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
The New York Times recently featured an article on the new exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, Becoming van Gogh. The exhibition explores the unorthodox journey that Vincent van Gogh took to becoming an artist. Focusing on key periods in his life—his work in London and Paris for an art dealer, his attempted career in the church, and the spiritual crisis that influenced his decision to become an artist—Becoming van Gogh investigates the influences and beliefs that made up van Gogh’s approach to art.
Becoming van Gogh represents nearly a decade of DAM’s collaborative work with more than sixty institutions to bring together works that reveal van Gogh’s artistic progression. The exhibition features more than seventy paintings and drawings by van Gogh and includes works by the artists who influenced him, such as Camille Pissarro and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
Accompanying the exhibition is the publication Becoming van Gogh. The catalogue, produced by Marquand Books and designed by John Hubbard, illuminates van Gogh’s evolution through essays and a timeline of his artistic career. With more than 150 full-color illustrations, this 288-page book is an insightful consideration of one of the most significant and beloved artists of the modern era.
To learn more about Becoming van Gogh, visit DAM. To purchase your copy of the book, visit Yale University Press.
photography by Jeremy Linden
The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly: A Catalogue Raisonné is now available at Amazon.com. Marquand Books produced the stunning two-volume catalogue, working directly with the Ellsworth Kelly studio and Richard Axsom, the raisonné’s author. Published by the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation and distributed by Marquand Books, the catalogue features more than 400 color illustrations accompanied with detailed entries.
Letters to Ellsworth, a companion publication, is also available on Amazon. This book gathers the reflections of men and women who have been close to Kelly and his art over the years. In many cases, the proximity has been to the artist’s prints. Curators, art historians, publishers, printers, dealers, and collectors contribute personal essays on Kelly’s work. Unlike any other book on Kelly—one of the most important artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—Letters to Ellsworth offers an intimate look at the bond between friend and artist.
The publication of the catalogue raisonné coincides with a traveling exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly Prints. The show, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (where it first opened as part of Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings in January 2012) recently closed at Portland Art Museum and moves in January to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
Visit our post “Color, Shape, and Nature: Ellsworth Kelly’s Prints” to learn more about the exhibitions and catalogue. To purchase The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly and Letters to Ellsworth, visit Amazon.com.
“Hold fast to dreams / For when they let go / Life is a barren field /
Frozen in snow”—Frank Moore
Fields littered with oversized pill bottles, buffalo grazing on cotton bedsheets, clouds in the shape of chemical compounds: these are the landscapes and images depicted by the late New York City artist Frank Moore (1953–2002). In his life and work, Moore fervently confronted issues of the day, from genetically modified food and pollution to the AIDS pandemic and human sexuality—his paintings, surreal and highly detailed, reveal the chaos and beauty inherent in each.
In early September, Grey Art Gallery opened the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Moore’s work. Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore chronicles the artist’s career and reveals his eloquent and inquisitive approach to life and art. The exhibition features more than thirty-five major paintings and fifty drawings, sketches, and gouches as well as Moore’s personal notebooks, source materials, and ephemera.
Marquand Books produced the exhibition catalogue, designed by Laura Lindgren. Essays by Gregg Bordowitz, Susan Harris, and Klaus Kertess study the connections between environmental, social, and personal health that Moore examined in his work. Excerpts from artist statements, essays, and interviews with Frank Moore are also included in the book, which features more than one hundred color illustrations.
To learn more about the exhibition Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore or to purchase a copy of the catalogue, visit the Grey Art Gallery.
Photography by Jeremy Linden
In the 1960s, John Powers resigned from his position as president of a major publishing company and pursued his passion for collecting contemporary American art and antique Japanese art. His enthusiasm for Japanese art prompted him, along with his wife, Kimiko, to travel extensively throughout Japan and meet with art dealers and scholars to learn more about the works they wanted to collect.
The ’60s proved an ideal time for the Powerses to begin collecting. Japanese art was not widely known, and its obscurity allowed them to build a collection focused on exquisite pieces without the stress of competing collectors. Today, the Powers Collection is recognized as the premier collection of Japanese art in the United States and as one of the largest collections outside of Japan. Throughout their years of collecting, John and Kimiko Powers gathered together more than 300 paintings, scrolls, Buddhist sculptures, calligraphy, and illuminated documents that reveal the stories and innovation of Japan’s artistic evolutions.
Unrivalled Splendor: The Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art is currently featured at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The exhibition, which runs through September 23, presents eighty-five selections from the collection and highlights elaborate screens, narrative scroll paintings, and some of the earliest known examples of Buddhist art in Japan.
