Martín Chambi

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[text, Mikhaïl Guerman

Upon his return to Germany in 1921, Kandinsky developed his theory of the Science of Art in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art in Weimar. The Bauhaus Period is the time of Kandinsky's most intense production when his genius would become better known to the world. This book allows us to discern the richness of Kandinsky's work through numerous canvases that have contributed to his international prestige as a painter.

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Jerome Silbergeld and Dora C.Y. Ching

The calligrapher and book artist Xu Bing has been called the most innovative Chinese artist of our time. As a citizen of both China and the United States and the first Asian-American artist to win the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius award," Xu Bing has fascinated and challenged audiences around the world with his imaginative textual art. From his 4,000 unreadable Chinese-looking characters, which unite Asian and Western audiences alike in an egalitarianism of induced illiteracy, to his invention of a "square words" language that makes "Chinese" readable by anyone at all, Xu Bing's use of language is at once artistically brilliant, highly entertaining, and profoundly subversive--a sharp-witted, masterly word-play that, in his own words, "strikes at the very essence of culture."In exhibitions on four continents, Xu Bing's printed art, mixed-media installations, and performance pieces--from books and calligraphic sculptures to inscribed pigs--have fascinated specialists and general audiences alike and generated a growing body of literature. This volume presents the first multidisciplinary study of Xu Bing's art and its intellectual implications. Included is an illuminating account by Xu Bing of his own work, as well as essays by leading scholars in a number of different fields.The essays address the place of this work within the long history of Chinese calligraphic practice, examine it in the context of Chinese intellectual dissidence, discuss Japanese avant-garde parallels, and judge it from a Western art-historical viewpoint.

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John Carter

"For millions of Americans, Solomon D. Butcher’s photographs epitomize the sod-house frontier. His images from western Nebraska constitute the most extensive photographic record of the generation that settled the Great Plains. Their faces are imprinted on our minds: jaunty bachelors and earnest husbands (Civil War veterans of both armies), spinster sodbusters, determined mothers, cowhands, farmhands, and former slaves––all in search of land of their own. This first book devoted to Butcher and his photos presents a unique visual chronicle of that epoch, firmly establishing Butcher's place in frontier photography.In a substantial introduction, John E. Carter traces the variegated career of this Virginia-born photographer who was himself an immigrant to the Nebraska plains. Combining critical analysis with biography, Carter situates Butcher in western history as well as in the history of photography and assesses his achievements in both. Exploring the nature of Butcher’s works and their scope, content, and significance, Carter offers a perspective for evaluating the historical evidence found in his work and new insights into the evolution of Butcher’s style and subject matter."--Book jacket.

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Brenda Daly

Joyce Carol Oates's authorial voice is lavishly diverse. In her works she divides herself into many voices, many persons. This up-to-date examination of Oates's novels argues that the father-identified daughters in her early novels have become, in the novels of the 1980s, self-authoring women who seek alliances with their culturally devalued mothers. Oates's struggle to resist and transform male-defined literary conventions is often mirrored by the struggles of her female characters to resist and transform social conventions.