Albert Contreras began his painting career in Los Angeles. He earned public acclaim for his minimalist paintings, and his work as an artist moved him to Mexico City and then onto Madrid, Stockholm, and New York. During his travels and work, he explored the edges of minimalist and reductivist styles, experimenting with the dematerialization of the object.
In the late 1960s, Contreras decided to stop painting entirely, returning to California to work for the City of Los Angeles. Upon retirement, he went to therapy for five years and started to paint again. Unlike his early art work, which often featured monochromes painted onto flat, stretched canvases, Contreras’s later paintings dazzle with Technicolor palettes and viscous textures.
Marquand Books recently published Albert Contreras, the first substantial monograph of the artist’s work. The 112-page book features essays by Dave Hickey, David Pagel, Ed Schad, and John Yau that chronicle Contreras’s career and reflect on the nature and significance of his work. The monograph, designed by Jeff Wincapaw, also includes seventy-seven full-color illustrations of Contreras’s recent and older paintings.
Albert Contreras can be purchased through the D.A.P. bookstore.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Some day when I am gone, my children / Will leaf through these pages I have writ / And find a thought that chimes with theirs / And so feel comforted and less alone.
Dorothy Darling Kerper, “Against Loneliness—A Bequest”
Dorothy Kerper Monnelly advocates for the preservation of nature through her work as a photographer and conservationist. In 2006, Monnelly published Between Land and Sea: The Great Marsh—a book of black-and-white landscapes that garnered critical praise in both the fine art and conservation communities.
In her most recent publication, For My Daughters, Monnelly pairs her photography with poetry written by her mother, Dorothy Darling Kerper. Exploring themes of happiness, connection, loss, and wonder, the book is a dialog between mother and daughter, word and image, time and place. Monnelly’s photographs communicate the enduring beauty of the natural world—its lakes and trees, driftwood and petals—as well as the abiding presence of those we have loved.
Marquand Books produced For My Daughters, designed by John Hubbard. The seventy-two-page book features more than thirty tritone illustrations and includes several poems by Kerper.
Monnelly’s work will be featured in the traveling exhibition Fragile Waters, alongside photographs by Ansel Adams and Ernest H. Brooks II. To learn more about the artist and her photography, visit her website. To purchase a copy of For My Daughters, visit Hudson Hills Press.
Photography by Jeremy Linden
Pasión Popular: Spanish and Latin American Folk Art from the Cecere Collection opened earlier this month at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA). Over the last ten years, SAMA received more than three hundred works of Spanish and Latin American folk art by collector and folk art specialist Peter P. Cecere. The show features nearly two hundred works from the collection that range from paintings and wood sculptures to tin masks and cast-iron signs.
Bright and distinctive, Cecere’s collection reflects his eye for objects integral to the societies and cultures that created them. His career as a cultural affairs officer introduced him to many expressions of folk art and allowed him to pursue with passion his love for collecting and research.
Marquand Books, together with Paper Hammer Studio, produced a limited run of catalogues for the exhibition. Designed to be as distinctive as the works it represents, the catalogue is composed of a hand-bound folding case that holds two components. The first is a hand-sewn booklet that features a foreword by Katherine Crawford Luber and essays by Marion Ottengier, Jr. and Martha Egan, as well as an exhibition checklist. The second is a collection of thirty color plates, printed on heavy stock paper, that present selected works from the exhibition. Together, the 80-page catalogue includes more than 170 full-color illustrations.
For more information about the exhibition and catalogue, visit SAMA.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Marquand Books is pleased to announce that Melissa Duffes is our new managing editor. After three years at the helm, Brynn Warriner is stepping down from the position.
Melissa has more than a decade of experience editing, writing, and preparing museum publications. She comes to us from the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, where she was Publications and Media Coordinator. Melissa has edited many museum publications as a freelance editor over the past 12 years. Her first museum publications position was as Assistant Editor at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Melissa has an MA, Art History from SUNY Buffalo and an M.Phil., History of Decorative Arts from the University of Glasgow. She has worked as a historian at The Montpelier Foundation in Orange, Virginia; a curator and historian for Historic Green Spring in Alexandria, Virginia; and a curator at Tudor Place Historic House and Gardens, Washington, DC.
