This book ––and the homonymous exhibition–– explores the work of artists who attempted to keep alive the expanded possibilities opened up for the arts of painting and sculpture by what was called Cubism in Paris between 1911 and 1914. This little community of artists refused to accept that recording the war or producing propaganda was their duty. They refused to forget the excitement of 1911-14, and kept faith in their independence as individuals as this war of machines threatened to rob every front-line soldier of his humanity and to draw even foreigners in France into “total war”.
The vast majority of fit young Frenchmen were mobilized, so those artists left behind in Paris were either foreign or too old or unfit for combat. Pablo Picasso, then called the inventor of Cubism, remained a leading figure, alongside his fellow Spaniards Juan Gris and María Blanchard, the Mexican Diego Rivera, the Italian Gino Severini, and the Lithuanian sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.
One feature of this book is the diversity of the work produced by these artists, each working as individuals. Another, however, especially from 1917, is the move made by most of them towards a more structured, architectural Cubism, which could be taken as reparative against the destructive forces that seemed to have taken over the whole world.>> Christopher Greenis Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Among his recent publications is Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo (New Haven and London, 2005). He has curated several exhibitions, including Juan Gris (WhitechapelArt Gallery, London, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands, 1992-93), and Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris (Tate Modern, London, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris and National Gallery, Washington D.C., 2006-07).
>> Christopher Greenis Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Among his recent publications is Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo (New Haven and London, 2005). He has curated several exhibitions, including Juan Gris (WhitechapelArt Gallery, London, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands, 1992-93), and Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris (Tate Modern, London, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris and National Gallery, Washington D.C., 2006-07).
>> Art historian, Dr Neil Cox is Head of Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex; author of the reference book Cubism, and co-author of A Picasso Bestiary. He has also written and presented two BBC TV series.
192pp./ 23.5x29cm./ / Tela
ISBN:
|
9788434313651 9788434313644 |
Castellano English |
45.00€
Francesc Torres (Barcelona, 1948) is, without doubt, one of the most important European artist of his generation.
The title of the piece I am writing about comes from a sentence in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon, and it conveys in a nutshell the overwhelming disregard that History has, in its Hegelian sense, for the individual human being.
During the Spanish Civil War a contingent of 3,500 Americans –– known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade–– joined the International Brigades. Half of them didn’t return.
Harry Randall was one of them and he did return. He was a photographer and cameraman in the brigade, and he is the prime mover of the editorial project presented here as an artist’s book. The basis material was 45 minutes of 16mm film shot over a period of two years (1937-1938), that very few people have seen to date.
As a matter of fact, this book reflects on the visual sedimentation of history beyond the concrete historical event; it is a comment on the material fragmentation, literal and metaphoric, that silently sleeps under the politically conditioned and socially negotiated official narrative of History.
What Does History Know of Nail-Biting?
Francesc Torres88pp./ 22x28cm./ / Printed hardcover
ISBN:
| 9788434313590 | Castellano/Català/English |
45.00€
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