By Jonah Siegel (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) In this fascinating look at the creative power of institutions, Jonah Siegel explores the rise of the modern idea of the artist in the nineteenth century, a period that also witnessed the emergence of the museum and the professional critic. Treating these developments as interrelated, he analyzes both visual … Continued
Edited by Shūji Takashina (NHC Fellow, 1981–82)
By Gary Shapiro (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) The death of Robert Smithson in 1973 robbed postwar American art of an unusually creative practitioner and thinker. Smithson's pioneering earthworks of the 1960s and 1970s anticipated contemporary concerns with environmentalism and the site-specific character of artistic production. His interrogation of authorship, the linear historiography of high modernism, and … Continued
By Gladys Engel Lang (NHC Fellow, 1983–84), and Kurt Lang (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Between 1880 and 1930, the art of painter-etching rose to a degree of popularity unmatched before or since. When the tide went out, most of the etchers once acclaimed were forgotten along with their prints–but some were more forgotten than others. Etched … Continued
Edited by Michael Edward Shapiro (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) and Peter H. Hassrick Ballinger traces Remington's life from his earliest travels in the West through his successful career as a magazine illustrator to his profoundly disturbing realization that the West he knew was passing rapidly into legend at the same time that American aesthetic tastes were … Continued
By Robert L. Patten (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) The etchings and wood-engravings of George Cruikshank (1792-1878) recorded, commented on and satirised his times to such an extent that they have frequently been used to represent the age. Cruikshank, a popular artist in the propaganda war against Napoleon, an ardent campaigner for Reform and Temperance, and the … Continued
By Rona Goffen (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) Giovanni Bellini, a master of the Venetian school of painting, is one of the most important figures in Italian Renaissance art. This lavishly illustrated book is the first major study to consider the artist’s work both stylistically and in its full cultural and historical context. Born in the early … Continued
By Jefferson Hunter (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) The complementarities and antipathies between photographs and literary texts allow the two arts to play off each other, denigrate or exalt each other, and sometimes reach a true collaboration that has more significance than either could achieve alone. Jefferson Hunter examines these symbiotic relationships in a highly original book that will … Continued
By Ewa Kuryluk (NHC Fellow, 1988–89)
Edward Hopper is regarded as the quintessential American realist painter of the twentieth century. His images — nighthawks in a clean, well-lighted cafe; a deserted street on a Sunday morning; a man, a woman alone in spare room, even when they are together — are deeply embedded in the American imagination. How do Hopper’s paintings … Continued