During her time at Marquand Books, Brynn led the editorial department with her commitment to produce excellent work. She brought her eye for detail, sense of humor, and impeccable organization skills to every project. Brynn will continue to edit, typeset, and proofread many of our publications on a freelance basis from the great city of New Orleans, Louisiana. She remains an essential part of Marquand Books.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Tonight marks the opening reception for Barbara Earl Thomas’s show Story Line at the Paper Hammer Gallery. Thomas is a local visual artist, award-winning writer, and the Deputy Director of the Northwest African American Museum. Story Line presents fourteen of Thomas’s prints made between 2006 and 2013.
Thomas first started making prints in 2006. The medium allowed her to engage both her visual and storytelling abilities. Her prints focus on the “mess of living,”* and her subjects include fisherman, readers, fish, trumpets, trees, and the activities of everyday life. She uses distinct lines, colors, and characters to create vivid—and rapturously messy—images. Like words on a page, these forms culminate into fluid and complex pictures and stories.
Marquand Books produced the exhibition booklet for Story Line, which features essays by Thomas and Sandra Jackson-Dumont along with full-color illustrations of the fourteen prints. The booklets will be available for purchase at the opening reception.
To learn more about Barbara Earl Thomas and her work, visit her website.
Story Line opening reception:
Paper Hammer Gallery
1400 2nd Ave
Seattle, WA 98101
5–7 p.m.
*Barbara Earl Thomas, Story Line. (Paper Hammer, 2013), 5.
Photography by Jeremy Linden
More than one thousand years ago, Northwest Coast two-dimensional art was developed along the shorelines of the northeast Pacific Ocean, between the central coast of British Columbia and the coast of Southeastern Alaska. When the United States and Canadian governments expanded west, this aesthetic tradition was methodically suppressed, along with Native languages and social and political customs. By the early twentieth century, mastery of Northwest Coast arts and languages had nearly extinguished, save for the voices and skills of a few elders in the local Native communities.
At midcentury, young Native men and women began the work of reclaiming their Native identity and heritage, learning once-forbidden languages and traditional arts. The careful examination of old works informed these new artists about how to use structure, line, and form in their art.
The power of Northwest Coast art caught the attention of nonnative artists as well. Duane Pasco, a Seattle artist, studied the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of the aesthetic tradition in order to master its form. Pasco’s work ranges from totem poles, longhouses, and canoes, to sculptures, masks, and bowls. Throughout his fifty-year career, Pasco has created a prolific body of work and has taught, mentored, and partnered with Native and nonnative artists and communities to create and promote Northwest Coast art.
Marquand Books recently produced the catalogue Duane Pasco: Life as Art, designed by Zach Hooker. The two-hundred-page catalogue features more than one hundred full-color illustrations. Essays coauthored by Pasco and Barbara Winther recount the events that led to Pasco’s discovery and embrace of Northwest Coast art.
To learn more about Pasco and his work, visit his website. To purchase a copy of Duane Pasco: Life as Art, visit the University of Washington Press.
photography by Jeremy Linden
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco recently opened the exhibition Artful Animals at the Legion of Honor Museum. The show features selected works from the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts—the largest collection of works on paper in the United States. Through works like Elaine de Kooning’s Ley Eyzies to Kobayashi Kiyochika’s Fox and Crescent Moon, the exhibition examines our enduring connection and fascination with the animal kingdom.
Marquand Books produced the catalogue for Artful Animals. Designed by Zach Hooker with assistance from Ryan Polich, the eighty-page book features more than seventy full-color illustrations. An essay by Colleen Terry explores the history of animals in art and how the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century expanded our knowledge of the animal world.
To learn more about the Artful Animals exhibition, visit the Legion of Honor Museum.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Martha Casanave took her first portraits when she was eight years old, using a Kodak Brownie camera. Her insatiable curiosity about how others lived in their homes and with their possessions inspired her to become a photographer and specialize in environmental portraiture. She quickly realized that non-commissioned portraits held her interest. The ability to photograph the people and spaces she found compelling gave Casanave an artistic freedom and satisfaction she found wanting in her commissioned photography.
