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The Museum of Modern Art
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«The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is a twentieth-century classic--an indispensable introduction to the visual language of photography. Based on a landmark exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1964, and originally published in 1966, the book has long been out of print. It is now available again to a new generation of photographers and lovers of photography in this duotone printing that closely follows the original. Szarkowski's compact text eloquently complements skillfully selected and sequenced groupings of 172 photographs drawn from the entire history and range of the medium. Celebrated works by such masters as Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Steichen, Strand, and Weston are juxtaposed with vernacular documents and even amateur snapshots to analyze the fundamental challenges and opportunities that all photographers have faced. Szarkowski, the legendary curator who worked at the Museum from 1962 to 1991, has published many influential books. But none more radically and succinctly demonstrates why--as U.S. News & World Report put it in 1990--»whether Americans know it or not, «his thinking about photography» has become our thinking about photography».» |
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Roy Lichtenstein made a tremendous impact on Modern art in the twentieth century. As a pioneer of Pop art, he was a key figure in the postwar tradition that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. This new volume in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favorite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guides readers through a dozen of the artist's most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of Modern art and the artist's own life. This volume provides a unique overview of someone who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and is an excellent resource for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the Modern canon. |
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Dutch artist Aernout Mik's moving-image installations meld filmmaking, sculpture and architecture into experiences that are at once compelling and unsettling, irrational yet plausible. The artist designs and constructs architectural spaces that hold his moving images, making the viewer's physical relationship to the piece a critical component of the overall experience. By interrogating the most basic ideas of narrative and reality and rejecting classical cinematic ideals, Mik creates works that are rich in allusion but subversive of codes. Published to accompany the artist's first U.S. retrospective, this volume is a vivid exploration of Mik's work and process. Laurence Kardish, MoMA's Senior Curator in the Department of Film, situates Mik within the history of documentary and nonnarrative cinema, while Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, investigates the ways in which the artist's work changes the way we see reality while simultaneously reinforcing the norms of visual culture. Abundantly illustrated with stills and the artist's own drawings, the book also features detailed descriptions of the installations, an exhibition history and a bibliography, making it the most comprehensive volume on the artist available in English. |
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William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of colour photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of colour photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with colour photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average person's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of colour as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the Guide contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually superrefined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's home town of Memphis — an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up in flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle; the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, grey-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of William Eggleston's Guide, The Museum of Modern Art has made new colour separations from the original 35mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the colour will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions. |
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The execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, in 1867, was the subject of a quartet of paintings by the French Impressionist and early Modernist Edouard Manet. These works are rarely shown together, and in fact cannot be seen in their entirety, since one of them exists only in fragments, but the three intact paintings and the surviving elements of the fourth are reproduced in this publication, and will be shown at The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition in the fall of 2006. Maximilian's death was an event of great public interest in France, in part because French policies shared the responsibility for it. A European aristocrat of the Hapsburg family, Maximilian had been installed in 1864 after a trio of European powers, led by Napoleon III of France, mounted an invasion of Mexico to reclaim debts upon which the Mexican government had suspended payment. But Napoleon soon withdrew, abandoning Maximilian to his fate at the hands of a resurgent Mexican army. As news of the execution reached Paris, Manet reacted with a group of works synthesizing the information as it came to him and drawing heavily on an earlier painting inspired by violent political events, Goya's The Third of May. In addition to analyzing and documenting the creation of these works, John Elderfield, in his text, clarifies their historical importance in the context of modern art, and in so doing, offers a capsular history of the place of current events in art. |
