Video and Books City Art: New York’s Percent for Art Program Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe & America: Design for the Modern World Textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement University City Ceramics: Art Pottery of the American Woman’s League From the Fire: A Survey of Contemporary Korean Ceramics The Penland Book of Handmade Books: Master Classes in Bookmaking Techniques The Art of Enameling: Techniques, Projects, Inspiration Archive
	City Art: New York’s Percent for Art Program edited by Marvin Heiferman, 2005, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Merrell Publishers, New York, 800-343-4499. 240 pages, essay by Eleanor Heartney, introduction by Adam Gopnik, preface by Michael R. Bloomberg, illustrated. $49.95 paperback. Since New York City’s Percent for Art program was established in 1983, nearly 200 works of public art have been funded and installed in firehouses, schools, police precincts, courthouses, hospitals, ferry terminals, juvenile detention centers, parks, sanitation facilities and sewage treatment plants throughout the city’s five boroughs. This lively catalog of the results of the program, which is administered through the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, features excellent photographs of the commissions to date, accompanied by a description. Ann Agee, Therman Statom, Faith Ringgold, Siah Armajani, Pat Steir, and Allan and Ellen Wexler are among the artists who have met the challenges of dealing with particular constituencies and technical aspects of the commissions. Noting the intimate, one-to-one impact of some of these artworks, the essayist Adam Gopnik writes: “In offering us private experience encoded in beguiling form, in insisting on the primacy of the individual imagination even in places of dulled institutional experience, the Percent for Art program has shown that civic art can be big while remaining little.” In her essay on the program, the art critic Eleanor Heartney suggests that “the most useful way to think about public art is to see it as a process or a kind of society-wide experiment that uses the public sphere as its laboratory.” On that score, she says, the program fares well. “Over two decades, it has presented literally hundreds of different ways to think about art’s role in New York’s daily life.” The book includes interviews with artists, community members, arts administrators and politicians. TOP
	Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius by Nikolaus Pevsner, 2005 (first published 1936), Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 203-432-0163. 192 pages, introduction by Richard Weston, illustrated. $40. This fourth edition of the classic study of the roots of Modernism by Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), a scholar of art and architecture, is an expanded version with many color photographs, new and updated information and a critique of the author’s analysis from today’s perspective by the scholar Richard Weston. Pevsner saw three main sources for Modernism: William Morris and his followers in the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, and the engineers and architects of the 19th century. He considers the role of these sources in the work of the early Modernists, looking at such masters as Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Britain, Frank Lloyd Wright in the United States, and Adolf Loos in Vienna. His account goes up to 1914, ending with the radical break from the past represented by Walter Gropius and fellow members of the Bauhaus. Apropos of Gropius’s design for a factory, which he finds comparable to masterpieces of Gothic architecture in its command over matter, Pevsner writes, “the glass walls are now clear and without mystery, the steel frame is hard, and its expression discourages all other-worldly speculation. It is the creative energy of this world in which we live and work and which we want to master, a world of science and technology, of speed and danger, of hard struggles and no personal security, that is glorified in Gropius’s architecture, and as long as this is the world and these are its ambitions and problems, the style of Gropius and the other pioneers will be valid.” TOP
	The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe & America: Design for the Modern World edited by Wendy Kaplan, 2004, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA. Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 212-354-3763. 328 pages, seven contributors, illustrated. $60. The much-examined Arts & Crafts movement is analyzed from an international perspective in this well-designed book for the traveling exhibition it documents (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and at the Cleveland Museum of Art, October 16-January 8, 2006). The movement “offered a variety of responses to the challenges of modernity,” writes Wendy Kaplan, curator of decorative arts at LACMA, “and by 1900 it had spread throughout Europe and North America.” The show and book present more than 300 objects—furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles and works on paper—from the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, France and the United States. The texts by Kaplan and an international group of scholars examine the way such objects embody a “language of reform in all its variations and expressive possibilities.” Masterworks by the best-known designers of the periods—William Morris, Henry Van de Velde, Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffman, Eliel Saarinen, Gustav Stickley, and Frank Lloyd Wright—are featured along with pieces by lesser-known designers. TOP
	Textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Linda Parry, 2005 (first published 1988), Thames & Hudson, New York, NY. 212-354-3763. 160 pages, illustrated. $24.95 paperback. This fine reprint (with additional color illustrations) focuses on textiles that were shown in London by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society between 1888, when the group was formed, and 1916. These include printed and woven fabrics, tapestries, carpets, embroideries and lace by such figures as Arthur Silver, C. F. A. Voysey, William Morris, Lindsay Butterfield, et al. Deputy Keeper at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Linda Parry discusses the artistic and industrial background and the evolution of the Arts and Crafts style. Information is provided on some 130 designers, manufacturers and shops. Vintage photographs of some of the designers and of original interiors with the fabrics in use convey the period. TOP
	University City Ceramics: Art Pottery of the American Woman’s League by David Conradsen and Ellen Paul Denker, 2004, Saint Louis Art Museum, MO, 314-721-0072. 117 pages, illustrated. $29.95 paperback. A brief but significant chapter in early-20th-century American ceramics is explored in this handsome catalog of a 2004 exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum. In 1909, the Art Academy of Porcelain Works was established as the centerpiece of a correspondence school called the Peoples University in University City, a St. Louis suburb, by Edward G. Lewis, an amateur potter and the publisher of women’s magazines. Though short-lived, the pottery engaged the energies and talent of leaders in ceramics: Taxile Doat, the French ceramist who was an expert on porcelain and high-fire glazes; Adelaide Alsop Robineau, a leading American ceramist, Emile Diffloth, a French ceramist who assisted Doat; the British-trained potter Frederick Hurten Rhead and Agnes Rhead; and Kathryn E. Cherry of St. Louis, who taught china painting. Fifty works by these artists, made in University City between 1910 and 1914, are shown in fine photographs and discussed by David Conradsen, the show’s curator. The art historian Ellen Paul Denker’s essay places the University City pottery in the context of the American Arts and Crafts movement. TOP
	From the Fire: A Survey of Contemporary Korean Ceramics by Chung Hyun Cho, 2004, International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC, 202-338-0680. 133 pages, texts by Cho and Warren Frederick, illustrated. $30. In this catalog of the largest exhibition survey of contemporary Korean ceramics to come to the United States, the curator, Chung Hyun Cho, a ceramic artist and professor at the College of Art and Design, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, presents 108 functional and sculptural works from the early 1990s to 2003 by 54 artists “whose work reflects the challenges of combining rich and distinct ceramic roots with new influences and reinterpreted methods.” Of the burden and benefits of her country’s 5,000-year heritage, Cho writes, “In Korea, if one makes ceramics, one must do it well. . . . It has . . . taken some artists long periods to digest new trends. . . . In contrast, the advantage of having a strong tradition are the many references and sources of information that are still incorporated and brought to light by practicing artists.” The exhibition is at the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, through October 26, and tours to the Honolulu Academy of Arts (November 9-January 29, 2006) and other venues through 2007. TOP
	The Penland Book of Handmade Books: Master Classes in Bookmaking Techniques edited by Jane LaFerla and Veronika Alice Gunter, 2004, Lark Books, Asheville, NC. Sterling Publishing Co., New York, NY, 212-532-7160. 230 pages, artists’ texts, introduction by Jean W. McLaughlin, illustrated. $34.95. Ten book artists who have been instructors at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina—Daniel Essig, Eileen Wallace, Steve Miller, Carol Barton, Susan E. King, Hedi Kyle, Barbara Mauriello, Dolph Smith, Jim Croft and Julie Leonard—each provide instruction in a technique they commonly use. In addition to a “hands-on” section, each artist’s chapter includes a brief biography, a personal account of influences and working methods, and a “gallery” of other artists’ works in a similar vein. Thus some 50 artists in the book field are represented overall TOP
	The Art of Enameling: Techniques, Projects, Inspiration by Linda Darty, 2004, Lark Books, Asheville, NC. Sterling Publishing Co., New York, NY, 212-532-7160. 176 pages, illustrated. $24.95. A professor of metalworking and enameling at the School of Art and Design, East Carolina University, Linda Darty shares her expertise in the time-honored art of fusing glass onto metal in this profusely illustrated handbook aimed at beginners and more experienced makers. She covers enameling fundamentals, the basics of setting up a studio and techniques such as basse taille, varied painting methods, sifting, cloisonné, champlevé and plique-à-jour and presents 12 projects. Among the enamelists who contributed information and whose works are illustrated are Jamie Bennett, Harlan Butt, Robert Ebendorf, William Harper, Harold Helwig, John Paul Miller, June Schwarcz, Mel Someroski and Valeri Timofeev.
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