Her recent publication, Trajectories: A Half Century of Portraits, gathers portraits taken over the last fifty years. Several of the portraits feature the same subject photographed over several years. The portraits reveal each sitter’s unique trajectory and explore how circumstances and choices affected each life. Her sitters include childhood friends, neighbors, family members, immigrants, intellectuals, artists, and eccentrics.
Trajectories was produced by Marquand Books and designed by Jeff Wincapaw. The 184-page book features more than 100 full-color illustrations along with essays by Martha Casanave and Arno Rafael Minkkinen.
To purchase a copy of Trajectories: A Half Century of Portraits, visit Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. To learn more about Casanave and her work, visit her website.
photography by Jeremy Linden
The design wall at Marquand Books stretches down the hallway, a parade of color and text on sheets of paper. The wall, a strip of white sheet metal, is an indispensable canvas for our designers. It’s a place where they can move ideas from a computer screen to a three-dimensional space and where the relation between a book’s object quality and design can be tested.
In our open floor plan, the design wall has increased visibility—making it a catalyst for dialogue between our design, editorial, and production teams. Its accessibility allows everyone to stay tuned to new projects and design directions. The design wall shows the creative work involved in book production, and it underscores the essential role each department plays in the process.
“The thing I like best about the design wall is that it encourages the designers to print pages and spreads in full size so that we can see the design subtleties in a real-world scale. This makes it feel like a real physical object, rather than a digital concept of a real object. And it allows everyone to see how their contributions are affecting the designer’s work.”—Ed Marquand, Creative Director
“I end up seeing designs much sooner than I would otherwise, so I feel connected to the material earlier on in the process. I believe that it fosters a collaborative environment.”—Brynn Warriner, Managing Editor
“I like being able to see the designs because it’s easier to visualize possible cover treatments that might enhance them. And I love seeing the overall spread of the new books.” —Leah Finger, Production Manager
“I like the fact that it invites conversation about the designs and encourages feedback.”—Jeremy Linden, Production Artist
“The design wall opens up one aspect of our work to everyone else, encouraging discussion and fostering a better understanding of what designers do.”—Adrian Lucia, Managing Director
“I really enjoy the critique environment that the design wall creates. Talking about the designs only makes them better, and I think it’s great that everyone has a chance to provide input.”—Ryan Polich, Design and Production Assistant
“It can definitely open up dialogue within the office, and all can see how the early concepts are developing. And when clients come to visit, it allows them to see what we’re up to. Everyone knows to look for new designs when they hear the loud clicking of magnets on sheet metal.”—Jeff Wincapaw, Design Director
photography by Jeremy Linden
In 2012, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Musée du Louvre announced a four-year collaboration to explore American and European art through programming and annual exhibitions that draw from the collections of each institution.
The first installation from this collaboration debuted at the Louvre in January 2012. This exhibition explored the birth of American landscape paintings, particularly works by Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand.
In January 2013, the Louvre opened the second exhibition, American Art Enters the Louvre: The Origins of American Genre Painting, on view through April 22. This exhibition looks at the ways in which genre paintings from the early nineteenth century helped the young United States articulate its identity and culture. The American genre paintings on display include Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait’s The Life of the Hunter: A Tight Fix, Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South, and George Caleb Bingham’s The Jolly Flatboatmen. These works will be shown along with two paintings that significantly influenced the American style: Dutch painter Jan Steen’s Festive Family Meal and English painter William Mulready’s Train Up a Child.
Accompanying this exhibition is the English catalogue American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life, and the French catalogue New Frontier: Les travaux et les jours: aux sources de la peinture américaine de genre. Both editions feature an essay by Peter John Brownlee and more than twenty-five full-color illustrations. The catalogues were produced by Marquand Books and designed by Zach Hooker.
For more information about the exhibition and its travel itinerary, visit the Terra Foundation for American Art. To purchase a copy of the catalogue American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life, visit the University of Washington Press.
Photography by Jeremy Linden
In 1935, a group of volunteers founded what is now the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM). Collecting artwork by Pacific Northwest artists was an early goal. When TAM started to build its permanent collection in 1963, works by Northwest artists Jacob Elshin, Paul Horiuchi, Beulah Hyde, and Hilda Morris were some of the first purchases. Today, TAM’s collection of Northwest art includes more than 3,500 works that range in origin from the late nineteenth century to the present.
