by Barry Dawson (2003)
"In the city that never sleeps, New York's soul is on display around the clock. New York is the world capital of street graphics - a creative kaleidoscope of urban ephemera in the form of signs, graffiti, murals and advertising. Its innovative ideas, styles and mediums quickly become international trends. Street Graphics New York captures the rich visual patina of the city's cultural diversity - jazz age elegance, brash Sixties Pop Art, hip-hop graffiti, anarchic stencil and sticker art. New York's landmarks are appropriated for chic fashion advertising and iconic tourist souvenirs, and here is the city's 9/11 experience too, up on the walls in emotionally charged imagery." "Barry Dawson's visual themes excite, inform and surprise. New York's streets are acutely observed and presented in a designer's sourcebook and an urban explorer's inspirational guidebook."--Jacket.
Martha Cooper, Joseph Sciorra
*R.I.P.* —assembling the very best of a vibrant street art wave— contains colour photographs of memorials from Harlem and the Lower East Side, the South Bronx and Brooklyn, as well as the moving stories behind them.
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.
Suzanne Joinson
Years after photographer William Harrington participates in a 1920s project to redesign Jerusalem with British parks against a backdrop of growing nationalist unrest, his revelations about long-buried secrets transform the life of his former employer's daughter--
Josef Albers
Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1963, Interazione del colore fu pensato da Josef Albers come un manuale di supporto didattico per artisti, docenti e studenti. Nelle sue pagine, attraverso esperimenti ed esempi pratici, viene illustrata la teoria del colore sviluppata dall’autore durante gli anni di insegnamento al Bauhaus. Lo scopo delle lezioni di Josef Albers è sviluppare l’occhio per il colore, quella sensibilità per la luce e le tonalità che il solo studio teorico dell’ottica e dei sistemi cromatici non può in alcun modo affinare. Il risultato è un percorso semplice ma articolato che vuole essere uno stimolo alla formazione di un «pensare pratico» in cui l’esperimento e la scoperta accompagnano la creatività. Cinquant’anni dopo la sua prima edizione, Interazione del colore è ormai un caposaldo nello studio del colore. Questa nuova edizione presenta una selezione aggiornata e ampliata delle tavole a colori che illustrano i princìpi espressi da Albers nel corso di lezioni e dimostrazioni. Josef Albers (Bottrop, 1888 – New Haven, 1976), pittore e designer tedesco, si forma nell’ambiente del Bauhaus, dove entra come allievo nel 1920 e rimane come docente fino alla chiusura, nel 1933. Si trasferisce quindi negli Stati Uniti, dove per sedici anni insegna al Black Mountain College del North Carolina. Nel 1950 viene chiamato a dirigere il dipartimento di Grafica e Design all’Università di Yale. Qui, dopo il suo ritiro nel 1958, viene insignito del titolo di professore emerito. Nel 1968 Albers è eletto membro del National Institute of Arts and Letters. È il primo artista vivente a cui sia stata dedicata una retrospettiva, nel 1971, al Metropolitan Museum of Art di New York.