Benton, Pollock, and the politics of modernism

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Donna Cassidy

"At the vanguard of renewed interest in Maine's influential early modernist Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), author Donna M. Cassidy appraises the contemporary social, political, and economic realities that shaped Hartley's landmark later art. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Hartley strove to represent the distinctive subjects of his native region - the North Atlantic folk, the Maine coast, and Mount Katahdin - producing work that demands an interpretive approach beyond art history's customary biographical, stylistic, and thematic methodologies.". "In Marsden Hartley, Cassidy, sensitive to the psychological and gender analysis traditionally central to interpretations of Hartley, becomes the first scholar to reassess his late work in light of contemporary American perceptions of race, ethnicity, place, and history. This new book resonates not only as a seminal Hartley study and a complex art and cultural history, but as an example of applied early twentieth-century American intellectual history informed by an impressive command of primary and secondary interdisciplinary literature. Numerous rich illustrations, as well as transcriptions of several key essays by Hartley - some never before published, including "This Country of Maine" (1937-38) - round out this revolutionary treatment."--BOOK JACKET.

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Mel Gooding

The first part of this book traces Fedden's development from neo-Romantic beginnings in the 1940s, through to her discovery of the principal elements of her own mature style in the early 1970s. The second part concentrates on her later work, and describes her approach to still life painting, with its emphasis upon the presentation of a particular repertoire of subjects, its distinctive 'staging' of objects, its brilliantly effective uses of decorative colour and simplified forms. A biographical section covers the period from the mid-1930s when Fedden was at the Slade, through her war service, to the years of her marriage to fellow artist Julian Trevelyan and their enchanted life together at Durham Wharf on the Thames at Chiswick. This book, the first on this popular artist, is fully illustrated with sixty of Fedden's paintings in full colour, a number of her remarkable drawings in black and white, and photographs of the artist and her studio.

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Ralf Schiebler

Salvador Dali's life and art were dominated by an almost insatiable craving for sex, money, and fame, as well as by a morbid fascination with death. He thrived on the acquisition of knowledge, absorbing influences both from other artists and from contemporary philosophy and science. Dali's extraordinary gift for artistic expression found an outlet in countless media: his technical virtuosity was seemingly unbounded. The more recognition he achieved, the greater his indulgence in his passions. Ambition became megalomania, sensuality became depravity. Dali: Genius, Obsession and Lust analyzes the different periods of the artist's development from 1921 to 1983, supported by a selection of his most brilliant paintings. The book presents a series of new and detailed interpretations of Dali's pictures, based on the artist's own writings and applying the motivational theories of two men who deeply influenced his thinking: Sigmund Freud and his protege, Otto Rank. Dali painted provocative surrealist visions of sexuality, as well as masterly images of death. After World War II, he seized upon new theories in physics, biology, and mathematics, in a process that revealed almost limitless powers of intuition.

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David Underwood

Oscar Niemeyer, born in 1907, is widely considered this century's leading Latin American architect, as well as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. This volume explores the major themes and sources of the most important works from all phases of Niemeyer's career, from the early collaborations of the 1930s and 1940s with Lucio Costa, the spiritual father of Brazilian modernism, to the 1989 Memorial da America Latina in Sao Paulo, a complex that reveals the maturation of Niemeyer's free-form style in the service of his utopian vision. A central theme of Niemeyer's work has been its reflection of the Brazilian jeito, a sinuous and improvisational style manifested in everything from the country's sensual, undulating landscape to its attraction to spontaneous impulses, best known through its vibrant music and dance. The jeito and the milieu of Rio de Janeiro lie at the heart of Niemeyer's free-form style, which emphasizes the inherent plasticity of the native curve over the rigid rectilinearity of the International Style in Europe. A second theme treats the influence on Niemeyer of the poetic style of Le Corbusier. Also considered are Niemeyer's attraction to surrealist biomorphic forms and his desire to express a sense of the fantastic in architecture. A final theme is Niemeyer's search for an aesthetic utopia that would resolve social dilemmas by wishing them away through architecture. Herein lies Niemeyer's strength, for as his architecture reflects the multiple dichotomies of the Brazilian experience, it projects an emotive universality that few architects have been able to achieve.