post’ believes that courtyards offer an excellent urban solution to domestic solitude. She explains how they can be hubs of community and calm.

Courtyard Living Charmaine ChanCourtyards have long played an important function in residential design, regulating light, shade, and the use of space. With thousands of years of tradition as inspiration, contemporary architects are now realizing courtyard living afresh. This lavish survey of twenty-five residences across the Asia-Pacific region features homes from Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, India, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

Structured by courtyard function, the book’s five chapters—on privacy; multigenerational living; sightlines; light and ventilation; and living with nature—are richly illustrated with photography and architectural illustrations showing courtyard positions within floor plans.

Showcasing the unique lifestyle opportunities afforded by contemporary courtyard design, this is an inspirational resource for anyone interested in indoor-outdoor living.

Charmaine Chan is Design Editor at the South China Morning Post. She began her journalism career in Sydney, pursued it in Tokyo and moved to Hong Kong in 1997 to join the Post. Her writing focuses on design and architecture in Asia.

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Profiles: Australian Ceramic Artist Nicolette Johnson – “Enigmatic And Timeless” Objects Of Art

From a Yatzer.com online article (March 14, 2020):

Hand-crafted through a laborious, almost ritualistic process, which sometimes has Nicolette individually sculpting and applying hundreds of protrusions to one vessel for days, her work transcends the dichotomy between artefact and artwork. 

Nicolette Johnson Ceramic ArtistWhether it’s a reaction to the intangible aspect of our digital age, or a consequence of the trend-setting power of Instagram, there’s been a resurgence of ceramics in the last few years, both as an art form and a hobby. Perhaps it’s quite telling then that London-born, Australia-based ceramic artist  Nicolette  Johnson  recreationally begun taking pottery classes just a few years ago as a counterbalance to her day job as a photographer.

Fast forward five years and Nicolette has distinguished herself as an acclaimed ceramist artist through the enchanting sophistication and painstaking craftsmanship of her work that channels ancient forms with contemporary precision.

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Nicolette Johnson is a ceramic artist whose work explores symmetry, motifs, and the importance of the artefact.

Nicolette was born in London, England in 1990, grew up in Texas, USA, and today is based in Brisbane, Australia. Working in stoneware and employing wheel-throwing, coiling, and sculpting techniques, Nicolette applies a modern aesthetic to re-imagined ancient forms. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Brisbane.

With a background in photographic art and social documentary, Nicolette began studying ceramics in 2015 and is continuing her practice-led exploration into functional and sculptural ceramic vessels, hand-making and firing each of her works in her Brisbane home studio.

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Artist Profiles: 69-Year Old American Painter Sigrid Burton (Video)

“I draw literally and figuratively from the natural world. My drawing and mark making refer to and derive from botanical and biological anatomies, including marine life, as well as, the structures of both macro and micro cosmologies and writing systems, such as logograms.” 

Sigrid Burton is an American painter, long based in New York City, whose semi-abstract work is known for its use of expressive, atmospheric color fields and enigmatic allusions to natural and cultural realms. Burton has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Osaka, including at Artists Space and the Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center, and been included in shows at A.I.R. Gallery, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard. Her work belongs to the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rockefeller Foundation, and Palm Springs Desert Museum, and has been reviewed in Arts Magazine, Arts & Antiques, Jung Journal, Chicago Tribune and LA Weekly.

Writers most frequently observe that Burton’s atmospheric works recall artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard and Mark Rothko, as well as the light of her native California. Art & Antiques described her approach as “chromatic expressionism” in which color is “her undisputed protagonist”.  Peter Frank observed, “The dialectic between color and form has always inflected, even impelled” Burton’s painting, with color the more omnipresent element, and form the more persistent. Art historian William C. Agee wrote, “The domains she explores […] meet, intersect, fuse, and then disappear, like apparitions, in liquid pools of mist and color. Her pictorial odyssey refers simultaneously to both a higher order, a timeless cosmic vastness, as well as to a private, interior world, abounding in personal histories and memories.” Burton has lived and worked in Pasadena, California since 2013.

From Wikipedia