Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was proud to call himself an American artist, but he dreamed of travel to Europe, believing instinctively that he would learn more there than would be possible in his home state of Maine or even in New York. In 1909 Alfred Stieglitz gave Hartley his first solo exhibition in New York, and a second successful show three years later enabled him to head to Europe, where he spent time in Paris, Berlin and Munich. His rise to prominence as a specifically American modernist was based largely on the visual ideas and influences that he encountered in these vibrant cities, which he then synthesized through his own New England point of view. Hartley, who was by nature something of a loner, never lost his wanderlust, and throughout his life found inspiration in many other landscapes and cultures, including in southern France, Italy, Bermuda, Mexico and Canada. Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts, published to coincide with an exhibition opening at the Vilcek Foundation in New York, offers a fresh appraisal of a pioneering modernist whose work continues to be celebrated for its spirituality, experimentation and innovation. Rick Kinsel's introduction provides an overview of the manifold ways in which Hartley's travels shaped his artistic vision, from experiencing the latest art in Paris and finding a mentor there in Gertrude Stein to meeting members of the Blaue Reiter group in Germany and developing an interest in both Prussian military pageantry and Bavarian folk art; from becoming fascinated with ancient Aztec and Mayan cultures while in Mexico to being inspired by the traditional pueblo life of the Native Americans of the Southwest. William Low surveys items from the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection of Bates College Museum in Maine - including memorabilia from the artist's travels and artefacts reflecting his diverse spiritual interests - and explains how they aid our understanding of Hartley's motivation and passions. Among them are a photograph album tracing the course of Hartley's peripatetic life from 1908 to 1930 and a notebook of 'Color Exercises', both of which are reproduced in full. Emily Schuchardt Navratil considers how Hartley's desire for escape was reflected in his love of the circus, a recurrent theme in his paintings, drawings and writings. He was enthralled by the spectacle and the nomadic existence, and he imagined circus performers to be members of his own wandering troupe. For fifteen years he worked on a book devoted to the subject, but it was left unfinished at his death; an 18-page typescript version is reproduced here in its entirety. Kinsel then explores Hartley's painting Canoe (Schiff), created in Berlin in 1915 as part of his Amerika series of brightly coloured works defined by imagery drawn from both Native American material culture and German folk art. For Hartley, these paintings represented a dual cultural identity. The main part of the book, by Navratil, features some 100 paintings, drawings, photographs and postcards, arranged into seven country- or state-themed sections, with a concluding section on Hartley's personal possessions, which - because he had no permanent home of his own - held extraordinary significance for him. &nbsp;

Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts

Arts & Photography

Low, William

Kinsel, Rick

Schuchardt Navratil, Emily

History & Criticism

Merrell Publishers

Early in his career, Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) earned acclaimed for his Precisionist paintings of architectural subjects associated with a forward-looking, industrialized America, most famously his Overseas Highway of 1939. But Crawford was a multifaceted artist with an adventurous spirit and a curiosity for the world beyond the United States, one whose work in various media and painting styles continued to evolve throughout his life, with his later, more abstract painting having a remarkable emotional dimension. This new book, published to accompany an exhibition at the Vilcek Foundation in New York focuses on two series of works – ‘Torn Signs’ and ‘Semana Santa’ – that Crawford developed mostly over the course of the last 20 or so years of his life (although his first ‘Torn Signs’ photographs date from the late 1930s, thus making this Crawford’s most enduring theme or motif). Rick Kinsel, President of the Vilcek Foundation, begins by considering how and why his travels to Europe, especially to Andalusia in Spain, were so inspiring to Crawford. Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the last week of Lent, is observed in Seville with public processions of penitential confraternities through the streets. Witnessing this event proved to be a moving experience for Crawford, and he revisited the subject of the penitents, with their distinctive conical hats, multiple times across a number of years. The art historian William C. Agee provides a biographical essay on Crawford’s peripatetic life, examining in particular the relation between the ‘Torn Signs’ and ‘Semana Santa’ bodies of work and the artist’s later decades, after the Second World War, when Crawford was interested less in the life-affirming view of modernity associated with Precisionism, and more in giving expression to disillusion and decay. Crawford’s son John writes about the complex interrelationship of the two series, with emphasis on the way in which Crawford’s photography relates to his painting and printmaking. Individual works in both series are then explored in depth in the main part of the book by Emily Schuchardt Navratil, Curator of the Vilcek Foundation. Reproductions of the pages of sketchbooks from 1971 (the year he was diagnosed with leukaemia) illuminate Crawford’s approach to remembering colour through writing and his incredible visual memory; here, drawings of torn signs, Semana Santa and the streets of Seville are interspersed with the artist’s thoughts on colour, the connection between drawing and writing, and his own life and death.