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Originally published in 1973, this marvelous collection of photographs with accompanying texts by the revered late Museum of Modern Art photography curator John Szarkowski has long been recognized as a classic. Reissued in 1999-with new digital duotones-this volume is now available to a new generation of readers. This is a picture book, and its first purpose is to provide the material for simple delectation, says Szarkowski in his introduction to this first survey of The Museum of Modern Art's photography collection. A visually splendid album, the book is both a treasury of remarkable photographs and a lively introduction to the aesthetics and the historical development of photography. Since 1930, when the Museum accessioned its first photograph, it has assembled an extraordinary and wide-ranging collection of pictures for preservation, study and exhibition. Among the outstanding figures represented here are Hill and Adamson, Cameron, O'Sullivan, Atget, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Weston, Kertesz, Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Brassai, Ansel Adams, Shomei Tomatsu, Frank, Arbus and Friedlander. Some of these photographs are classics, familiar and well-loved favorites, many are surprising, little-known works by the masters of the art. |
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«More than any other artist, Walker Evans invented the images of essential America that we have long since accepted as fact, and his work has influenced not only modern photography but also literature, film and visual arts in other mediums. The original edition of «American Photographs» was a carefully prepared letterpress production, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to accompany an exhibition of photographs by Evans that captured scenes of America in the early 1930s. As noted on the jacket of the first edition, Evans, «photographing in New England or Louisiana, watching a Cuban political funeral or a Mississippi flood, working cautiously so as to disturb nothing in the normal atmosphere of the average place, can be considered a kind of disembodied, burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers.» This seventy-fifth anniversary edition of «American Photographs» made with new reproductions, recreates the original 1938 edition as closely as possible to make the landmark publication available for a new generation. «American Photographs» has fallen out of print for long periods of time since it was first published, and even subsequent editions — two of which altered the design and typography of the book in small but significant ways — are often available only at libraries and rare bookstores. This version, like the fiftieth-anniversary edition produced by the Museum in 1988, captures the look and feel of the very first edition with the aid of new digital technologies. Walker Evans (1903-1975) took up photography upon his return to New York in 1927, following a year in Paris when his aspiration to become a writer withered in the shadow of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Joyce. In 1935, Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to photograph the effects of the Great Depression in the Southeast. During this time he took many of the photographs that appeared in his collaboration with James Agee, «Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a book which has become a defining document of that era. Evans joined the staff of «Time «magazine in 1945 and shortly thereafter became an editor at «Fortune» where he stayed for the next two decades. In 1964, he became a professor at the Yale University School of Art, where he taught until his death in 1975.» |
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In 1900, Swedish design reformer and social theorist Ellen Key published The Century of the Child, presaging the coming century as a period of intensified focus and progressive thinking around the rights, development and well-being of children. Taking inspiration from Key-and looking back through the twentieth century-this volume, published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, examines individual and collective visions for the material world of children, from utopian dreams for the citizens of the future to the dark realities of political conflict and exploitation. Surveying more than 100 years of toys, clothing, playgrounds, schools, children's hospitals, nurseries, furniture, posters, animation and books, this richly illustrated catalogue illuminates how progressive design has enhanced the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of children and, conversely, how models of children's play have informed experimental aesthetics and imaginative design thinking-engendering, in the process, reappraisals of some of the iconic names in twentieth-century design and enriching the unfolding narrative of modern design with other, less familiar figures. Divided into seven sections — New Century, New Child, New Art; Avant-Garde Playtime; Light, Health and Air; Body Politic; Reconstruction, Regeneration; Fantasy, Fun and Commerce; and Designing Better Worlds — The Century of the Child focuses on individuals and projects that represent innovative and comprehensive contributions to design for children. |
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A lady checks her luggage for a train ride: a couch, a suitcase, a traveling bag, a picture, a basket, a hat-box, and a little dog. Will they all make it to her destination? During the 1920s in Russia, many authors, poets, and talented visual artists worked with fervent dedication and the support of the government to create a new type of childrens literature, one that drew on both the aesthetic innovations of the period and contemporary social and political philosophy to inspire and stimulate young minds. This whimsical childrens picture book was one of several collaborations between Vladimir Lebedev and Samuil Marshak, many of which are now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. This volume reproduces the original book in size, shape, and layout, with new English translations. The dynamic graphic compositions and playful rhyming texts remain as compelling today as they were nearly a century ago. |
