Art & Design, Art History, Art Education

Exploring how artists at midcentury addressed the social issues of their day--from Jacob Lawrence to Elizabeth Catlett, Rose Piper to Charles White   This timely book surveys the varied ways in which Black American artists responded to the political, social, and economic climate of the United States from the time of the Great Depression through the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Featuring paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by artists including Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin, Augusta Savage, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Norman Lewis, Walter Augustus Simon, Loïs Mailou Jones, and more, the book recognizes the contributions Black artists made to Social Realism and abstraction as they debated the role of art in society and community. Black artists played a vital part in midcentury art movements, and the inclusive policies of government programs like the Works Progress Administration brought more of these artists into mainstream circles.   In three chapters, Earnestine Jenkins discusses the work of Black artists during this period; the perspective of Black women artists with a focus on the sculpture of Augusta Savage; and the pedagogy of Black American art through the art and teaching of Walter Augustus Simon. Published in association with the Dixon Gallery and Gardens   Exhibition Schedule: Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis (October 17, 2021-January 2, 2022)

From its underground genesis during the Cultural Revolution, contemporary Chinese art has become a dynamic and hugely influential force in a globalized art world where the distinctions between Eastern and Western civilization are rapidly collapsing. In this first systematic introduction to the topic, Wu Hang provides a much-needed narrative of the development of Chinese art across all media during a period of radical social, political and economic change in China. This richly illustrated and easy-to-navigate chronological survey considers contemporary Chinese art both in the context of China's specific historical experience and in the global arena. Wu Hung explores: * The emergence of avant-garde or contemporary art - as opposed to officially sanctioned art - in the public sphere after the Cultural Revolution * The mobilization by young artists and critics of a nationwide avant-garde movement in the mid-1980s * The re-emphasis on individual creativity in the late 1980s * The heightened spirit of experimentation of the 1990s * The catapulting of contemporary Chinese art into the global arena from the 1990s onwards. The book introduces the reader to key art movements, styles and trends, important artists and art projects, experimental exhibitions and avant-garde publications, and China's growing number of new museums, galleries and alternative art spaces. Contemporary Chinese Art is an indispensable resource to one of the most vital and exciting areas of international art practice today.

NAMED A BEST NEW POTTERY BOOK TO READ IN 2022 BY THE BOOK AUTHORITY Lavishly illustrated with over 250 full-color photographs of unique designs and rare methods, providing an in-depth look at the pottery produced in the Fayoum The Fayoum, a broad, fertile depression in Egypt's Western Desert, known for its great salt lake, its rich green fields, and its unique pharaonic and Greco-Roman remains, is also home to three very different centers of pottery production. The potters of Kom Oshim specialize in decorated garden pots and other utilitarian ware, and guard the special secret of how to make the largest clay vessels in Egypt, up to an extraordinary two and a half meters tall. At al-Nazla, ancient traditions are kept alive, as members of a single extended family continue to use millennia-old techniques passed down from generation to generation, hand-forming among other things their distinctive spherical water jars with amazing dexterity and speed. In the small village of Tunis, the establishment of a pottery school by a Swiss couple in 1990 led to a complete transformation, and the village now hosts more than twenty-five pottery workshops and showrooms, whose products are sold in Cairo, London, and New York. In this lively insight into a varied and vital craft, the author reveals the stories of the three villages and the skilled potters who make their living there, looking at how they learned their trade and how they work, from the preparation of the clay to the formation of the pots on the wheel or by hand, to the decoration, the glazing, and the firing, and finally to the display or distribution and sale of the finished product. For past and future travelers to Egypt, lovers of the craft of pottery, practitioners, and collectors, this beautifully illustrated exploration of the ceramics of the Fayoum will inspire and enchant.

The first book to publish the entirety of Franz Kafka's graphic output, including more than 100 newly discovered drawings   "The figures he drew stand alone as stories in themselves."--Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review   "A sensational new book [that] reveals these hitherto hidden artworks for the first time. . . . This valuable volume allows us to see how, for Kafka, word and image walk arm in arm."--Benjamin Balint, Jewish Review of Books   The year 2019 brought a sensational discovery: hundreds of drawings by the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) were found in a private collection that for decades had been kept under lock and key. Until now, only a few of Kafka's drawings were widely known. Although Kafka is renowned for his written work, his drawings are evidence of what his literary executor Max Brod termed his "double talent." Irresistible and full of fascinating figures, shifting from the realistic to the fantastic, the grotesque, the uncanny, and the carnivalesque, they illuminate a previously unknown side of the quintessential modernist author.   Kafka's drawings span his full career, but he drew most intensively in his university years, between 1901 and 1907. An entire booklet of drawings from this period is among the many new discoveries, along with dozens of loose sheets. Published for the first time in English, these newly available materials are collected with his known works in a complete catalogue raisonné of more than 240 illustrations, reproduced in full color. Essays by Andreas Kilcher and Judith Butler provide essential background for this lavish volume, interpreting the drawings in their own right while also reconciling their place in Kafka's larger oeuvre.

