Jay A. Clarke – författare

Business leader and arts patron Sir Edwin A. G. Manton (1909–2005) and his wife Florence, Lady Manton, assembled an outstanding collection of 18th- and 19th-century British art. A gift to the Clark Art Institute from the Manton Foundation in 2007, their collection features more than three hundred oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, including works by John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough, and William Blake.In a series of wide-ranging essays, prominent scholars consider the major works and themes in the collection, relating them to larger issues within the field of British studies. Individual essays are devoted to Constable's oil sketches, cloud studies, and magisterial painting The Wheat Field; the growth of the watercolor tradition; print portfolios and narrative series; Thomas Rowlandson's satiric drawings; and Gainsborough's use of experimental materials as revealed through recent scientific analysis. The volume concludes with an illustrated checklist of the works in the collection.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

A thought-provoking volume on Edvard Munch’s often neglected pictures of nature, exploring the Norwegian artist’s landscapes, seascapes, and existential environments in light of his own time and oursThis richly illustrated catalogue provides a multifaceted perspective on the pictures of nature and landscape by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944). This important topic has been neglected in scholarship on Munch, despite the fact that it is a major motif in his oeuvre. This volume is the first to explore the theme in its full breadth throughout Munch’s corpus, including his paintings, lithographs, watercolors, and woodcuts. His depictions of forests, farmland, and the seashore, as well as paintings of sea storms, snow, and other extreme weather, present us with undulating forms that animate nature. They likewise provide an example of Munch’s preference for liminal spaces where transformations take place, often celebrating human interaction with nature in its many manifestations. The book also considers Munch’s less conventional landscapes, and particularly those where his famous Scream motif occurs. These environments depict nature in an existential way, suggesting that the artist held a deep concern for nature’s destruction by humans—a concern no less relevant today. A complementary look at his writings as primary sources alongside his images shows how Munch mixed a scientific perspective on nature with metaphysical and spiritual notions of rebirth that permeate other parts of his corpus. The book also includes a engaging short story by award-winning author Ali Smith that was inspired by Munch's work. Distributed for MUNCH  Exhibition Schedule:Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA(June 10–October 15, 2023)Museum Barberini, Potsdam(November 18, 2023–April 1, 2024)Munch Museum, Oslo(April 27–August 24, 2024)

A fascinating view of the career of Bridget Riley, one of the most significant living artists, through her personal archive of her own works on paperDevoted exclusively to the artist’s works on paper, Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio explores the importance of these works not only as a means of visual experimentation but as works of art in their own right. Throughout her working life, Riley has preserved works of particular significance, creating an archive that records her constant artistic inquiry and development. The studies presented in the book are drawn entirely from this personal collection, with Riley’s own input. They demonstrate the artist’s progression from early figurative works, through the monochrome geometry of the 1960s, to the examination of color that has characterized the second half of her long career. The choice of work explores the themes that have absorbed Riley in different periods and highlights key influences: the importance of life drawing to her and the significance of artists such as Seurat and Mondrian. The book illustrates—literally and figuratively—the story of a productive and constantly experimental career, underpinned by drawing.  Distributed for Modern Art PressExhibition Schedule:The Art Institute of Chicago(September 17, 2022–January 16, 2023)Hammer Museum, Los Angeles(January 29–May 7, 2023)The Morgan Library & Museum, New York(June 16–October 22, 2023)

This exhibition catalog considers the work of a pioneering artist who subverted conventions in her bold depictions of the nude, self-portraits, and still-lives. An iconoclast in her own time, Modersohn-Becker is today considered an icon of modernity.Throughout her career, Paula Modersohn-Becker boldly experimented with styles while steadfastly pursuing the truth of everyday life and her own female experience. This monograph looks at the entire spectrum of her work-figure drawings, still-lifes, self-portraiture, landscape, nudes, and portraits of young girls and old women-to illustrate the evolution of an artist reacting to seismic cultural change at the turn of the nineteenth century. Whether she was embracing or subverting the principles of realism, naturalism, impressionism, symbolism, or expressionism, Modersohn-Becker remained interested in issues of identity, peeling away outer layers to uncover what she understood as the true essence of life. This book features numerous examples of Modersohn-Becker's striking and relatively unknown drawings of men, women, and childrenfacing poverty, as well as her highly original figure paintings and nudes-including her unprecedented nude self-portraits. Accompanying the first museum exhibition of Modersohn-Becker's work in the United States, it reveals the deeply personal and authentic work of an artist who resolutely forged her own path.