Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Clifford S. Ackley.
From the 1890s through the turn of the century, there was a flourishing of new, imaginative art and craft throughout Europe that we now know as Art Nouveau. The Netherlands experienced an inventive variant of this art and design phenomenon, but until now it has been largely overshadowed by its counterparts in other countries, especially France. This richly illustrated book is the first in English to celebrate the Dutch contribution to Art Nouveau through a tour of more than 100 works on paper--posters, decorative calendars and illustrated books, as well as prints and drawings. These innovative works of graphic design reveal the progressive Dutch artists’ conscious reaction against the past, their inspiration in natural forms and exotic cultures, and their embrace of the principle that art should transform everyday life. They also show how the New Art--Nieuwe Kunst in Dutch--coexisted and sometimes intertwined in the Netherlands with other artistic strands, including persistent realist trends, Symbolism and the emergence of modernism. Included here are early drawings by well-known artists Vincent van Gogh and Bart van der Leck, as well as new discoveries from Jan Toorop, Theo Nieuwenhuis, Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, Theo Hoytema, G. W. Dijsselhof and C. A. Lion Cachet. This beautifully illustrated book is the first in English to celebrate the Dutch contribution to Art Nouveau through a tour of over one hundred posters, decorative calendars, and illustrated books, as well as prints and drawings. With text by Clifford S. Ackley, one of the leading specialists on Dutch prints and drawings, Holland on Paper in the Age of Art Nouveau provides a fascinating and visually rewarding introduction to a rich and creative artistic era.
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Stephanie Loeb Stepanek, Frederick Ilchman, Janis A. Tomlinson, Clifford S. Ackley, Jane E. Braun, Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Gudrun Maurer, Elisabetta Polidori, Sue W. Reed, Benjamin Weiss, Juliet Wilson-Bareau.
Francisco Goya has been widely celebrated as the most important Spanish artist of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the last of the old masters and the first of the moderns, and an astute observer of the human condition in all its complexity. The many-layered and shifting meanings of his work have made him one of the most studied artists in the world. Few, however, have made the ambitious attempt to explore his work as a painter, printmaker and draftsman across media and the timeline of his life. This book does just that, presenting a comprehensive and integrated view of Goya's most important paintings, prints, and drawings through the themes and imagery that continually challenged or preoccupied the artist. They reveal how he strove relentlessly to understand and describe human behavior and emotional states, even at their most orderly or disorderly extremes, in elegant and incisive portraits, dramatic and monumental history paintings, and series of prints and drawings of a satirical, disturbing and surreal nature. Derived from the research for the largest Goya art exhibition in North America in a quarter-century, this book takes a fresh look at one of the greatest artists in history by examining the fertile territory between the two poles that defined the range of his boundlessly creative personality.
Francisco José Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) was born in Fuendetodos, Aragón, in the northeast of Spain. Goya was court painter to the Spanish Crown, and famously documented the Peninsular War (1807–1814) between France and Spain in his harrowing Disasters of War series. An important bridge to the modernist era, Goya's oeuvre provided a crucial precedent for artists such as Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon.
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Clifford S. Ackley, Patrick Murphy.
Best known for his monumental images of bathrobes, tools and hearts that became icons of Pop art during the 1960s and 70s, Jim Dine remains one of the most inventive and prolific printmakers of our time. His prints currently number some 1,000 items, and at age 75, he continues to produce new works with remarkable zest and boundless energy. Dine’s prints are rooted in the spontaneous, gestural aesthetic of American Abstract Expressionism. Intensely physical in execution, they celebrate the artist’s touch. He supplements his energetic, full-body strokes not only by hand coloring but also by collaging with nontraditional media. He may also subtract, scratching or even gouging his surfaces, sometimes with power tools. The results show his great joy in working with the thick paper and rich inks and colors, or in the artist’s words, his love for “leaving my tracks.” Jim Dine Printmaker: Leaving My Tracks explores Dine’s etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and illustrated books from the last 50 years, drawing from the prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the artist has created an archive of his life’s work. Some 160 lush full-color images, along with text based on conversations between the artist and MFA curator Clifford S. Ackley, offer an intimate look into Dine’s deeply personal approach to his favorite subject matter.
European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Clifford S. Ackley, Horace W. Brock, Martin P. Levy.
