Katherine M. Bourguignon Livres

Accompanies the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on this key member of the Boston Expressionist school Hyman Bloom (1913-2009) was a key member of the Boston Expressionist school and a contemporary of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky. This new study focuses on Bloom's paintings and drawings of human corpses, anatomical studies and archaeological excavations from the 1940s and 1950s. He often returned to these subjects throughout his career, using thickly applied paint in rich colours as he aspired to present both the physical and the spiritual on canvas. Insightful curatorial essays accompanied by beautiful full-colour reproductions explore this difficult but compelling work, considering themes such as the life, death and rebirth of Bloom's artistic reputation; the growing divide between figuration and abstraction at this defining moment of American art; earlier artistic traditions of representing mortality; the relationship between these works and Bloom's Judaism, interest in eastern religions, and belief in reincarnation; and the artist's desire to find beauty and meaning within death and decay. In these drawings and paintings, as Bloom himself asserted, 'the paradox of the harrowing and the beautiful [can] be brought into unity.'

A paperback edition of the book described by the New York Times Book Review as 'thoroughly absorbing'. Henry James minced no words in crediting John Singer Sargent with a 'knock-down insolence of talent.' Among the painter's many renowned works, few deserve the phrase as much as The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, which stands alongside Madame X and Lady Agnew of Lochnaw as one of Sargent's greatest images. The painting, depicting four young sisters in the family apartment (first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1883, it predated by just one year the scandal of Madame X), both explores and defies convention, crossing the boundaries between portrait and genre scene, formal composition and casual snapshot. At its unveiling, one prominent critic rushed to praise Sargent's stunning originality, while another dismissed the canvas as 'four corners and a void.' Using numerous unpublished archival documents, Erica E. Hirshler explores this iconic canvas from a variety of angles, discussing its innovative significance as a work of art, the people involved in its making and what became of them, its importance to Sargent's career, its place in the tradition of artistic patronage, and its changing meanings and lasting popularity. Sargent's Daughters is an evocative, multifaceted book that will transform the way you look at Sargent's work, simultaneously illuminating a much beloved painting and reaffirming its mystery

After spending the last months of the Great War as POWs, Wolf Mau and his fellow soldiers are relieved to be back in Germany. Their homeland is defeated, starving, and broken – they didn’t expect a welcome home party. But neither did they anticipate murder … A killer is stalking the medieval streets of Konigsberg. A killer who specialises in kidnapping demobbed soldiers … before torturing them using medieval methods and leaving their mutilated corpses in the city’s red light district. With senior police officials more concerned with politics than crime-solving, it falls to Wolf to hunt down whoever is committing these sadistic crimes – before he and his remaining friends find themselves on the growing list of victims … - See more at: http://www.accentpress.co.uk/Book/129...

The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), one of America's influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase's career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase's multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century. 0.

"This vivid account of Childe Hassam's 1880s cityscape chronicles one of Boston's best loved paintings. The rosy rusty tones, cozy trio, and quiet expanse of the snow-laden park in At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight) seem to encourage reflection, yet in its time it heralded the emerging modern scene, from observations of women's changing place in society to glowing depictions of the newly electric street lamps on the busiest block in Boston."-- Page 4 of cover.

The Terra Foundation for American Art uses its impressive collection of American art spanning a two-hundred-year period to fulfill its mission. Since the Foundation's establishment in 1978, it has sought to share the collection's extraordinary pieces by renowned American artists like Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Edward Hopper with an international audience, encouraging the study of American art around the world. Conversations with the Collection helps to realize the Foundation's mission of serving as a "museum without walls," bringing art and scholarship to a global audience. The handbook entries and scholars' responses to the artworks that comprise these Conversations provide fascinating insight not only into the collection and its holdings, but also into the Foundation's history of making these works accessible to art historians and art lovers beyond the United States. The texts achieve a range of objectives, describing the significance of individual pieces in the collection, movements and themes that provide context for these works, and the Foundation's innovative objective of bringing its collection to an international audience. Indeed, this distinctive handbook demonstrates the success of the Foundation's mission: the works in its collection have had an impact on worldwide audiences, leading to a richer appreciation for American art.