Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation, 1: Contemporary Native American Art from the Southwest
Crafting a Legacy: Contemporary American Crafts in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Ceramic Figures: A Directory of Artists
The Potter’s Brush: The Kenzan Style in Japanese Ceramics
Classic Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe
Material Culture: Aspects of Contemporary Australian Craft and Design
William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata
Louis Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany & Company
Louis C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch
Art Deco and Modernist Carpets
Artists in Glass: Late Twentieth Century Masters in Glass
Artists’
Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000
The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books
Changing
Hands: Art Without Reservation, 1:
Contemporary Native American Art from the Southwest
edited by David Revere McFadden and Ellen Napiura Taubman, 2002, American
Craft Museum in association with Merrell Publishers, London, distributed
by Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY, 800-522-6657; 224
pages, texts by McFadden, Taubman and 9 contributors, illustrated. $50.
Reviewed by W. Jackson Rushing III
This book documents the first of three exhibitions planned by the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum), New York City, to present "Native American work today in all of its manifestations." Acknowledging that previously it had acquired only three Native American objects, the museum intends to build its collections, in part, by acquiring work from these exhibitions. Thus does it seek to eradicate the "artificial boundaries that have isolated craft, design, and ethnographic objects in our times." Nearly 90 Native artists active in the Southwest are represented by exquisite works in a variety of media. The objects in the touring exhibition [at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, through March 16] were selected on the basis of their aesthetic, not “ethnographic” value, a strategy first employed by American curators in the 1930s.
Changing Hands is elegantly designed, with outstanding color plates, and will be prized as a visual resource. Informative artist biographies and statements accompany the work, providing a sorely needed indigenous perspective. The nurturing dialogue between tradition and innovation and between craft and culture is evident throughout, and the natural voice of the materials (including clay, diamonds, fossil ivory, gold, silver and turquoise) is clearly annunciated. However, the cultural/tribal background of each artist is not directly indicated, though I have done so here, since all of them are deeply rooted in specific artistic traditions.
Lonnie Vigil (Nambe) explores prehistoric, Asian and Native American pottery, and his Large Black Olla with Flat Shoulder, 2001, of micaceous earthenware, would look handsome in any museum in the world. Nathan Begaye’s (Navajo) assemblage pottery gives form to contemporary theories about the socially constructed nature of the self. Diego Romero (Cochiti) plays critically with Attic figures, Mimbres style, Pop culture, and overturned stereotypes in his wickedly funny narrative pots, such as Luncheon in the Canyon Bowl, 2000, of polychrome earthenware. Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi), who contributes a fine essay on Southwest weaving, is represented by wool tapestries from her new Migration series, which mesh lyrical, linear rhythms with architectonic form and poetic color, evoking the seasons and surfaces of the Southwest.
The objects are presented "as independent works of art" not intended to "illustrate cultural histories." Yet collectively the works constitute a powerful visual history of culture, reflecting, for example, the relationship between stylistic experimentation and market success. The curators/editors organized the exhibition and catalog into thematic categories—“Historical Provocation," "Form Beyond Function," "Nature and Narrative," "The Human Condition" and "Material Evidence"—with some artists represented in more than one. David McFadden’s writing is cogent, thoughtfully establishing the criteria for the book. Joanna O. Bigfeather (Cherokee), an artist (and former director of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe), contributes an essay on art education, which is instructive, given that almost half the included artists have enjoyed either a university or an art school education in addition to their training with family members and elders in the community.
Some of the essays, however, are repetitive and superficial, suggesting advertising copy. Surely there is a conflict of interest in having collectors write "essays" underscoring the presence in the book/exhibition of artists they have collected. Indeed, more scholarly texts and fewer by dealers/collectors would have improved Changing Hands considerably. I also wish the identities of the contributors, aside from the curators, had been made known in a biographical caption. And the inclusion of texts by dealers and non-Native collectors points to a serious question: where is the Native audience relative to tantalizing Native art that is typically very expensive? This is art by intention, not destination, yet most of it is destined for non-Native private collections, and that cultural dynamic needs to be explicated. Thankfully, the work is forward-looking, unmarred by enervating nostalgia. Or, as the sculptor Bob Haozous (Chiricahua Apache) writes, "What better role for the arts of any culture than to tell their own people who they are, rather than who they were?"
W. Jackson Rushing III is professor of art history at the University of Houston, TX, and the author of numerous books and catalogs on 20th-century art.
Crafting
a Legacy: Contemporary American Crafts in the Philadelphia Museum
of Art
by Suzanne Ramljak, 2002, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, 800-329-4856,
co-published with Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ; 192 pages,
introduction by Darrel Sewell, illustrated. $60 hardcover, $32 paperback.