Torn Signs

Crawford, John

Agee, William C.

Navratil, Emily Schuchardt

American art underwent a transformation during the period 1940-55, and nowhere is that change better exemplified than in the work of Ralston Crawford (1906-1978). Crawford worked in a variety of media throughout his career, and his wartime and early postwar art ranged from designing camouflage and creating weather infographics for the US Army to documenting the detonation of the atomic bomb for Fortune magazine. This exciting new book explores Crawford's influences and the ideas and experiences he had during World War II and its aftermath, and chronicles a period of change, during which Crawford gradually moved away from celebrating feats of engineering and industrial development to creating imagery that was more abstract and far more personal, expressing the grief and anxiety of the postwar world.Crawford's painting during the 1930s had largely been a dazzling series of Precisionist works that reflected American advances in industry, engineering and technology. After the United States entered World War II, Crawford served in the Weather Division of the Army Air Forces. He created pictorial representations of weather patterns for airplane pilots, and was exposed to countless photographs of air crashes. He continued working as an artist throughout the conflict, receiving a commission to paint the Curtiss-Wright aircraft plant in Buffalo, New York, and, in 1946, an assignment to observe and record one of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. These experiences had a profound impact on Crawford, and marked a major turning point in his life and art. Published to coincide with an exhibition opening at the Dayton Art Institute, Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War presents a remarkable selection of Crawford's paintings, drawings, photographs and prints from this time. These vary from powerful images of chaos and devastation to ordered and precise paintings of airplane assembly at the Curtiss-Wright plant and cover illustrations and charts related to weather, flight and radar for Fortune magazine. The evolution of many of the works can be traced from photograph and drawing to the finished painting, revealing Crawford's decisions about form and space, which were informed by his experiences with airplanes and flight. Accompanying the artworks is a series of perceptive essays. Rick Kinsel considers Crawford's war years in the context of developments in both aviation and American art. Emily Schuchardt Navratil reflects on aerial views by Crawford and on his Curtiss-Wright commission. Amanda Burdan looks at Crawford's work for Fortune, while Jerry Smith surveys various American and European abstract renditions of airplanes and flight as a means by which to place Crawford's interest in aviation during World War II into a broader historical context. In the final essay, John Crawford examines the importance of photography in his father's work, and explores collage as both a compositional technique and as a term that may be used to describe the series of intense experiences that contributed to Crawford's development as an artist in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Ralston Crawford: Air + Space + War

Burdan, Amanda C.

Smith, Jerry N.

Individual Artists

About the Author\nPueblo Pottery Collective is a collective of more than 60 Native American community members from 21 Pueblo communities in the Southwest. The collective includes potters, designers, and other artists, as well as writers, poets, community leader, and museum professionals.\nElysia Poon is Director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.\nRick Kinsel is Director of the Vilcek Foundation, New York.\nNo art form is more associated with the Native Americans of the Southwest than pottery. For centuries, Pueblo people have made beautiful pottery, often painted with intricate designs, for everyday activities such as cooking, food storage and gathering water, and for ceremonial use. Vessels of these types have been found at ancient sites including Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. The tradition of pottery-making continues to thrive among Pueblo communities in the Southwest, and while pottery is still made for practical purposes, it is also commonly produced for the art market. Since the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, pottery has been made predominantly by women. The pots are created from natural clay using a coil method; they are hand-painted and then fired outdoors. Designs vary from one Pueblo to another, but many symbols and motifs are shared by the Pueblos.\nAn impressive survey of more than 100 pieces of historic Pueblo pottery, Grounded in Clay is remarkable for the fact that its content has been selected by Pueblo community members. Rather than relying on Anglo-American art historical interpretations, this book foregrounds Native American voices and perspectives. More than 60 participants from 21 Pueblo communities in the Southwest – among them potters and other artists, as well as writers, curators and community leaders – chose one or two pieces from the collections of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Vilcek Collection in New York. They were then given the freedom to express their thoughts in whichever written form they wished, prose or poem. Their lively, varied contributions reveal the pottery to be not only a utilitarian art form but also a powerfully intangible element that sits at the heart of Pueblo cultures. With magnificent photography throughout, Grounded in Clay showcases the extraordinary history and beauty of Pueblo pottery while bringing to life the complex narratives and stories of this most essential of Native American arts.

Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery

Pottery Collective, Pueblo

Poon, Elysia

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