Alexander Calder

This study, now published in paperback, provides the most complete scholarly account yet published of the life and work of Alexander Calder. The son and grandson of acclaimed public sculptors, Calder was trained as an engineer. Working in Europe during the 1920s, he was exposed to a range of avant-garde art, including Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Constructivism, and works created at the Bauhaus. These sources, together with Calder's abiding interest in American folk art, were fundamental to the evolution of his wood and wire sculptures, which fundamentally challenged the principles of Western sculpture established in antiquity. Calder's creation of the mobile and stabile, two forms of sculpture that are synonymous with modernism, is also analysed in detail. Including a new plate section and 170 halftones, many published here for the first time, Marter's book is an absorbing study of Calder's special contribution to twentieth-century art and culture.

Arts & Photography

Marter, Joan M.

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

How do students develop a personal style from their instruction in a visual arts program? Women Artists on the Leading Edge explores this question as it describes the emergence of an important group of young women artists from an innovative post-war visual arts program at Douglass College.
The women who studied with avant-garde artists at Douglas were among the first students in the nation to be introduced to performance art, conceptual art, Fluxus, and Pop Art. These young artists were among the first to experience new approaches to artmaking that rejected the predominant style of the 1950s: Abstract Expressionism. The New Art espoused by faculty including Robert Watts, Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Geoffrey Hendricks, and others advocated that art should be based on everyday life. The phrase “anything can be art” was frequently repeated in the creation of Happenings, multi-media installations, and video art. Experimental approaches to methods of creation using a remarkable range of materials were investigated by these young women. Interdisciplinary aspects of the Douglass curriculum became the basis for performances, videos, photography, and constructions. Sculpture was created using new technologies and industrial materials. The Douglass women artists included in this book were among the first to implement the message and direction of their instructors.
Ultimately, the artistic careers of these young women have reflected the successful interaction of students with a cutting-edge faculty. From this BA and MFA program in the Visual Arts emerged women such as Alice Aycock. Rita Myers, Joan Snyder, Mimi Smith, and Jackie Winsor, who went on to become lifelong innovators. Camaraderie was important among the Douglass art students, and many continue to be instructors within a close circle of associates from their college years. Even before the inception of the women’s art movement of the 1970s, these women students were encouraged to pursue professional careers, and to remain independent in their approach to making art. The message of the New Art was to relate one’s art production to life itself and to personal experiences. From these directions emerged a “proto-feminist” art of great originality identified with women’s issues. The legacy of these artists can be found in radical changes in art instruction since the 1950s, the promotion of non-hierarchical approaches to media, and acceptance of conceptual art as a viable art form.

Women Artists on the Leading Edge: Visual Arts at Douglass College

Rutgers University Press

American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tolles, Thayer

Thompson, Jerry L.

Hassler, Donna J.

Yale University Press / Metropolitan Museum of Art

Theodore Roszak: The drawings

Drawing Society, Inc. in association with Universi

This magnificent publication presents surveys the vital role of women in the development of Abstract Expressionism by looking at more than 50 paintings, collages, and sculptures all accompanied by carefully selected quotes from the artists themselves. 
The dominant movement of the New York and San Francisco art scenes of the mid-20th century, Abstract Expressionism is celebrated as the first development in American art to gain international status. The movement is synonymous with the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, but also belonging to this generation who changed the course of modern art were numerous female artists; only in recent years have their contributions received the recognition they deserve. The remarkable women in this exciting new book - among them Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Gechtoff, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell - studied at the same art schools as the men, exhibited at the same galleries, and were part of the same social scene. But their work was not shown and reviewed as widely or considered as valuable as that of the men. 
This beautiful book presents the works of the Levett Collection, an unparalleled private collection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by women Abstract Expressionists. Richly illustrated essays by the scholars Ellen G. Landau and Joan M. Marter, leading authorities on the subject, consider, respectively, the vital role of women in the development of Abstract Expressionism and the work of women sculptors of the movement. Full of exuberant, explosive color and densely layered expression, the main part of the book is devoted to more than 50 paintings, collages, and sculptures, all accompanied by pertinent quotes from the women about their artistic practice and concerns. 
An illustrated timeline and 35 artist biographies provide further insight, making this volume an essential addition to the study of Abstract Expressionist women, innovators in their own right, whose time in the art-historical spotlight has finally come.

Abstract Expressionists: The Women

Landau, Ellen G.

Merrell Publishers

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