Marking the 25th anniversary of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, this catalog documents the museum’s contemporary craft collection, begun in 1970 and now totaling 315 objects. More than 100 works by 64 artists, including Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, Dale Chihuly, Sheila Hicks, Peter Voulkos, Rudolf Staffel, Albert Paley and Robert Stocksdale, are presented in dramatic full-page photographs, accompanied by biographical entries. Darrel Sewell, the recently retired Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Curator of American Art, traces the history of craft collecting at the museum, stressing the role Philadelphia has played as a center for innovation in the field since the 1960s. Arguing for the value of craft in an age characterized increasingly by the electronic simulation of reality, Suzanne Ramljak writes, “Whether they are helping to unify a group, reunite individuals with lost pleasures, or provide life-enhancing stimuli, crafts offer a sophisticated form of life support. For the real sustenance in our lives there is no alternative to these rare but necessary luxuries.”
Ceramic
Figures: A Directory of Artists
by Michael Flynn, 2002, A & C Black, London, and Rutgers University
Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 732-445-7762; 240 pages, illustrated. $50.
The diversity, expressiveness and innovation in figurative ceramics over the last 25 years are on display in this survey of more than 100 artists from 23 countries, with Great Britain and the United States represented by the greatest number. The directory is alphabetical, with brief accounts of the artists accompanying several photographs of their works. Included are lists of galleries and collections showing their ceramics.
Clayton
James
by Vicki Halper, 2002, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA, in
association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115;
77 pages, illustrated. $25 paperback.
For more than 50 years, the Northwest artist Clayton James has produced a distinguished body of work that comprises landscape paintings, monumental coil-built vessels and sculptures in wood, ceramic and bronze. In this catalog documenting his retrospective at the Museum of Northwest Art last fall, Vicki Halper, the exhibition curator, surveys the artist’s life and career. A checklist of the 60 works, a bibliography and a chronology are included.
The
Potter’s Brush: The Kenzan Style in Japanese Ceramics
by Richard L. Wilson, 2001, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, in association with
Merrell Publishers, London, England, distributed by Rizzoli International
Publications, New York, NY, 800-522-6657; 239 pages, contributions by
Saeko Ogasawara, illustrated. $50.
Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743) is renowned among aficionados of Japanese pottery as an inventive creator of ceramic decoration and a foremost workshop master who signed his work. He inspired many imitators, particularly in the late 19th century, who appropriated his designs. In this study based on the Freer Gallery’s collection of Kenzan wares, authentic and fake, the art historian Richard L. Wilson explores the evolution of “Kenzan” as “a brand name invoked in a multigenerational and multidimensional corpus of ceramic products.” The book accompanied a Freer exhibition last year.
Classic
Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe
by Ryoji Kuroda and Takeshi Murayama, 2002, Kodansha International,
New York, NY, 800-451-7556; 112 pages, translated by Robert N. Huey and
Lynne E. Riggs, illustrated. $35.
Shino and Oribe ware, two styles of Japanese ceramics associated with the tea ceremony, originated in the late 16th century in Mino province (Gifu Prefecture today). Shino ware is characterized by a thick, white, feldspathic glaze with stylized but spontaneous-looking decoration in iron underglaze, while Oribe has an earthy quality, with a layering of naturally occurring colors such as browns and greens. A combined edition of two previous volumes in the series Famous Ceramics of Japan, this book offers a visual survey of early and recent examples, and covers the history of each style and its distinguishing techniques.
Material
Culture: Aspects of Contemporary Australian Craft and Design
by Robert Bell, 2002, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, distributed
by University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115; 80 pages, illustrated.
$24.95 paperback.
Recent acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia in ceramics, glass, textiles, furniture, jewelry and holloware by 34 Australian artists and designers are presented in this catalog of the first exhibit (February-June 2002) of the Gallery’s Decorative Arts and Design Department, created in 2000. Grouped under “structure,” “narrative” and “transformation,” the works are united, writes Robert Bell, the department’s senior curator, by “a sure and confident sense of inquiry into the nature of materials, the observation of structure, the inherited and indigenous traditions of design and manufacture, the natural environment and the human body itself.”
William
Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata
by Penny C. Morrill, guest curator, 2002, Harry N. Abrams, New York,
NY, 800-345-1359, in association with the San Antonio Museum of Art, TX;
279 pages, 9 contributors, illustrated. $60.