TAM celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2010 and kicked off an initiative to present the Northwest art collection through an online collection database and an exhibition series. The initiative also included the publication of its most recent publication, Best of the Northwest: Selected Works from the Tacoma Art Museum. The catalogue highlights key works in the collection and explores early influences on Pacific Northwest art—including Native American, Asian, and European aesthetics.
Marquand Books produced the 240-page catalogue, designed by John Hubbard. More than 200 full-color illustrations of selected works are included in the catalogue, which was compiled by curators Margaret E. Bullock and Rock Hushka. Featured artists include Imogen Cunningham, Gaylen Hansen, Jeffry Mitchell, Kenjiro Nomura, and Mary Randlett, among others.
To see some of the works presented in the catalogue, visit TAM’s current exhibition Best of the Northwest: Selected Paintings from the Collection, open now through Sunday, March 17. For information on ordering a copy of Best of the Northwest: Selected Works from the Tacoma Art Museum, contact TAM’s museum store.
photography by Jeremy Linden
On November 11, 2011, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Alice Walton, opened to the public. The museum focuses on American art and is home to works from the Colonial period to the present day. Through its continued collection of historic and contemporary works—such as War News from Mexico by Richard Canton Woodville and Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell—Crystal Bridges seeks to chronicle the United States’ dynamic cultural landscape.
Marquand Books produced the catalogue Celebrating the American Spirit: Masterworks from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, now in its third printing. The 356-page book features detailed entries and full-color illustrations for more than 150 of the museum’s most significant pieces. Contributors include such scholars and curators as William C. Agee, Stephanie Meyer Heydt, Linda Merrill, and John Wilmerding. Designed by Zach Hooker and edited by Christopher B. Crosman and Emily D. Shapiro, Celebrating the American Spirit is a beautiful, in-depth introduction to the collection and vision of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Visit Crystal Bridges to learn more about the museum and its current exhibitions. To purchase a copy of Celebrating the American Spirit, visit the museum store or Amazon.com.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Tonight marks the opening of Ellsworth Kelly Prints at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA). The exhibition, which debuted last year in Portland, OR, and then traveled to Los Angeles, features artworks that span Kelly’s career. MMoCA’s exhibit will include five additional pieces that belong to The River series.
The museum’s curator Rick Axsom organized the show. Axsom authored The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly. This two-volume catalogue raisonné was produced by Marquand Books and published by the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation in 2012. Accompanying the raisonné is the book Letters to Ellsworth. Both publications are available for purchase through Amazon.com.
To learn more about the Ellsworth Kelly Prints exhibition and events, visit MMoCA.
photography by Jeremy Linden
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) has recently expanded its collection of art from South Asia. Since the museum acquired the Tibetan Majushri sculpture in 1955, the collection and promotion of Asian art has become integral to the DMA’s work. The collection has grown to nearly five hundred works that range from Himalayan Buddhist sculptures to decorative objects from India’s Mughal period.
To celebrate the collection, the DMA published The Arts of India, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas at the Dallas Museum of Art. The catalogue presents more than 140 works from the collection and details the cultural and artistic importance of each. Marquand Books produced the 264-page catalogue, designed by Jeff Wincapaw with Ryan Polich. The book features more than 200 full-color illustrations; intricate maps; and essays by Anne R. Bromberg, Catherine B. Asher, Frederick M. Asher, Robert Warren Clark, and Nancy Tingley.
To learn more about the Asian art collection, visit the DMA. To purchase a copy of the catalogue, visit Yale University Press.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Lipsticks, eye shadows, mirrors, soaps—these are a few of the materials used by Los Angeles–based conceptual artist and sculptor Rachel Lachowicz. Known as the “lipstick feminist” of the art world, Lachowicz counters male-dominated spheres of modern and historical art with acid wit and keen technical skill. Through her work, she explores the connections between identity and the politics of mark-making.
Her famous (and infamous) performance art piece Red Not Blue—a charged, thought-provoking reinterpretation of Yves Klein’s Anthropométries performance—and her sculptural works such as Red David and Mondrian Blue demonstrate her artistic vision and push established boundaries. Her artwork evokes multiple interpretations and falls under many categories, including feminist, appropriationist, conceptual, and postminimalist. Visually bold and provocative, Lachowicz’s work unsettles and recasts the ideas and contexts that surround modern and canonical art.
