Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

In Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World, Finlay (independent scholar) uses personal narrative and world history to guide readers on an engaging trip through the world of fabric. Each of the book's 11 chapters uses agriculture, manufacturing, science, technology, fashion, myth, and politics to explore a specific fiber/cloth's influence and global impact, helping readers situate each fiber/cloth's historical context. The book is certainly balanced in its arguments and directly confronts the violence surrounding fabric production; the narrative encourages readers to think more deeply about their relationships to cloth and their collective responsibilities toward ending animal cruelty and supporting human rights and environmental stewardship. Intersecting ideas across chapters provide a flow connected to the overall narrative. Black-and-white images illustrate each chapter, and at the book's center is a small section of color images. The notes are excellent and a museum list and a bibliography provide a wealth of information for reference and deeper research. Because of the book's narrative format, it is an excellent choice for general readers, studio artists, and art history and history students looking for how cloth literally weaves, stitches, and ties human histories and futures together.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; students in technical programs; professionals; general readers.

In late February 2022, just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a secure caravan transporting almost 70 works of Ukrainian modernist art left Kyiv bound for Madrid, Spain. This event was part of a larger effort organized by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza and Museums for Ukraine to support Ukrainian cultural institutions during the ensuing war and to protect important examples of Ukrainian culture. To counter the Russian narrative that Ukraine has no real claim to independent sovereignty and cultural expression, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional moved very quickly to assemble an impressive exhibition of Ukrainian modernism, which is currently on view in Madrid, supplementing the works from Ukrainian collections with 50 works borrowed from other European collections. This publication documents the exhibition, which will also travel to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, with color plates and extensive essays by 12 Ukrainian scholars and museum officials. Modernism flourished in Ukraine 100 years ago during cultural and political revolutions in which Ukraine gained brief independence from imperial Russia, only to lose its freedom under the expansions of Stalinism. Parallels with the current political and cultural conflicts are clearly established by the contributors' essays.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Featuring beautiful high-quality photographs, this comprehensive picture book includes more than 450 color images of iconic furniture designs produced in a dynamic era of the 20th century. The volume is divided into nine sections, each focusing on a furniture type, and it ends with a detailed exploration of materials, methods of production, and ways of making. Each of the book's sections provides a brief overview of the impact of new industrial techniques that influenced the mass production of new furniture for modern living. The demand for modern furniture evolved from the consumer boom following WW II. New 20th-century industrial materials played an important role in the creation of mid-century furniture. Postwar industrial methods using factory production enabled creative designs to flourish, and the result was furniture that was cheaper to produce, lighter, adaptable, and flexible for the modern lifestyle. Architects explored sculptural and expressive designs with unique shapes, silhouettes, and new forms extruded from plastics, shaped by tubular steel, welded steel, plywood, and fiberglass. International architects and designers of the 20th century are identified and highlighted for their creative designs using fresh materials and new ways of crafting furniture marked by experimentation, innovation, and a growing interest in abstract and gestural forms. The volume includes a directory of designers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This book is a treasure trove of revelatory, detailed information on capitalist systems in the museum world. The amount of material Shaked (California State Univ., Long Beach) brings together is unrivaled by any other volume to date. She offers critical analyses of various interconnected factions in the art world, exposing economic strategies employed by museums and collectors as well as the financialization of art. Drawing on Marxist theory and case studies of artworks and museums, the author describes conflicts of interest within museums and problematizes the legal and administrative use of a categorical public within public/private partnerships. She also charts intermediate and long-term changes aimed at distributing wealth and funds in egalitarian ways. Mandatory for those interested in art history, art administration, and fine art, Shaked's book is relevant for anyone even remotely involved in the art world--museum studies in particular.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

In this ambitious undertaking Slominski intervenes in histories of outsider art. She is an expert on the subject, and she succeeds in her goal of "present[ing] biographies, ideas, and interviews that disrupt the broad assumptions and stigmas applied throughout the categorization of self-taught." Complex in its organization, Nonconformers opens with productive introductory essays that clearly and concisely provide the framework for the book's three sections: "20th-Century Origins and Representation," "Disparate Boundaries," and "Compositions." Each section comprises three to four essays written by a cohort of nine contributors, including curators, gallerists, editors, directors, and others representing varied perspectives. A discussion of an individual artist or an interview follows each author's entry, along with five short vignettes of other creatives ranging from Lonnie Holley to Hilma af Klint. The result is a compendium that charts a good deal of fresh territory in how art of the self-taught can be productively discussed without recourse to a connoisseurship of dysfunction, valorization of the margins, or anxieties of authenticity. For all its structural intricacy, Nonconformers affords an accessible, thoughtful, and instructive provocation and synthesis.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

