Tag: art blog

Top 10 Art Books of 2012, Part 1

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Our favorite art books of 2012 span centuries and movements, and include names both new and familiar. Follow the adventures of Paul Cezanne, meet Vivian Maier and her many subjects, and discover the (real) secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci in our first five selections: 

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Cezanne: A Life, Alex Danchev- Critics called Paul Cezanne’s paintings unfinished, but the artist himself insisted they were “unresolved.” A biographer who wishes to capture the spirit of the revolutionary post-impressionist must play to the distinction. Danchev doesn’t try to solve the riddle of the man who diagnosed himself mad, who hid his wife and child from his family until he was 40, and who spent his final years in wild seclusion. With the aid of more than 100 images—including a series of self portraits—and excerpts from Cezanne’s favorite readings, the raconteur gives us a beautiful, perplexing glimpse through one of the most influential sets of eyes of the 19th century and beyond.

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Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade: 1940-1950; Todd Herman, Christopher Rothko and David Anfam- Though Mark Rothko’s journey from the figurative to the abstract happened rather rapidly, The Decisive Decade presents it as a careful, scientific evolution. An early canvas showing a trio of figures begets a painting of three figures merged into one, which bears a fascinating resemblance to the horizontal planes of color for which Rothko gained renown. The full sweep is a tribute to the artist’s deliberate genius.

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Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, Richard Cahan and Michael Williams- Amateur street photographer Vivian Maier’s now famous body of work was discovered before her death in 2009, when the contents of a storage locker she couldn’t pay for were auctioned off. It wasn’t until her obituary appeared in the Chicago Tribune that real estate agent John Maloof, who had purchased thousands of her negatives, discovered her identity. Cahan and Williams shine some light on the mysterious artist through interviews with Maier’s confidantes, but it’s the work itself, mostly captured on the streets of New York and Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, that bring her into full focus.

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Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King- Perhaps the most shocking secret of The Da Vinci Code is that, had Dan Brown done more digging, he wouldn’t have needed to rely so much on fiction. King introduces us to an aging, depressed Leonardo and the seemingly impossible project he took on at the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie. There are many secrets to uncover, from the true identities of the Apostle models to the significance of the food Leonardo chose for the table. No symbologist needed.

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Lucian Freud Portraits, Sarah Howgate with Michael Auping and John Richardson- As ever, the severe portraits of Lucian Freud cast a captivating spell in this new collection. New to the game is a series of rare, revelatory interviews on everything from the artist’s process to his famous grandfather, conducted in the last years of his life.

Click here to browse our next five selections, and check out our Twitter and Facebook pages for more art musings.

Hannah Holliday Stewart (1924 – 2010) A Sculptor Who Forged The Way

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Hannah Holliday Stewart (1924 – 2010) had her sculpture exhibited in over 40 venues including The Smithsonian, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Art; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and others. Her work and her career were instrumental to the increased recognition of women sculptors in the United States. The International Sculpture magazine wrote :

“(She) forged the way for serious women sculptors. Uniting Greek mythology and contemporary energy concepts … (her) work fuses both primitive and futuristic sensibilities.”

At a time when the art world marginalized women artists, she chose to create her own world from metal and stone and helped lead the way for a generation of women sculptors. Though she had achieved a high level of success and recognition, she eventually turned her back on the art establishment and continued to work in isolation for the last twenty years of her life. After her death in 2010, sculptures, consisting of work that spanned her entire career, were discovered in her studio – from pieces that are only a few inches tall to one bronze that is over nine feet.

A written statement discovered in one of her notebooks eloquently records her own thoughts on the origins and principles underlying her art work:

When I was eight years old, I asked my mother what the wind really looked like. I remember spending hours … days … sitting with my hands open wide or running with my lightning-bug jar, hoping to catch the wind. I wanted to SEE the wind, that magical force that could bend the huge oak tree in a summer storm, gently caress me on a hot summer day or sing to me as it played through a tree or around the house.

This early interest in natural forces has sustained me throughout my life as a sculptor. My goal is to render visible the hidden realities of pent-up contained energy. The direct fields of reference are Sacred Geometry, Astronomy, Myth & Physics … Each Sculpture is an energy form, the movement arrested in space, a form sustaining an energy. My work is a response to these patterns and delineations and communicates with viewers through the universality of symbolism and form.

The Matthews Gallery is pleased to show this pioneering artist and reacquaint the world with her work. If you would like to learn more about Hannah Holliday Stewart, we have created a website dedicated to her life and work which includes a 163 page online catalog of her work. Click Here to visit the site.