The Shoshana Wayne Gallery, together with Marquand Books, recently published Rachel Lachowicz, a mid-career survey and comprehensive monograph. With more than 100 full-color illustrations and essays by George Melrod, Amelia Jones, and Jillian Hernandez, this 128-page book examines Lachowicz’s twenty years of art making.
To purchase a copy of Rachel Lachowicz, visit DAP. Visit Lachowicz’s website to learn more about the artist and her work.
photography by Jeremy Linden
Happy Holidays to you and yours from Marquand Books! Over the course of the year, we had the privilege to create catalogues and publications that covered a range of topics—from Greek sculpture and modern painting to photography and performance art.
We’re honored to work with such talented artists, galleries, curators, and collectors. To celebrate, we’ve put together a slideshow that features publications from 2012. Congratulations and best wishes for a merry and bright new year!
A Mine of Beauty:
Landscapes by William Trost Richards
Unrivaled Splendor:
The Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art
Color and Form:
The Geometric Sculptures of Morton C. Bradley Jr.
The Seduction of Color:
Photographs from the Collection of Robert E. Jackson
Knitted, Knotted, Twisted, and Twined:
The Jewelry of Mary Lee Hu
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist
Rising Up:
Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Taladega College
Ferreira Gullar in Conversation with/
en Conversación con Ariel Jiménez
The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly
A Catalogue Raisonné
Ink on Paper:
The Mary Cooley Print Collection
at Cornish College of the Arts
Maine Sublime:
Frederic Edwin Church’s Landscapes of
Mount Desert and Mount Katahdin
Behold, America!
Art of the United States from the Three San Diego Museums
Collecting Art is a Slippery Slope
Human Canvas
The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece
Gail Grinnell
Out of Character:
Decoding Chinese Calligraphy
Bearing Witness from Another Place:
James Baldwin in Turkey
Motion, Emotion, and Love:
The Nature of Artistic Performance
Microsoft Art Collection:
25 Years of Celebrating Creativity and Inspiring Innovation
Ancient Near Eastern Art
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Lesley Vance & Ricky Swallow
at The Huntington
The Art of Golf
Bill Traylor
Drawings from the Collections of the
High Museum of Art and the
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
Letters to Ellsworth
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune
A Glorious Enterprise:
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
and the Making of American Science
Toxic Beauty:
The Art of Frank Moore
Ancestral Modern:
Australian Aboriginal Art
Tellings: Johanna Nitzke Marquis
Estampas de la Raza:
Contemporary Prints from the Romo Collection
The San Antonio Museum of Art
Guide to the Collection
Gyula Kosicein Conversation with/
en Conversación con Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
Benjamin Patterson:
Born in the State of FLUX/us
Charles Reiffel:
An American Post-Impressionist
Like a Valentine:
The Art of Jeffry Mitchell
Rachel Lachowicz
Making a Presence: F. Holland Day in Artistic Photography
Lois Dodd: Catching the Light
Becoming Van Gogh
Access to Excellence:
The Ten-Year Impact of the Charles & Lisa Simonyi Fund
for Arts and Sciences
The Female Gaze:
Women Artists Making Their World
Daily Pleasures:
French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection
Barbara Rogers:
The Imperative of Beauty
In the Eye of the Muses:
Selections from the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
The Artist’s Hand:
American Works on Paper 1945–1975
Dallas Museum of Art
A Guide to the Collection
Museo de Arte de Ponce:
The British Collection
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is home to several permanent collections, each representing distinct eras, cultures, and geographies. Their collection of ancient Near Eastern art spans more than four thousand years and includes more than two thousand objects. LACMA’s artifacts come from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan, with a focus on Iran.
Until the eighteenth century, the art of the ancient Near East was almost unknown. No organized exploration of the region occurred until the nineteenth century, when, in 1801, Napoleon sent soldiers, civilian scientists, and scholars to excavate in Egypt. Scientists and archaeologists followed soon thereafter to explore the surrounding areas, including southern Mesopotamia and southwestern Iran. Through these ventures, the Sumerian and Elamite civilizations were discovered, and several artifacts were brought back to museums. LACMA’s collection presents a broad spectrum of ancient Near East art; it is a mosaic of objects that reveals the values, aesthetics, ideals, and realities of cultures past.
