Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

In this concise, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched book, Calirman (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) surveys the work of activist women artists, some trans and queer, in the context of recent Brazilian history and the increasingly global art world. Framed by an introduction and an epilogue, four chronologically ordered chapters map, respectively, political practices, discursive practices, transgressive practices, and practices of the self. The historical narrative isolates change from the period of Brazil's military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985 (chapters 1 and 2) through the return to democracy (chapter 3) to the present (chapter 4). Each chapter focuses on a handful of artists whose practices exemplify strategies of liberation from varied but interrelated forms of discrimination. These artists contest the boundaries of gender, sex, race, class, and ethnicity in ways that do not always align with US feminist thought or expectations, as Calirman demonstrates. Injustices in Brazil are ongoing, but Dissident Practices attests to a gradual opening of society and of the art world to those whose skin, bodies, sexuality, gender expression, or income would have excluded or infantilized them in the not-too-distant past. This is an important addition to the literature, especially to the scholarship on modern and contemporary Brazilian art available in English.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Accompanying the Minneapolis Institute of Art 2021 exhibition of the work of Mauricio Lasansky (1914-2012), McGarry's rich catalogue provides detailed, brilliantly contextualized understanding of Lasansky's artistic mission to expose the evil of the Nazi regime and the horrors of the Shoah. Lasansky created his series of 33 charcoal drawings during the 1960s as the Eichmann trials and Nazi atrocities captured worldwide attention. The catalogue's opening essay, "The Holocaust in Press, Culture, and Art: Before and after Eichmann," and concluding visual time line, "The Holocaust in Literature, Art, and Popular Culture, 1945-1970," offer powerful, unique lessons on how best to interpret Lasansky's work and its significance alongside archival documents, historical milestones, scholarship, and films, literature, and other popular-culture forces. A biographical chapter offers a complete picture of how Lasansky, an Argentinian Jew, began creating watershed works such as Dachau, his first work to directly examine the Nazi camps, in 1946. He went on to create some of the most haunting images of Nazi victims, concentration camps, and other holocaust atrocities. Meticulous research and exhibition notes bring the Nazi atrocities more into the world's collective consciousness. First exhibited in 1967-70, Lasansky's thought-provoking and jarring work has inspired other artists and thinkers to create works to fight future genocides.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals; general readers.

This publication is the culmination of a remarkable event--the discovery in 2019 of hundreds of previously unknown drawings by Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Kafka scholars had known previously of a few dozen drawings by the author, but only a handful had been widely published as cover illustrations for paperback editions of Kafka's writings reissued in the 1950s. This new book presents more than 240 drawings reproduced in full color spanning the last two decades of the author's life as he penned his groundbreaking short stories and novels. The relationship between writing and drawing in Kafka's creative life is examined in the essay by Kilcher (one of the book's editors). An essay by Judith Butler explores Kafka's fascination with bodily movements in drawings and passages from his writings as metaphors of psychological estrangement. Kafka's creative period corresponded with the early stages of fin de siecle modernism in Central Europe, especially as it was manifested in illustrated art publications. The exaggerated proportions of Kafka's figural drawings and their critique of bourgeois customs, along with the outsider perspective they reveal, connect Kafka's work with modernist visual expression and suggest a broader understanding of his art.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This handsomely illustrated work provides a significant and succinct examination of German painter George Grosz (1893-1959). Grosz saw in German society a dystopian world--a world marked by hypocritical and moral decadence at every level--in the period between the end of WW I and the rise of Hitler. Human suffering and its morally debilitating impact on individuals was a frequent theme for Grosz, and it influenced his participation in the Dada movement. In the aftermath of his limited service in WW I, Grosz developed a lifelong hatred for war and German militarism and a sustained dislike for the politics and politicians who supported those endeavors. Ferment for change was profound, and Grosz chronicled his dismay in caricatures, drawings, and paintings. In early 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach at the Art Students League in New York, and he ultimately became an American citizen, returning to live in Germany only shortly before his death. In his perceptive essay, Ian Burma chronicles the nature of what Grosz found morally destructive in German society and in his Berlin experiences. This critical catalogue, with its excellent reproductions of Grosz's paintings and drawings, chronicles the evolution of his art. Succinct notes and bibliography point to opportunities for more sustained studies, and illustrations speak to Grosz's talent.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers

