All the time in the world

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Karen McCready

The dazzling decorative arts of the 1920s and 1930s have continued to capture our imagination to an extent perhaps unmatched by those of any other period. The enduring popularity of the jewelry, silver, furniture, glass, textiles and other media has been reflected in publications of all kinds. This book fills a gap in the literature on the subject: the need for a completely authoritative, spectacularly illustrated guide to the period's eclectic ceramics. Every conceivable color, texture, form and style is to be found in the creative output of factories and artists' studios in the USA, Britain, Continental Europe and Japan. The label "Art Deco" - strictly referring to the exclusive, luxurious wares made for the smart set in Paris - has been loosely applied to almost everything except the output of the traditionalist studio-potters. While skillfully showing how the various terms - Art Deco, Modernism, Art Moderne, Streamline Style - have been used in different ways at different times, Karen McCready avoids these somewhat artificial distinctions, choosing her subject matter on the basis of its visual power, its historical significance and - perhaps above all - its appeal to 1990s collectors, practitioners and everyone with an interest in design. Art Deco and Modernist Ceramics is sure to become the standard reference on the subject. Garth Clark's introduction gives a magisterial survey of the period; more than 200 color photographs, many of them specially taken, provide a stunning visual reference; all the significant artist-potters, as well as sculptors and designers who worked in ceramics, are discussed in A-Z entries, many of them illustrated with photographs or makers' marks. The book also includes full information on technical terms and publications.

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Victoria Kastner

"This is the first book to tell the full story of America's most glamorous and fascinating country house. It is also an account of one of the most spirited, productive, and long-lasting architect-client relationships in American history. Hearst and Julia Morgan, the first prominent woman architect in America, collaborated for twenty-eight years on the creation of La Cuesta Encantada, or the "Enchanted Hill." Nonetheless, the magnificent 165-room estate on 250,000 breathtaking acres near the remote seaside hamlet of San Simeon, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was never completed. Now, drawing on previously unpublished correspondence - nearly 5,000 letters exchanged between Hearst, Morgan, and their staffs from the 1920s through the 1940s - Victoria Kastner chronicles the evolution of this extraordinary Mediterranean-inspired compound, its two spectacular pools, and its astounding collections of art and antiquities. Illustrated here are the Castle's Spanish ceilings and other architectural fragments, medieval tapestries, Renissance furniture, nineteenth-century sculpture, and wide-ranging examples of European decorative arts, including ceramics, metalworks, textiles, and more."--BOOK JACKET.

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Raymond N. Morris

Examining cartoons published between 1960 and 1979, Raymond Morris shows how artists dealt with particular aspects of Quebec's political experience. He looks at Berthio's drawings on Queen Elizabeth's visit and Dupras's on President de Gaulle's; Girerd's and Berthio's on Quebec-Ottawa relations; Girerd's on the referendum campaign; and Girerd's and Aislin's on the English minority in Quebec. He points out recurring tensions, oppositions, and associations and analyses them from a sociological perspective. One of Morris's major objectives is to better understand the framework through which ideas presented in cartoons are filtered to their audience, particularly the metaphors that underlie the frame, message, content, and form of the cartoons. Morris argues that the carnivalization of political figures and events, whereby the social structure is mockingly inverted and society's values and taboos are exaggerated until they become ridiculous, is a central metaphor governing Quebec cartoons of this period. He also explores the metaphor of the family, with England and France as grandparents, Canada and Quebec as parents, and the official-language minorities as children.

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R. Tripp Evans

He claimed to be “the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America.