LACMA recently published the catalogue Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Produced by Marquand Books and designed by Tina Kim, this seventy-two-page catalogue features more than sixty full-color illustrations. Essays by Ali Mousavi focus on key pieces in the collection and their connection to important historical developments, such as the invention of writing.
To learn more about the collection of Ancient Near Eastern art or to view the collection online, visit LACMA. To purchase a copy of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, visit LACMA’s bookstore.
photography by Jeremy Linden
In the 1980s, frustrated by the lack of representation of women in galleries and museums, Philadelphia-based collector Linda Lee Alter focused her collection on female artists. Her collection, which includes nearly 500 objects, was presented as a gift to the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in December 2010.
Last week, PAFA debuted Alter’s collection in the exhibition The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World. The exhibition features more than 200 works that present a diversity of artists, themes, and mediums. Alter’s collection focuses on contemporary living artists but includes works by such influential female artists as Elizabeth Catlett, Alice Neel, and Louise Bourgeois. When the premiere exhibition ends on April 7, 2013, the collection will tour throughout the United States.
Accompanying the exhibition is a 336-page catalogue, produced by Marquand Books and designed by Susan Kelly. The catalogue includes more than 100 full-color illustrations, essays by leading scholars of feminism and modern and contemporary art, and an interview with Linda Lee Alter.
Visit PAFA to learn more about the exhibition and to view a slideshow of works in the Alter collection. To learn more about Alter’s work to support female artists, visit the Leeway Foundation, which she helped found in 1993.
photography by Jeremy Linden
From the colonial period to the present, the art of the United States has influenced and reflected the evolution of a country and its people. Last week, three San Diego museums—The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA), and the Timken Museum of Art—opened the innovative exhibition Behold, America! Art of the United States from Three San Diego Museums. This exhibition offers a sweeping view of American art history, dividing the featured works into three distinct shows: Forms, Figures, and Frontiers.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presents Frontiers, focusing on landscape painting and installations. The works range from Georgia O’Keefe’s desert paintings to installations by artists such as Vito Acconci. The Timken Museum of Art features Forms and places traditional still-life paintings by artists such as Raphaelle Peale next to early modern and minimalist works by artists such as Morgan Dawson and Agnes Martin. The San Diego Art Museum exhibits Figures, highlighting portraiture from early American painters like Thomas Sully to contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman.
Marquand Books produced the 412-page catalogue, designed by Zach Hooker. The book features essays, interviews, and more than 200 full-color illustrations. Behold, America! explores a range of topics—from the development of modernism to the process of organizing a survey exhibition—and invites readers to engage with American art history in new and thoughtful ways.
Visit Behold, America!’s website to learn more about the exhibition. To purchase a copy of the book, visit the bookstore at SDMA.
photography by Jeremy Linden
On Saturday, November 10, The San Diego Museum of Art will open its new exhibition Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist. Charles Reiffel led the California plein-air school of landscape painting in the late 1920s. SDMA’s exhibition explores Reiffel’s relationship with nature and form and examines the influence of American Post-Impressionism and Expressionism on his work.
Reiffel moved from Silvermine, Connecticut, to San Diego in 1925. The Pacific shores and desert hills of Southern California renewed his imagination and art, but he did not experience the same kind of financial success there as he had back East. Though critics embraced Reiffel, collectors dismissed his paintings as “too modern.” Reiffel’s bold colors and rhythmic lines, interrupted by angular brush strokes, challenged the conservative style of local plein-air paintings. These quintessentially modern works, however, reveal the artist’s unique vision and “absolute command of the monumental landscape.”*
The exhibition catalogue, produced by Marquand Books and designed by Annabelle Gould, features an essay by San Diego–area curator Bram Dijkstra that considers the writers and artists who inspired Reiffel’s approach to art—from American transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, to painters such as Carl Marr. The 190-page book includes more than 70 full-color images and an exhibition timeline for Reiffel’s work.
To learn more about the exhibition and purchase tickets, visit SDMA.
*Ariel Plotek, Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist. (San Diego: The San Diego Art Museum), 15.
photography by Jeremy Linden