This attractive book accomplishes several things: a dual monograph, entwined biographies, and an extended comparison of two hugely important and influential artists. A highly respected scholar and author, Talvacchia (emer., Univ. of Connecticut) explores the significant but little-discussed connection between two artists with the given name Michelangelo--Michelangelo the Florentine sculptor (1475-1564) who is known by that name, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios (1571-1610), the earlier Michelangelo's namesake, who grew up in Caravaggio and is known as Caravaggio. Talvacchia discusses the dynamic relationship between their work, including Michelangelo's overwhelming achievement as a model and Caravaggio's creative response to his namesake. In the early 1600s, Caravaggio produced revolutionary paintings of great impact, as did Michelangelo a century earlier. One can deepen understanding of Caravaggio's ambiguous paintings by a sustained analysis of the works in dialog with Michelangelo. Talvacchia's book is an original contribution, alive with fresh insights. Readers will gain much from her informed and intelligent comparison of two masters of artistic invention. A carefully considered and informative selection of 71 good-quality illustrations (32 in color) underpin the author's many perceptive observations, incisive interpretations, and astute comparisons. Including a voluminous bibliography, the book will appeal to a wide and diverse audience, albeit one that is academically well informed.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

This valuable book is a rarity in its ability to bridge gaps between disparate fields of specialty in art historical research. Bol (Utrecht Univ., Netherlands) writes with authority about the development of glazes and varnishes from the European Middle Ages until the early Renaissance (ca.1100-1500) and about Jan van Eyck's exploitation of those methods. The myth that Van Eyck invented modern oil painting has endured, and this volume goes a long way toward establishing the artist's techniques as born of historical investigation, experimentation, and responses to aesthetic imperatives. Bol is particularly adept at explaining the scientific properties of artists' materials, and she supplements the text with informative images, many of which she took, as she re-creates and documents the historical processes. The book is especially helpful for its reintegration of painting and other art forms, such as goldsmith work, jewelry, tapestry, manuscript illumination, and more. Bol's expertise in art history, painting technique, and material science is far-reaching, so this book will be an excellent resource for those studying the development of oil painting techniques.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates, faculty, researchers, professionals, students in two-year programs.

This meticulously produced, handsomely illustrated, sensitively documented volume carefully analyzes how Eastern avant-garde artists Elaine de Kooning, Jeanne Reynal, and Louise Nevelson were influenced by their experiences of and artistic reactions to the wide-open, randomly populated, sun-scorched High Plains of Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma and how they processed and incorporated these experiences into their particular artistic visions. Von Lintel and Roos (both, West Texas A&M Univ.) contextualize the interest in abstract expressionism developing in this region and the role these artists played in nourishing this interest through their paintings. Of particular note is Von Lintel's careful delineation of the profoundly significant role art dealer Dord Fitz had in advancing and promoting modern art, women painters, and abstract expressionism. Fitz was, as this volume shows, a talented and committed advocate for modern art, a friend and energetic supporter of women artists, and a significant voice in the development of art and painting on the High Plains of Texas and Oklahoma. This carefully composed work illuminates the vibrant relationships among these women, their art, and the region.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This is a wonderfully insightful and thorough examination of Van Dyck's world on many levels: his life, his associations, his legacy, and, above all, his powerful effect on British and Continental artists, authors, and patrons. Van Dyck's ability to combine likeness, elegance, and sensuality was admired from the start, as was his success with aristocratic and royal patronage. Eaker (curator, European paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art) brings the reader into the artist's studio in his discussions of portrait sittings as intimate meetings of painter and portrayed, and as court spectacle with monarch and friends in attendance. The triangular relationship of sitter, painter, and viewer emphasizes the erotic nuances and the potential for actual relationships. Firsthand accounts offer details about conversations, materials, servants used as models, technique, and critical appraisal. Immediate emulators of Van Dyke (1599-1641) include Mary Beale, Joan Carlile, Samuel Cooper, Peter Lely, and Godfried Kneller, but Van Dyck's reach extended to Jonathan Richardson, William Hogarth, Maria Cosways, Thomas Gainsborough, and John Singer Sargent. The gendered characterization and qualities of Van Dyck as feminine contrast with Rubens as masculine. Throughout Eaker provides a historiography of responses to Van Dyke by writers and artists, vividly recounting and recovering Van Dyck's reputation and reception.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

In elucidating Johannes Vermeer's paintings of women in domestic interiors, Georgievska-Shine (Univ. of Maryland) explores literature, religion, and pictorial tradition, referencing Petrarchan and metaphysical poetry, music, and emblems. The thread is love--the unseen viewer may be regarding his beloved from afar, indicated by an empty chair, a map, or a letter. Paintings within the paintings further amplify this theme and offer allusions to love as nourishment, both spiritual and physical. Vermeer's juxtapositions pose questions not easily resolved: is the love reciprocal or unrequited? The author's well-chosen comparisons to paintings by Vermeer's contemporaries heighten the ambiguity and complexity of this extraordinary artist's work. The momentariness of one woman, for example, the girl with the pearl earring, is contrasted with the stillness of another, the woman dressed in blue who reads a letter. The first seeks contact with the viewer; the other retreats into her private fantasy. This stimulating discussion of compellingly beautiful imagery is both lively and highly informative, leading readers on an adventure through spaces they can enter only in their imaginations. For nonspecialists, this book is an excellent window into this endlessly fascinating 17th-century Dutch artist; for specialists, it is an original, welcome, current cultural and intellectual interpretation.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.