Thursday, December 11, 2014

Thursday's Three on Art

Today's Thursday's Three offers a trio of recently published art books you might want to add to your bookshelves or give as gifts.

✭ Published by Harvard University Press, The Image of the Black in Western Art is a series of redesigned and new large-format, color editions issued with the collaboration of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at the Hutchins Center at Harvard. The original five volumes were produced 50 years ago as part of a research project and photo archive supported by art patron Dominque de Menil. Five more volumes have been added. The volume in the image below, edited by art historian David Bindman of University College London and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was issued in October 2014; it is the final volume. Details and ordering information for all the volumes, which include scholarly essays, are found in the Volumes section of a Website dedicated to the series. This is an extraordinary and important compilation.


Below is a video in which Gates explains the project's history.



The Menil Collection

✭ Writer and journalist Victoria Finlay's The Brilliant History of Color in Art (J. Paul Getty Museum, November 1 2014) tours the world and time-travels as it seeks to uncover the origins and science of color. In addition to a trove of facts and anecdotes, the book features some 166 full-color illustrations of major artworks. Its tone is conversational and its narrative fascinating. Finlay's also the author of Color: A Natural History of the Palette (Random House, 2003) and Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox (Sceptre, 2003), as well as Jewels: A Secret History (Random House, 2007). These and her other books are described at her Website.


Read Finlay's interesting post for the museum's blog, The Getty Iris, "My Lifelong Quest for Color".

J. Paul Getty Museum Page for The Brilliant History of Color in Art

Victoria Finlay on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Images of 178 vintage prints from the 1920s through 1940s are showcased in Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography: The David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Yale University Press, October 28, 2014). The collection is a recent acquisition of the Cleveland Museum. This book includes work by artists from 14 countries; among the most well-known artists featured are Brassai, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, and Man Ray. Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner contribute scholarly essays encompassing the history, techniques, and symbolism of the photographs.


The book accompanies an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art that continues through January 11, 2015. Read the museum's blog post, "Forbidden Games: Take a Peek with the Eye in Its Wild State", about the exhibition and the collection.

Cleveland Museum of Art on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

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