Marquand Books produced the 246-page catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. Designed by Zach Hooker, the catalogue presents more than eighty color illustrations of the selected works and includes an essay by Miyeko Murase that examines the importance of the objects presented in the exhibition.
To learn more about Unrivalled Splendor, visit the MFAH. To purchase a copy of the exhibition catalogue, visit Yale University Press.
photography by Jeremy Linden
On Monday, The New York Times featured an article on the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, their current exhibition, and their book A Glorious Enterprise.
The book’s true fascination comes in its color photographs and illustrations, scores of them. We see naturalists in the field, the tools they used and the specimens they returned—legions of stuffed birds, minerals, mushrooms and insects … the story of the Academy of Natural Sciences engrosses. Its collections, sampled here, are valuable, and the attitude of its founders—that satisfying one’s curiosity about the natural world is celebratory activity—is refreshing.
The book chronicles the museum’s 200-year history of collection and research. It was produced by Marquand Books and designed by Jeff Wincapaw. To purchase A Glorious Enterprise, visit the University of Pennsylvania Press.
The Bellevue Art Museum’s current exhibition Knitted, Knotted, Twisted & Twined highlights more than ninety pieces of jewelry by local artist Mary Lee Hu. The show chronicles Hu’s work from the 1960s to the present and focuses on the original techniques she brought to the worlds of jewelry and metalwork.
Employing fiber techniques like twining and weaving, Hu manipulates metal as if it were textile. Her methods cause light to reflect off her jewelry in deliberate, mesmerizing ways. By wrapping wire and folding metals, she constructs textured neckpieces, earrings, bracelets, and brooches, as well as several small animals—a lizard, turtle, and squid are a few of the creatures displayed.
The 128-page exhibition catalogue, designed by Jeff Wincapaw, was produced by Marquand Books and features more than eighty color illustrations. Essays by Janet Koplos and Jeannine Falino illuminate Hu’s journey in metalwork and jewelry design.
To learn more about the Knitted, Knotted, Twisted & Twined exhibition and catalogue, visit the Bellevue Arts Museum online.
[Traylor] was beautiful to see—so right with himself and at peace—as the rich imagery of his long life welled up into his drawings and paintings.
—Charles Shannon, 1985*
The High Museum of Art is currently showing the exhibit Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit, a collaboration of the two museums, showcases over sixty works by the self-taught, Alabama artist Bill Traylor.
Born into slavery around 1854, Traylor grew up in rural Alabama. In 1928 he moved to Montgomery where he survived on the streets of Monroe Avenue, working and living in meager conditions. When he was eighty years old and physically unable to work, he started to draw. On the sidewalks of Montgomery, he used crayons, graphite pencils, and poster paint on pieces of old cardboard to create pictures of rural and urban life.
Charles Shannon, a Montgomery artist, befriended Traylor in 1939. He soon championed his work, buying and preserving most of Traylor’s drawings. For nearly forty years, Shannon protected Traylor’s art, convinced the drawings deserved to be in museums alongside works by mainstream artists. Finally, in the late 1970’s, the drawings were introduced to the public and are now regarded as important examples of American art.
The exhibition catalogue, produced by Marquand Books, allows the reader a close view of the textural, temporal qualities of Traylor’s work. Essays by Susan Mitchell Crawley and Leslie H. Paisely explore both the history of the artist’s life, as well as the history of preserving his works. The 111-page catalogue includes portraits of the artist and selected works from the collections of the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and the High Museum of Art.
To learn more about the exhibition or to purchase the catalogue, visit the High Museum of Art online.
* Margaret Lynne Ausfeld, Susan Mitchell Crawley. Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. (New York: Prestel, 2012), 13.
photography by Jeremy Linden
The history of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia is as interesting as its collections. Established in 1812, the Academy was the nation’s center for scientific thought and discovery. It funded expeditions into the western wilderness and its members classified and categorized the variety of specimens they found. Today, the Academy’s collections are important libraries of the biodiversity in flora and fauna.
The book A Glorious Enterprise chronicles events that have shaped the Academy’s history over the last 200 years, from its early beginnings as an epicenter for science to its present-day status as the United States’ oldest natural history museum.
Produced by Marquand Books and designed by Jeff Wincapaw, this 464-page book details the collections of the museum in more than 250 color illustrations. Essays by Robert McCracken Peck and Patricia Tyson Stroud and photographs by Rosamond Purcell illuminate the stories of past discoveries.
To purchase A Glorious Enterprise, visit the University of Pennsylvania Press.
photography by Jeremy Linden