Griot Potters of the Folona reconstructs the past of a particular group of West African women potters using evidence found in their artistry and techniques. The potters of the Folona region of southeastern Mali serve a diverse clientele and firing thousands of pots weekly during the height of the dry season. Although they identify themselves as Mande, the unique styles and types of objects the Folona women make, and more importantly, the way they form and fire them, are fundamentally different from Mande potters to the north and west. Through a brilliant comparative analysis of pottery production methods across the region, especially how the pots are formed and the way the techniques are taught by mothers to daughters, Barbara Frank concludes that the mothers of the potters of the Folona very likely came from the south and east, marrying Mande griots (West African leatherworkers who are better known as storytellers or musicians), as they made their way south in search of clientele as early as the 14th or 15th century CE. While the women may have nominally given up their mothers' identities through marriage, over the generations the potters preserved their maternal heritage through their technological style, passing this knowledge on to their daughters, and thus transforming the very nature of what it means to be a Mande griot. This is a story of resilience and the continuity of cultural heritage in the hands of women. 

In a world where the making and consumption of art is constantly changing, the term "Islamic art" can be hard to define. Through the exploration of a wide array of media--from painting, sculpture, and photography to video and multimedia--an internationally renowned group of scholars, collectors, artists, and curators tackles questions such as whether the art has to come from the Middle East, whether it must have a religious component, and, indeed, whether the work of art must be made by a Muslim. Based on a series of papers presented at the 7th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in 2017, the essays in this volume grapple with these questions from a range of viewpoints. These texts--including beautiful illustrations of major works by contemporary artists from the Muslim world, including Newsha Tavakolian, Shahzia Sikander, Hassan Hajjaj and Lalla Essaydi--invoke a lively discussion of how the arts of the Islamic lands link the past with the present and the future. Distributed for the Qatar Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar

The first comprehensive survey to explore the rich and complex history of contemporary Korean art Starting with the armistice that divided the Korean Peninsula in 1953, this one-of-a-kind book spotlights the artistic movements and collectives that have flourished and evolved throughout Korean culture over the past seven decades - from the 1950s avant-garde through to the feminist scene in the 1970s, the birth of the Gwangju Biennale in the 1990s, the lesser known North Korean art scene, and all the artists who have emerged to secure a place in the international art world.

Features recently discovered, previously unpublished materials from the archives of the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin by Bauhaus professor and renowned avant-garde artist L szl Moholy-Nagy- Includes work by Moholy-Nagy, Guillaume Apollinaire, F.T. Marinetti, Theo van Doesburg, Herbert Bayer, Walter Dexel, and El Lissitzky- Published concurrently with an exhibition at the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek in BerlinThe 1920s in Germany witnessed a revolution in visual communication, typography, and graphic design that still influences us today. In 1929, Hungarian avant-garde artist and Bauhaus professor L szl Moholy-Nagy was invited to design a room dedicated to the future of typography at the Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin as part of a larger exhibition called New Typography ("Neue Typographie"). The exhibition was organized by the Ring of New Advertising Designers ("ring neue werbegestalter"), a group started by Kurt Schwitters in 1927 which consisted of 12 avant-garde designers and artists who explored a common vision of modernity in advertising and graphic design. In five years, the Ring put on over 20 shows in Germany, and invited guest artists to exhibit with them. Moholy-Nagy's room in the New Typography show was called "Where is Typography Headed?". He created 78 freestanding panels with work by himself, other artists, and contemporary printed matter, which addressed the current trends and future direction of typography. The panels are reproduced together in this book for the first time, along with an Abcdarium of terms and concepts by a roster of noted typography and design historians.

The Shahnama, an epic poem from the 10th century that chronicles Iran's mythical history before the founding of Islam, has been immortalized in numerous illustrated copies. . The illuminated pages of the 16th-century Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, known as the most beautiful edition ever created,  are reproduced in this new publication, which succeeds the Metropolitan Museum's celebrated out-of-print deluxe facsimile edition of 2011. This new volume combines the vibrant, high-quality reproductions of the deluxe edition with enlightening information and a smaller, more accessible format.  The fascinating text introduces the Shahnama to readers and describes the material world depicted in the intricate paintings. It also includes a brief description of the stories depicted in the illustrations and an illustrated "Who's Who" to help readers identify major characters in the epic. These features provide readers a deeper engagement with this captivating masterpiece.

Surveying the Anthropocene collates a range of approaches to image making concerning environmental issues by some of the best artist-photographers working worldwide. The incisive input to environmental questions is gathered together at a pivotal moment in the evolving human relationship with our home planet. Photographic approaches to environmental imagery have altered fundamentally in recent decades, largely as a result of increasing socio-ecological awareness. This insightful international survey, with a strong representation from Scotland, considers the varied range of current working practices of a representative selection of artist-photographers, both renowned and emerging, whose image-making explores human-caused environmental change. It concentrates particularly on work which relates to the types of impact, on climate and the web of life, that are sufficiently significant and globally widespread to appear in the future record of the rocks as a new geological epoch - the Anthropocene. The concept of the Anthropocene has engaged the attention and imagination of a wide range of commentators from very different backgrounds and walks of life. It therefore provides an excellent context in which to discuss, in an open and cross-disciplinary way, the range of responses of artist-photographers and cultural writers to our present global situation of multiple, interconnected environmental and social crises - and the options for human ingenuity in addressing these.