In Radical Dreams King (William and Lee) and Susik (Willamette Univ.) gather diverse perspectives on surrealism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, centering participation in politically radical and nonconformist communities. The volume advances the recent scholarly explorations of the surrealist continuum beyond the traditional chronological confines, notably Susik's Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (CH, Sep'22, 60-0019) and David Hopkins's Dark Toys: Surrealism and the Culture of Childhood (CH, Jan'22, 59-1246) (an editor and a contributor to this volume, respectively). Though the essays cover specific examples of surrealist activity between the 1960s and 1980s, the editors argue for the continued resonance of surrealist thought in present and future resistance movements. They skillfully arrange the contributions to support this argument by focusing on surrealism as a process distinct from artistic outcomes and characteristics, and by including academic disciplinary experts grouped thematically with contemporary surrealists who provide firsthand accounts of motivations and actions based on surrealist theory. This well-organized and evocatively illustrated volume exposes contemporary surrealist scholarship and has the potential to lead to new lines of inquiry connecting surrealism to contemporary radicalism.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Raphael (1483-1520) was so well suited to his own time that he can seem slightly remote to contemporary viewers. This catalogue of a memorable 2022 exhibition (postponed two years due to COVID) at the National Galley (London) marking the 500th anniversary of the artist's death restores the artists' vibrancy. Deftly geared to both the exhibition's public and art historians, this catalogue on the foundational artist pays its due to the complete range of Raphael's work (despite the challenges of untransportability and loss) as architect, draftsman, sculptor, engraver, fresco painter, portraitist, painter of altarpieces and of small devotional and philosophical images, and creator of tapestries and mosaics--not to mention suave representative of his profession. Beautifully produced, the volume opens with five essays by leading scholars dealing especially with the otherwise necessarily slighted architecture, frescoes, and tapestries. The ample catalogue entries are richly enhanced with supplemental and helpful illustrations. The writing is nuanced (and avoids the dullness such a comprehensive enterprise can elicit) and will encourage readers to delve deeper. The exhibition, with its remarkable and delectable juxtapositions, had only one venue, but this spectacular catalogue extends the exhibition to a broad audience and will be of enduring value.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Libraries typically own numerous books addressing the subject of symbols, often with accompanying illustrations, but this addition to the publisher's "Art Essentials" titles is significantly different and remarkably entertaining. Wilson, an art historian who has written for numerous publications and the BBC, takes a compelling, unique approach to the subject. Each symbol he explores has its own chapter that takes readers through centuries and across continents. Excellent color reproductions of works of art that include the symbol are accompanied by frequent literary quotes. Examples of the symbols span the entire history of art, from both Western and Eastern cultures. One chapter, "An Elegy to the Poppy," begins with the subject of the British poppy fields and a poem by John McCrae written during WW I. A portrait of the pre-Raphaelite Elizabeth Siddall and a visual reference to the opium that contributed to her death follows. Works of art that depict the poppy as a symbol of sleep in ancient Greece and Rome conclude the chaper. Notes provide an extensive bibliography of sources for future reading.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Herman's decision to begin The Unfinished Business of Unsettled Things with 22 plates featuring works of art is interesting, unusual, and in fact ethical. Comprising six concise but weighty essays, the volume challenges "the old nomenclature of folk, outsider, vernacular, grass roots, and self-taught" and instead questions the need for categories that ultimately "stake and police cultural production" (pp. 1-2). Given the general interest in the global contemporary, Herman's introduction is a necessary interruption of art history and should be incorporated in methods classes and introductory surveys. The writing varies according to the disciplines of the multiple contributors, but each brings passion and commitment to the subject of artists deemed "outsider" or "found" even as Herman initiates the conversation by confounding the very concept of "found." He notes that the designation "betrays a particular consolidation of cultural authenticity" and negates the artist's agency (p. 7). This well-written, lavishly illustrated volume will be valuable for a wide audience.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Joining volumes on blue, black, green, red, and yellow, Pastoureau's White is his sixth book in Princeton's series on color. Like the previous volumes, White focuses on material culture, chronologically exploring the visual, social, and cultural history of the color in the European world from antiquity to the present. In addition, Pastoureau explores how language and value systems affect perception of white and change over time, thus changing the meanings of the color. Pastoureau's professional experience as a professor of medieval history and Western symbolism is evident in the topics covered and the text's presentation. The book is organized into four main chapters, each comprising shorter, topic-focused sections. Some 130 beautiful full-color illustrations accompany the text and sometimes make up half of a chapter. Exploring the intricate and subtle uses of white in these images, the book is a good introductory resource on the significance and symbolism of the color white in Western European culture. Pastoureau's volume is a valuable addition to his introduction to the history of color in the West.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.