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TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY
Elizabeth Bishop: Objects & Apparitions
Text by Joelle Biele, Dan Chiasson, Lloyd Schwartz.
Today established as one of the twentieth century’s most important poets, Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) was also a gifted artist and collector of art and artifacts, many of which were collected from her years in Brazil. Objects and Apparitions explores for the first time Bishop’s art: her delicate, miniaturist watercolors and gouaches of domestic vignettes; her tenderly fabricated, Cornell-esque constructions; and several works of art from her own collection, including family portraits and a bird cage modeled on a medieval cathedral. Many of these are reproduced here for the first time in full color, alongside poems, archival photographs and essays by Bishop scholars Joelle Biele, Dan Chiasson and Lloyd Schwartz that discuss Bishop’s art and its relationship to her poetry. Published for a critically acclaimed show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, this handsomely produced volume shows Bishop’s visual instincts to be as flawlessly poised and exquisite as her poetical sensibility.
Featured image, "Cabin with Porthole," is an undated watercolor and gouache work on paper, reproduced from Elizabeth Bishop: Objects & Apparitions.
"Bishop loved the intimate, the exquisite, the eccentric, in art as well as in poetry: Joseph Cornell, Kurt Schwitters (she owned one of his collages), Paul Klee, Alexander Calder (whom she knew); Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Smart, Marianne Moore. She distrusted grandiosity, preferring (much preferring), for example, Mozart or Webern to Beethoven. In her apartment in Boston, the spectacular Venetian Baroque gilt mirror framed by hand-carved cherubic blackamoors, which she acquired at an auction in Rio, was almost an act of irony, given everything else she had on her walls—including her own little Cornell-inspired assemblage Anjinhos (“Innocents”) and a tiny oil sketch of her childhood landscape, Great Village, Nova Scotia, painted by her great uncle George Hutchinson. A smiling wooden figurehead from an Amazon boat hung from the beams. Her building was a reconstructed waterfront warehouse that once housed artists’ studios and a gallery. Everything on display meant something to her."
Lloyd Schwartz, excerpted from Elizabeth Bishop: Objects & Apparitions.
FORMAT: Hbk, 8 x 9.75 in. / 48 pgs / 25 color / 5 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $40 ISBN: 9781891123023 PUBLISHER: Tibor de Nagy Gallery AVAILABLE: 7/31/2012 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: *not available
Published by Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Text by Joelle Biele, Dan Chiasson, Lloyd Schwartz.
Today established as one of the twentieth century’s most important poets, Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) was also a gifted artist and collector of art and artifacts, many of which were collected from her years in Brazil. Objects and Apparitions explores for the first time Bishop’s art: her delicate, miniaturist watercolors and gouaches of domestic vignettes; her tenderly fabricated, Cornell-esque constructions; and several works of art from her own collection, including family portraits and a bird cage modeled on a medieval cathedral. Many of these are reproduced here for the first time in full color, alongside poems, archival photographs and essays by Bishop scholars Joelle Biele, Dan Chiasson and Lloyd Schwartz that discuss Bishop’s art and its relationship to her poetry. Published for a critically acclaimed show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, this handsomely produced volume shows Bishop’s visual instincts to be as flawlessly poised and exquisite as her poetical sensibility.
