Video and Books The Modernist Textile: Europe and America 1890-1940 Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 Simply Droog, 10 + 3 Years of Creating Innovation and Discussion Anne Currier: Sculpture Michael Taylor: A Geometry of Meaning Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker Sandglass Theater from Thought to Image: 20 Years in Vermont Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World The Cutting Edge: Scotland's Contemporary Crafts The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation Archive
	The Modernist Textile: Europe and America 1890-1940 by Virginia Gardner Troy, 2006, Lund Humphries/Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 800-535-9544. 192 pages, illustrated. $60. It is the premise of this richly illustrated study that the development of modern textiles is a significant part of the history of modern art and modern life. “The social, political and economic transformations that prompted modernist experimentation also fuelled a sea change in the way textiles were made, used and perceived,” writes Virginia Gardner Troy, an art historian, tracing the story of the modernist textile as it emerged from the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, through the varied and experimental 1910s, the decorative 1920s and the Constructivist, nationalist and revivalist 1930s. Modernist textiles were “authentic artistic expressions resulting from considerable intellectual and technical enquiry,” she writes, not just reflections of prevailing styles and movements. Among the wealth of works reproduced are an embroidered and appliqué wall hanging by the Art Nouveau figure Henry van de Velde, block-printed silk by Josef Hoffmann of the Wiener Werkstätte, a “simultaneous” dress by Sonia Delaunay, and a cotton, silk, rayon tapestry by the American weaver Dorothy Liebes. TOP
	Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 by Barbara Bloemink, 2006, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, NY. Assouline Publishing, New York, NY, 212-529-5533. 224 pages, five contributors, illustrated. $50. Since 2000, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has been sending its curators scurrying about the United States in search of the best in contemporary design every three years. The resulting exhibitions have always been a provocative mixed bag, but never before have they been this big a provocative mixed bag. At Cooper-Hewitt through July 29, the exhibition fills three floors of the museum and tackles fields as varied as aeronautics and military design to architecture, fashion, furniture and seemingly everything in between, including a section on craft and community in design. It's a lot to take in. But at least the museum has published a 224-page catalog to help the viewer make sense of it all. The 87 exhibitors are each given a spread with images of their work and a hefty amount of copy contextualizing it. It won’t be easy for 2009's curators to top this effort. TOP
	Simply Droog, 10 + 3 Years of Creating Innovation and Discussion edited by Renny Ramakers and Anneke Moors, 2006, Droog, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY, 212-956-3535. 312 pages, seven contributors, introduction by Ramakers and Gijs Bakker, illustrated. $52 paperback. Established in the Netherlands in 1993 as a platform for Dutch design, the Droog Design collective has developed innovative, often droll everyday objects using low-cost, industrial or recycled materials—in Dutch droog means “dry,” as in dry wit, and also unadorned or simple. Led by its founders, the designer Gijs Bakker and the art historian Renny Ramakers, Droog has expanded to include work of an international group of contemporary designers. This second edition of Droog’s catalog presents more than 160 designs developed under the Droog aegis, like the milk-bottle hanging lamp, chest of mismatched drawers strapped together, a dress made of used designer labels and a chair out of knotted rope. All were in a show that toured Europe and ended its run at the Museum of Arts & Design in January. TOP
	Anne Currier: Sculpture by Nancy Weekly, Mary Drach McInnes, Helen Williams Drutt English, 2006, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany. Antique Collectors’ Club, Easthampton, MA, 800-252-5231. 112 pages, texts in English and German, illustrated, $45 paperback. Anne Currier creates modernist objects that engage—and tantalizingly evade—the vocabulary of ceramics and sculpture,” writes Mary Drach McInnes, in this publication on the sculptor, who is a professor of ceramic art at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University. McInnes notes Currier’s avoidance of the sculptural methods of modeling or carving. Her pieces are “cubist-inspired . . . constructed objects of conical and cylindrical shapes that are cut and assembled,” though the forming of the work is indebted to “pottery-making.” Currier herself describes the process in an artist’s statement as making ceramic sculptures shaped by the interplay of masses and voids. The writer-curator Nancy Weekly’s psychological and aesthetic analysis of Currier’s forms emphasizes their often sensual evocations of the human figure. The art dealer Helen William Drutt English’s personal account cites passages from Currier’s letters to her revealing everyday and artistic concerns. TOP
	Michael Taylor: A Geometry of Meaning by Michael Taylor, 2006, Hudson Hills Press, Manchester, VT, 802-362-6450. 290 pages, texts by Tina Oldknow, Robert C. Morgan and William Warmus, illustrated. $60. “Transparency, illusion, color, and the light that enables them are ideas that Michael Taylor has chosen to spend his career exploring,” writes Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, in her introduction to this monograph on a pioneer of American studio glass. And with these “chimeral materials” he constructs “architectures of light.” Taylor started out in ceramics in the 1960s, but by 1969 had begun to explore glass and was producing his first series in that medium. He has also contributed to the field as a teacher for more than 30 years, 20 of them as professor and chair of the glass department at the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology. The art critic Robert C. Morgan writes of Taylor’s aesthetic accomplishments in reference to the Russian Constructivism of the early 20th century: “Taylor offers a way of perceiving translucent form as a highly sophisticated art genre; his vital contribution to glass art has been his integration of laminated blocks of cast glass in which varying colors are placed against one another in a network of complex interlocking variations.” Dramatic photographs of these works are accompanied by Taylor’s accounts of his influences and interpretations. The book concludes with a conversation between Taylor and William Warmus, formerly a Corning curator, on technical matters. TOP
	Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker by Glenn Adamson, 2006, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, 414-224-3210. 192 pages, five contributors, illustrated. $29.95. The Toronto-based furniture maker and artist Gord Peteran has a sense of humor. Thankfully, Glenn Adamson, the editor of this tricked-out little book does too and it shows. From the introduction by David Dorenbaum titled simply "Letter of Reference for Gord Peteran" to Peteran's own written contribution, "A Hypothetical Response to a Hypothetical Question Someone Like Glenn Adamson Might Ask," the reader will immediately have a better understanding of the artist's funky furniture. But don't let the light-hearted approach fool you—there is nothing simplistic about Peteran's work as the exquisitely reproduced photographs, paper of varying textures and many intricate gatefolds clearly show. This book, which documents a traveling show, organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Chipstone Foundation and now at Winterthur Museum in Delaware, is a great example of something both Peteran and Adamson obviously already have a good handle on: furniture, while a serious undertaking, can also be a lot of fun. TOP
	Sandglass Theater from Thought to Image: 20 Years in Vermont edited by Andrew Periale, 2006, Sandglass Theater, Putney, VT, 802-387-4051. 90 pages, illustrated. $25 paperback. Located in rural Vermont since 1986, Sandglass Theater belongs to the close-knit yet far-flung community of international puppetry. Founded in 1982 by American-born Eric Bass and German-born Ines Zeller Bass, the company is known for an approach that combines imaginatively crafted puppets and live performers in poetic dramas that address psychological/emotional and social/political themes. Andrew Periale, editor of Puppetry International magazine, provides a history of the theater and traces the Basses’ creative development through reviews, personal reflections, and photographs of the theater’s productions, collaborative projects and international festivals, such as “Puppets in the Green Mountains,” which Sandglass has hosted in Vermont for the last five summers. TOP
	Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World edited by Thomas K. Seligman and Kristyne Loughran, 2006, Fowler Museum at UCLA, CA, 310-206-7004. 292 pages, eight contributors, illustrated. $75 hardcover, $45 paperback. The Tuareg, a Berber-speaking people inhabiting Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya, have long attracted interest for their unique form of dress, refined aesthetic sense, pride in their distinctive culture and skill in negotiating the desert environment. This catalog of an exhibition organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA (where it opened) and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University (May 30–September 2), sheds light on Tuareg culture, emphasizing artisan traditions. The essays, complemented by excellent photographs of the Tuareg in their habitat, and of their singular works, examine what it means to be Tuareg. The objects include leather work—hats, bags, saddles, sword sheaths, drums—carved wood tent poles and bowls, and silver jewelry that is worn by men and women. An essay by Mohamed ag Ewangaye, a Tuareg writer, about the inadan—artisans—points out these makers’ adaptability to circumstances such as globalization. “Tuareg artisans,” he writes, “are central to an economic dynamic in which they play a crucial role as producers of their traditional art in a renewed form.” TOP
	The Cutting Edge: Scotland’s Contemporary Crafts edited by Catriona Baird and Rose Watban, 2007, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. Woodstocker Books, Woodstock, NY, 800-669-9080. 144 pages, four contributors, photographs by Shannon Tofts. $21.50 paperback. Scottish craft has long been associated with the past—the famous tartan plaids, for example—but Scotland has enjoyed a forward movement in design that many around the world may be unaware of. While Scottish craftspeople today are deeply influenced by the traditions of their forebears, especially their ancestors’ striving for perfection, they are also open to innovation in media and technology. This catalog brings a global perspective to the Scottish craft world with essays by Grace Cochrane (Australia), David McFadden (United States), and Simon Olding and Phillipa Swann (both United Kingdom). It accompanies a touring exhibition, developed by several city councils with the National Museums of Scotland, of 30 Scottish makers from a range of disciplines, in a display of what Swann calls, “ingenious technical wizardry, irreverent and provocative subject matter, restrained abstractions, colourful and outrageous excess, designer interior chic, the nature and whimsy.” TOP
	The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation by Judy Chicago, 2007, Merrell, New York, NY, 212-929-8344. 308 pages, photographs by Donald Woodman. $49.95. Though not the first book on The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s feminist magnum opus first shown in 1979 and now permanently installed in the newly opened Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, in size and production values, this volume by the artist is clearly meant to be definitive. In the 1970s it took Chicago and a mostly volunteer team five years to complete the work, a triangular installation, 48 by 48 by 3 feet, of 39 table settings that employ various media, and whose purpose it is to honor women’s achievements through history. Each place setting consists of a ceramic plate usually displaying a vulval form and a needlework mat or runner decoratively referring to the woman being honored. The table rests on a porcelain floor inscribed with the names of 999 other important women. The book lavishly reproduces The Dinner Party in a gatefold photo and abundant detail views. Each woman’s story is included, along with those of the supplementary women. (One purpose of the new book, Chicago writes, was to update the historical material to reflect the expansion of scholarship on women in the decades since the work was first shown.) Describing the critical reception—almost universal rejection by the art establishment and an outpouring of grass roots support—she writes, “What my career demonstrates, is that one can succeed in spite of bad reviews and a hostile art community.” Her concluding chapter recounts her efforts to find a permanent home for the work while continuing to create other large-scale projects. TOP
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