Matthew Affron – författare

An engaging and accessible introduction to one of the 20th century’s greatest and most enigmatic artistsThis richly illustrated publication explores the full career of the hugely influential and endlessly fascinating French-American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). A pioneer whose creative output was predicated on a fundamental questioning of what art is, Duchamp is well known despite remaining mysterious as an artist, owing to his elusive persona and the unconventional nature of his work.   Focusing on the world-renowned Duchamp collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Essential Duchamp tells the artist’s story through four key periods. The book begins with his early paintings and engagement with the avant-garde, then charts his abandonment of painting and invention of the readymade. This is followed by the creation of his alter ego Rrose Sélavy and the optical experiments of the interwar years, and, finally, by the making of Étant donnés (1946–66), the project that occupied the artist in the final two decades of his life. Shorter accompanying texts include explanations of key terms Duchamp used for his innovative ideas—readymade, precision optics, pictorial nominalism, and infrathin—as well as interviews and statements by the artist about his own art and ideas.Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Tokyo National Museum(10/02/18–12/09/18)National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul(12/22/18–04/07/19)Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney(April–August 2019)

Bringing together studies by art historians, historians, and political scientists, Fascist Visions explores the themes and paradigms that pervaded protofascist and fascist aesthetic discourse, cultural policy, and artistic production in France and Italy. Whether traditionalist or innovative in idiom, art functioned as the expression of fascism's ideological polarities: nihilism and idealism, modernism and antimodernism, revolution and reaction. This volume charts the unfolding of fascist aesthetics from its genesis in nationalist and antimaterialist ideologies before World War I to its full development during the interwar period and World War II. It also highlights the shared motivations of advocates of fascist aesthetics, including artists, art critics, political activists, and government officials, outside of Germany. The eight essays in this book investigate the intersection of fascist ideology and aesthetics through a wide range of historical examples.Topics include: theories of cultural regeneration in Italy from the Risorgimento to fascism; the impact of fascism upon the work of such artists and art critics as Ardengo Soffici, Mario Sironi, Valentine de Saint-Point, and Waldemar George; the theories of modernist urbanism developed by Georges Valois's Faisceau; and official sponsorship of painting and the decorative arts in Mussolini's Italy and in Vichy France. The contributors to this volume include Walter Adamson, Matthew Affron, Mark Antliff, Emily Braun, Michele Cone, Emilio Gentile, Nancy Locke, and Marla Stone.

The first in-depth examination of Matisse’s work in the 1930s, a key decade of creative innovation and renewal for this celebrated artistIn 1930, as Henri Matisse (1869–1954) embarked on The Dance, a monumental mural commissioned by the American collector Albert C. Barnes, he began experimenting in ways that would permanently change the nature of his work. The use of pre-painted cut papers to lay out his compositions led to a new style of flat tones and bold shapes. He also increasingly used serial imagery to make visible his creative process, aiming to capture the flux of his own perceptions and emotions in the work of art.  This volume highlights and explains pivotal transformations in Matisse’s work in the 1930s across a range of media, including mural and easel painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and the illustrated book. The transatlantic contributors also look at the relationship between Matisse and the Parisian art journal Cahiers d’art, which played an outsized role in publicizing Matisse’s work during this period, and consider his exhibitions, his ongoing involvement with decorative painting, his studio as a creative laboratory, and the role of his model and muse Lydia Delectorskaya in his studio practice.Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Musées d’Orsay et de l’OrangerieExhibition Schedule:Philadelphia Museum of Art(October 20, 2022–January 29, 2023)Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris(February 28–May 29, 2023)Musée Matisse, Nice(June 23–September 24, 2023)

A lively history of Surrealism, from its beginnings in Paris to its expansion into an international artistic movement Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 celebrates the centennial of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), which launched one of the essential currents of twentieth-century thought and culture. Matthew Affron investigates how artists made good on Surrealism’s promise of a revolution in consciousness by means of the unbridled imagination. This book highlights the key motivations, principles, themes, and techniques of Surrealist art from the early 1920s to the late 1960s. It also underscores Surrealism’s spread beyond its birthplace in Paris, with a focus on the migration of artists to hubs in North America—especially New York City and Mexico City—during the Second World War. This lively, richly illustrated publication features works in a wide range of media by a diverse group of artists, including Jean Arp, Leonora Carrington, Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Wifredo Lam, Man Ray, André Masson, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, and many others. Distributed for the Philadelphia Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Philadelphia Museum of Art(November 8, 2025–February 16, 2026)