Cover of Michael Lucero
Read Time: ~2.7 hr

Michael Lucero

by Mark Richard Leach and Barbara J. Bloemink (1996)

About this book

This volume presents two decades of Michael Lucero's glazed ceramic, bronze, and mixed media sculptures, including such series as the Dreamers, Pre-Columbus, New World, and Reclamations. While at first glance his work appears to be a vigorous example of contemporary ceramic sculpture with a background in 1960s California art and a foreground in New York eclecticism, in fact his figurative forms borrow liberally and wittily from the history of art of various cultures, including pre-Columbian, Native American, European, Afro-Carolinian, and the vernacular and popular media. The imagery that slides in and out of the complex glazes of this master of the ceramic medium is art about art and about self. The consistent strength of the work comes from a fusion of ceramic tradition with sculptural innovation, and from a combination of extraordinarily fine technique, keen wide-ranging intelligence, and the resonance brought to bear by past associations, cultures, and use.

Setting / LocationNew York City
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreMichael Lucero Lead Character

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum

(essay by Craig Owens

Since the late 1970s, Allan McCollum (b. 1944, Los Angeles, lives in New York) has addressed the production, distribution, acquisition, display, and reading of the artwork. His constant use of strategies of multiplication, his examination of the museum as a discursive agent, and his recurrent interest in notions of display, as well as his attempt to find a generic form for any purpose, were entirely reconfigured by this displacement of context. Working with regional museums, heterogeneous audiences, and references ranging from palaeontology to mineralogy, McCollum has built a very strong and intriguing body of works that has remained, in large part, unknown to (or at least unseen by) the art world.

Cover of Unknown Terrain

Unknown Terrain

Beth Venn and Adam D. Weinberg

This volume, which accompanies a landmark exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is the first to focus exclusively on the exquisite landscape paintings and watercolors that Wyeth has been creating throughout his long career. Fluid, expressionistic, often breathtaking in their abstract beauty, these landscapes enable us to view Wyeth's work without the usual focus on narrative and anecdote. By revealing the art behind the story, they offer a fresh basis for understanding Wyeth's genius.

Cover of American Arts and Crafts

American Arts and Crafts

Leslie Greene Bowman

"The American arts and crafts movement is one of the most significant in the history of the decorative arts ... Here, in this lavishly illustrated volume, are the finest expressions of the American arts and crafts movement."--Description from jacket flap.

Cover of Modern modern

Modern modern

Pati Herling

Modern modern, is a group exhibition curated by Pati Hertling featuring works by 34 contemporary artists. Modern modern points to an emotional and aesthetic sensibility among the artists in the show, who are living and working mostly between Berlin and New York. Despite strong modernist references, stylistic classifications are of no importance in this show. The works are refreshingly unconcerned with the distinctions between 'figuration', 'abstraction' and the 'conceptual' and find another way to communicate their ideas and feelings about their subjects and the world around them. With colors dirty and drab, the absence of evident political commentary or shocking visuals, and an accent on the melancholic, the show is also reflection of the times we are living in right now.

Michael Lucero by Mark Richard Leach and Barbara J. Bloemink | Literally Just Books