William Spratling (1900-1967) arrived in Taxco in the late 1920s from New Orleans, where he had taught architecture, becoming part of a circle of American artists and writers attracted to Mexico for its culture. In 1931 he established the workshop Taller de Las Delicias, which at its height, in 1944, employed more than 400 silversmiths and from which emerged many of Mexico’s finest silver designers. This catalog of a touring exhibit (at San Antonio Museum of Art last October and at the Mingei International Museum of Folk Art, San Diego, February 15-May 11) explores Spratling’s role in Mexico’s silver industry as a business and design genius. The visual riches include photographs of outstanding pieces designed by Spratling and others, archival images and an appendix of hallmarks.
Louis
Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany & Company
by John Loring, 2002, Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359;
256 pages, illustrated. $60.
This elegant book examines the contribution of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), the foremost American proponent of Art Nouveau and admired above all for his stained-glass lamps, windows and iridescent glass vessels, to Tiffany & Co., the firm his father founded. During his tenure as design director there (1902-1918), Tiffany produced a protean array of jewelry, enamels, ceramics and precious objects. Drawing on company archives, John Loring, Tiffany’s current design director, illuminates Louis Comfort Tiffany’s relationship with the company, his influences and the connections between the stained glass done for his own studio and the decorative works in other media.
Louis
C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch
by Robert Koch, 2001, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777;
336 pages, illustrated. $69.95.
Louis C. Tiffany: Rebel in Glass, Louis C. Tiffany’s Glass-Bronzes-Lamps and Louis C. Tiffany’s Art Glass, previously published books by Robert Koch, a professor of art and an authority on Art Nouveau, have been combined in this single volume and expanded with additional color photographs of Tiffany works in museum collections.
Art
Deco and Modernist Carpets
by Susan Day, 2002, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 800-722-6657;
224 pages, illustrated. $75.
In this handsome geographically organized survey, the author, a specialist
in traditional carpets and 20th-century decorative arts, traces the history
of avant-garde carpet production in Europe and North America between 1910
and 1945, viewing it as a reflection of the revolutionary design and art
movements of that era, such as the Wiener Werkstatte, Art Deco, the Bauhaus
and Cubism. Among the many striking carpets pictured are examples by Paul
Klee, Gunta Stolzl, Eileen Gray, Sonia Delaunay, Josef Hoffman, Fernand
Leger, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Donald Deskey. A valuable resource, the
book includes biographies of artists, manufacturers and retailers, a list
of signatures and monograms, a glossary and a bibliography.
Seth
Randal: Myth and Majesty
by Jo Lauria, 2002, Marquand Books, Inc., Seattle, in association
with University of Washington Press, Seattle, 800-441-4115; 128 pages,
illustrated. $35.
In excellent photographs and knowledgeable text by the independent curator Jo Lauria, this monograph on the American artist Seth Randal traces the varied influences on his sculptural glass vessels—Art Nouveau, Greco-Roman culture and Egyptian mythology—and his progressive mastery of glass techniques, from glassblowing to glass casting, in particular his adaptation of lost-wax pâte de verre.
Artists
in Glass: Late Twentieth Century Masters in Glass
by Dan Klein, 2001, Mitchell Beazley, London, England, distributed
by Phaidon Press, New York, NY, 877-742-4366; 240 pages, illustrated.
$50.
Dan Klein, executive director of the auction house Phillips, London, introduces this international survey of 40 years of studio glass with the oft-told story of Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino’s first glassblowing workshops in a garage at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1962. He traces the movement through the lives and works of nearly 80 artists, exploring their influences, training and techniques. A glossary, a bibliography and lists of galleries and museums where contemporary glass art can be seen round out this useful reference.
Beadwork:
A World Guide
by Caroline Crabtree and Pam Stallebrass, 2002, Rizzoli International
Publications, New York, NY 800-522-6657; 208 pages, illustrated. $50.
For centuries, people the world over have created complex patterns from tiny “seed” beads and thread, the objects and embellishments they produce varying with their culture. Organized into regional areas—Africa; the Americas; Asia, Oceania and the Arabian Gulf; and Europe—this lavishly illustrated survey reveals the wealth and diversity of beadwork, including manufacturing history, trade routes and the different types of beading construction.
Artists’
Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000
The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated
Books
by Robert Flynn Johnson and Donna Stein, 2001, Fine Arts Museums of
San Francisco, CA, 415-750-3677; 303 pages, illustrated. $59.95 hardcover,
$39.95 paperback.
The livre d’artiste, a limited edition handmade book combining text with original graphic art, is a form that has engaged leading artists from the late-19th century to the present. The 180 books (selected from the more than 400 in the Logan collection) illustrated and annotated in this exemplary catalog—fittingly, the design and the quality of paper stock, typography and reproductions are outstanding—provide a comprehensive survey of an enduring genre. Donna Stein’s scholarly essay traces its evolution, illuminating the role of publishers, printers and artists. The book accompanied an exhibition last year at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where this collection now resides.
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