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Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde explores the extraordinary convergence of artists, intellectuals, and creators in Japans capital city during the radically transformative postwar period. Examining works from a range of media paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings, prints, videos and films, as well as graphics, architecture, musical compositions and dance this is the first publication in English to focus in depth on the full scope of postwar art in Japan. The city during this period was a vibrant hub that attracted such critical artistic figures as Taro Okamoto, Hiroshi Nakamura, Ay-O, Yoko Ono, Mieko Shiomi and Tetsumi Kudo; photographers Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu; illustrators and graphic designers Tadanori Yokoo, Kohei Sugiura and Kiyoshi Awazu; and architects Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurokawa; as well as many important artists collectives. Curator Doryun Chongs introductory essay investigates Tokyos sociopolitical context and the massive urban changes that redefined the city as a vital node in the international avant-garde network. Essays by scholars Hayashi Michio and Miryam Sas and curator Mika Yoshitake discuss central notions of postwar Japanese art, including design and graphics; the development of new sculptural languages; and the intermedia trend that engendered experimental performance works and cross-pollination among artistic modes. |
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Since its birth in the first half of the 19th century, photography has offered extraordinary possibilities of isolating works of art for study and pleasure. Through cropping, focus, angle of view, distance and lighting as well as the ex post facto techniques of dark room manipulation, collage, montage and assemblage, photographers not only interpret the artworks they record but create stunning reinventions. The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1939 to Today presents a critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture. Through a selection of nearly 300 outstanding pictures by more than 100 artists from the 19th century to the present, The Original Copy explores how one medium has become implicated in the understanding of the other. Photographs reproduced in this richly illustrated volume range in subject from inanimate objects to performing bodies, and include major works by mediums most influential artists, from early modernism to the present. |
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Throughout his career, Douglas Gordon has engaged in an ongoing reflection on the motion picture, examining the relationship between cinema and our common knowledge and perception of it. In altering, monumentalizing and alienating our collective understandings of film, he has visualized, pictured and 'sculpted' time. Motion/Pictures, the book accompanying an exhibition that focuses on Gordon's filmic work, explores the relationship between film and psychoanalysis, and the way in which these systems of thought have affected the idea of individual biography. |
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Published in conjunction with the exhibition Gauguin: Metamorphoses at The Museum of Modern Art, this volume explores the remarkable relationship between Paul Gauguins rare and extraordinary prints and transfer drawings, and his better-known paintings and sculptures in wood and ceramic. Created in several discreet bursts of activity from 1889 until his death in 1903, these remarkable works on paper reflect Gauguins experiments with a range of mediums, from radically primitive woodcuts that extend from the sculptural gouging of his carved wood reliefs, to jewel-like watercolour monotypes and large, mysterious transfer drawings. Richly illustrated with approximately 190 works in a range of mediums, Gauguin: Metamorphoses explores the artists radically experimental approach to techniques and his pivotal place in the history of art. An introductory essay by Starr Figura considers the significance of Gauguins innovative printmaking and the relationship between his prints and works in painting and sculpture. Elizabeth Childs writes on Gauguins radical wood sculptures, using them as a touchstone from which to further investigate his peripatetic practice. An essay by Hal Foster addresses Gauguins primitivism and its aesthetic and cultural implications. An essay by Erika Mosier offers a conservators insights into Gauguins unusual printmaking techniques. |
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Published in conjunction with a major exhibition organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with the Menil Collection, Houston, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 19261938 focuses on the breakthrough surrealist years of Ren? Magritte, creator of some of the 20th centurys most extraordinary images. Bringing together nearly 80 paintings, periodicals and early commercial work, it offers fresh insight into Magrittes identity as a revolutionary painter and surrealist artist. Beginning in 1926, when Magritte first aimed to create paintings that would, in his words, challenge the real world, and concluding in 1938 a historically and biographically significant moment just before the outbreak of World War II the publication traces central strategies and themes from this seminal period, particularly those of diplacement, transformation, metamorphosis, the misnaming of objects, and the representation of visions seen in half-waking states. The publication also presents new conservation research on Magrittes materials and techniques, and an illustrated chronology outlining significant moments in the artists life during this significant period, including travel, connections with other surrealist artists and writers, contributions to journals, and important exhibitions and reviews. |
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John Singer Sargent's approach to watercolor was unconventional. His confidently bold, dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. Enhanced by biographical and technical essays, and lavishly illustrated with 175 color reproductions, this publication introduces readers to the full sweep of Sargent's accomplishments in this medium. |
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