The collection of the prominent American economist Dr. Horace "Woody" Brock spans from the decorative arts (most notably French and English objects from the eighteenth century) to Old Master drawings and paintings. Brock's interests encompass the philosophy of science, moral philosophy and aesthetics--concerns that directly inform his personal collecting strategy. Virtually every object in this volume has been selected according to Brock's highly original theory of beauty in design, which is brilliantly elucidated here. Splendor and Elegance celebrates Brock's particular vision of European art, showcasing some 150 objects in a variety of media. Highlights include a spectacular Flemish turtleshell cabinet-on-stand; one of the earliest long-case clocks by André-Charles Boulle; major examples of Chelsea, Meissen and Sèvres porcelain; a powerful anatomical study by Peter Paul Rubens; and a fine group of eighteenth-century Venetian drawings, including Tiepolo's dramatic "Resurrection of Christ." An essay by antiques specialist Martin P. Levy identifies themes running through the decorative-arts collection, while MFA Boston curator Clifford S. Ackley highlights the collection's most remarkable drawings and paintings.
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Clifford S. Ackley, Stephen Coppel, Thomas E. Rassieur, Samantha Rippner.
It is little known that interbellum Britain hosted a generation of Modernist artists who absorbed the wealth of Continental avant-garde idioms and adapted them to their own unique ends. Some of this work was done under the rubric of Vorticism, the Neofuturist movement spearheaded by Wyndham Lewis, while other artists were closely associated with London’s Grosvenor School of Art (and so came to be known collectively as the Grosvenor School), breaking new ground in the practice of linocut. Rhythms of Modern Life examines the impact of Cubism and Futurism on British printmaking in the years between the First and Second World Wars, focusing in particular on the dynamic imagery of 13 artists, including C.R.W. Nevinson, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth and David Bomberg, all early followers of Italian Futurism and British Vorticism, and on the works of Grosvenor School artists Claude Flight, Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power and Lill Tschudi. All of these artists coined styles that addressed the velocity of modern life, espousing industry, speed and an optimism for the century ahead. This book, the first survey of its kind, features more than 100 lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and linocuts, ranging from geometric abstractions to forceful impressions of the first fully mechanized war, Jazz Age images of sporting events, speed trials and other contemporary diversions. Clifford S. Ackley’s introduction takes stock of the art historical moment and is followed by discussions of the prints, an overview of the history and technique of the modern linocut and short biographies of the artists.
Published by Colby College Museum of Art. Essay by Clifford S. Ackley. Foreword by Sharon Corwin.
The Colby College of Art is the sole repository of Terry Winters's entire archive of prints. Prints & Sequences presents selections from that collection, spanning two decades and a variety of media including lithography, etching, aquatint, woodcut, linoleum cut and Mixografia. Serial practice is at the core of Winters's art, and Prints & Sequences offers insight into the artist's diverse printing techniques as well as a perspective on his serial processes within individual groupings. The catalogue essay by Clifford S. Ackley, Chair, Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and Ruth and Carl Shapiro Curator of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, offers an insightful account of Winters's printmaking within the history of the medium.
PUBLISHER Colby College Museum of Art
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 7 x 10 in. / 124 pgs / 56 bw / 82 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 1/1/2006 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2006 p. 104
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780972848442TRADE List Price: $20.00 CAD $25.00
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Essays by Clifford S. Ackley, Ronni Baer, Thomas E. Rassieur and William W. Robinson.
Rembrandt changed the course of art history not only as a painter but also as a draftsman and printmaker. His output of some 300 etchings and drypoints represents a lifelong commitment to printmaking unequaled by any other seventeenth-century painter and comparable only to Picasso in our own time. Rembrandt's Journey unfolds the richness and diversity of Rembrandt's career as an etcher in the context of his paintings and drawings. Illustrated with nearly 200 works in all three media, this book traces the remarkable evolution of Rembrandt's art over four decades, from the robust physical energy of his early productions to the breadth, simplicity and meditative beauty of his later work. It establishes new and important connections among these works and among the three media that the artist explored throughout his career. It encompasses the wide range of his vision, from the tragic and spiritual to the earthy and comic. And it gives full due to Rembrandt's narrative sensibilities, showing how he endowed his figures (particularly in biblical scenes) with unprecedented psychological nuance and vividness. Published to accompany the first comprehensive American survey of his work in decades, Rembrandt's Journey offers a fresh, authoritative view of this endlessly familiar, yet still unknown, artist.
Goya: Order & Disorder
Jim Dine Printmaker: Leaving My Tracks
Splendor and Elegance
Rhythms of Modern Life
Terry Winters: Prints & Sequences
Rembrandt's Journey