Beth Gates Warren – författare

A four-volume celebration of one of America's most influential gallerists, with rarely seen letters, ephemera and photographsJulien Levy (1906–81) is best remembered today as the art dealer who brought Surrealism to the United States. His eponymous New York City Gallery (1931–49) was generally regarded as the best place to view cutting-edge work by such artists as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo and Man Ray. This four-volume set, presented in a slipcase, gives readers an uncensored insider’s view of Levy, the artists he exhibited, and the influence he wielded during the 1930s and '40s. Volume one presents a biography of Levy, including a comprehensive exhibition chronology and an abundance of new information about the evolution of Levy’s career during his 18 years as an art dealer. Volumes two, three and four include chapters that discuss each of the approximately 230 solo and group exhibitions mounted by Levy, along with interesting observations about the featured artists. The authors have incorporated important new details about the workings of the gallery, allowing them to clarify or correct statements made in Levy’s 1977 Memoir of an Art Gallery and other publications. They have also uncovered some surprising revelations concerning Levy and his interactions with the artists he represented.

Over the course of his fifty-year career, American photographer Edward Weston (1886-1958) blazed a path into Photo-Modernism rendering portraits, landscapes, still-lifes and nudes. In 1902, a sixteen-year-old Weston took up photography in Highland Park, Illinois, where he worked as an amateur for five years. In 1907, at the age of twenty-one, Weston moved to Tropico, California, now the city of Glendale in Los Angeles County, where he constructed his first studio and set about with great purpose to become a photographic artist. Examining Weston's earliest sharp- and soft-focus photographs reveals that the young artist had already formed a perfect sense of composition that was to be the hallmark of his later work. Presenting Weston's earliest work from a recently discovered family album, Edward Weston: Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist compares the artist's naive first artistic efforts with his latest masterworks to show the persistence and evolution of his singular vision to find essential form in the vernacular with an ever-increasing intensity.As a young man deeply intuitive and original in his creative expression, Edward Weston demonstrates that his teenage work, beginning with his amateur snapshots, embrace the same significant form as the later work for which he is now considered a master.

Margrethe Mather has been remembered mostly through the commentary of fellow photographer Edward Weston, who referred to her as "the first important person" in his life. In fact, Mather was probably the greatest influence on the development of Weston's early career. Although Mather's little-known body of work has always held its own in the company of great photographs, her biography and influence have never been thoroughly investigated, in no small part due to her own reluctance to reveal the details of her colorful, sometimes sordid life. This book illuminates the professional and personal relationship of Mather and Weston, adding an unforgettable chapter to the history of twentieth-century photography.Mather and Weston first met in Los Angeles in 1913. They soon developed a close relationship, eventually working together as full-fledged artistic partners and even co-signing the photographs they produced. Weston was also madly in love with Mather, and the two engaged in a brief affair during his first marriage, although Mather was more interested in women. This book, which features work by both artists, chronicles their twelve-year association and sheds light on Mather, whose artistry, sexual identity, and mysterious past were overshadowed by the massive reputation of Edward Weston and his subsequent association with Tina Modotti.