McMullen Museum of Art – förlag

A beautiful presentation of 130 major paintings and sculptures by Belgian artists Fernand Khnopff, Léon Frédéric, Constantin Meunier, George Minne, Xavier Mellery, and Léon Spilliaert.Showcasing the most significant collection of Belgian symbolist art in private hands, this exhibition and catalogue present 140 major paintings and sculptures by Belgian artists Fernand Khnopff, Léon Frédéric, Constantin Meunier, George Minne, Xavier Mellery, and Léon Spilliaert, who were at the vanguard of the symbolist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a key moment in the development of modern art. The wider European context is highlighted with works by Gustave Moreau, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, František Kupka, and Koloman Moser. Essays by leading American and Belgian scholars Anne Adriaens-Pannier, Claude Cernuschi, Edouard Derom, Alison Hokanson, and Oliver Wunsch, as well as Howe, contextualize the complex mind- and landscapes of Belgian artists. Symbolist art engages with the most crucial issues of modern life, including questions of faith, social justice, historical context, individual identity, and psychological analysis. Building on the historic tradition of Belgian and Flemish art, the works are innovative in style and personal vision, presented in full color in this volume.

The Simon Collection, housed in London and France, is the finest assemblage of modern Belgian art outside Belgium. Accompanying an exhibition held at Boston College's McMullen Museum, "A New Key" presents fifty-three works never before displayed in North America, including important paintings by Rene Magritte, James Ensor, Frits van den Berge, Paul Delvaux, and others. Full-color reproductions of the paintings are accompanied by seven essays that illuminate their significance and the distinctive contribution of Belgian art to the development of modernism. Addressing themes such as the rise of Freudian psychology, the influence of carnival, and the trauma of two world wars, "A New Key" forges a new understanding of Belgium's long-neglected role in the development of modern art.

Legendary abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-56) is most famous for the frenetic, highly textured works created through his trademark "drip" technique in which he poured paint from its can directly onto the canvas. "Pollock Matters" explores, for the first time, the personal and artistic interrelationship between the notorious artist and noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter.Published to coincide with an exhibition at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art, "Pollock Matters" traces a close friendship that spanned almost two decades, beginning in 1936 when the men's future wives, painters Lee Krasner and Mercedes Carles, met after being sent to jail for protesting Works Progress Administration cutbacks. The friendship continued until Pollock's tragic death in an automobile accident in the summer of 1956.Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, including over 250 illustrations, this book demonstrates a critically important chain of influence between two creative individuals not addressed in previous studies of their respective careers.Pollock Matters reveals the crucial role that Herbert Matter's technical innovations played in helping to stimulate Pollock's radical artistic conception of "energy made visible." A previously unknown body of small drip paintings labeled by Matter as "Jackson experimentals" is presented here along with scientific analysis of the works. This volume will be essential reading for anyone seeking an enriched understanding of Jackson Pollock's life and work or the history of abstract painting.

Gustave Courbet (1819-77) was a French artist whose work heralded the realist movement of the nineteenth century, and his paintings have had a profound influence on other artists from around the world, including Claude Monet, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Cezanne. This catalog is published to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the McMullen Museum, Boston College, in the autumn of 2013, which was put together in tandem with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Approaching its subject from a unique perspective, Courbet: Mapping Realism looks at the artist's reception on both sides of the Atlantic, and includes paintings by Courbet himself, as well as Belgian and American realist-influenced artists. American and Belgian scholars, including Jeffery Howe, Claude Cernuschi, Dominique Marechal, and Katherine Nahum, contribute essays that explore Courbet's art in light of this expanded view of this career. Complete with color illustrations, Courbet: Mapping Realism showcases artworks from both the United States and Belgium that are rarely exhibited or published together.

Cuban painter Rafael Soriano (1920–2015) was an acclaimed master of geometric abstraction and a global figure in the twentieth-century art world—his work resonated with such international artists of Latin American origin as Roberto Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Wifredo Lam. As a result of the revolution in Cuba in 1959, Soriano left the country in 1962 for the United States. The effect of the Cuban revolution on his art as well as his aesthetics in general are the focus of this book, an unprecedented examination of his entire oeuvre.Featuring more than ninety paintings, pastels, and drawings, this bilingual English-Spanish catalog for an accompanying exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; the Long Beach Museum of Art; and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University begins with a contextual analysis of Soriano’s relationship to the Cuban avant-garde and his position within the emerging mid-century modernists. Essays then trace his evolving styles, examining his work through the lens of surrealism and European and Latin American transnational aesthetics. The idea of exile and struggle is a leitmotif and is framed within questions of transcendence and spirituality. Taken together, the contributions suggest both Soriano’s rootedness in Latin America and his striving for universality.The most comprehensive exploration of Soriano’s work to date, Rafael Soriano: The Artist as Mystic deftly takes the idea of exile and struggle so prominent in the artist’s work and frames it within important questions of transcendence and spirituality. This book will be essential reading for anyone intrigued by Latin American and modern art.

Beyond Words accompanies a collaborative exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Harvard University's Houghton Library; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area institutions, this catalog provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as a guide to its production, illumination, functions, and readership. Entries by eighty-five international experts document, discuss, and reproduce more than two hundred and sixty manuscripts and early printed books, many of them little known before now. Beyond Words also explores the history of collecting such books in Boston, an uncharted chapter in the history of American taste. Of broad appeal to scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike, this catalog documents one of the most ambitious exhibitions of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts ever to take place in North America.

No contemporary artist has succeeded so thoroughly in blending classical Chinese art and modern abstract art as Cao Jun, who has exhibited widely in China, as well as at the Louvre. Accompanying an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, this volume presents the art of Cao Jun for the first time in the United States. Featuring the artist’s early wild animal paintings, to his landscapes, to recent explorations of space depicted abstractly, the book also showcases Cao Jun’s calligraphy and ceramics.  Essays by Chinese and American scholars examine Cao Jun’s art, showing how it is deeply rooted in the experience of nature and how it portrays our place within nature. The essays demonstrate also the way in which Cao Jun’s art brings together classical Chinese painting with modern abstract forms akin to those of Western art. Yet Cao Jun’s art foregoes simply fusing these traditions; it employs the techniques of Chinese ink and brush painting and uses ink- and color-splashing to produce abstract forms.

Eaglemania celebrates Boston College’s mascot, a monumental Japanese bronze eagle, following its recent conservation and return to view. Donated in the 1950s by the estate of diplomat and collector Larz Anderson (1866–1937) and his wife, Isabel (1876–1948), the eagle recently received in-depth restoration that has revealed its fine detail, carefully modeled form, and excellent material construction.Eaglemania brings the history of this stunning object to life. It features new research on topics that contextualize the Boston College eagle, assembling articles that discuss various aspects of its Edo- and Meiji-period origins. These include the Andersons’ acquisition of the eagle; the Boston College eagle seen in comparison with other exceptional Meiji eagle figures; the meanings of eagle depictions in the Edo and Meiji periods; and Japan’s rise as a destination for American collectors, particularly of sculpture, in the Meiji period. Through its focus on eagle imagery, this study illuminates cross-cultural dynamics resulting from American collectors’ fascination with traditional and contemporary Japanese arts and Japanese artists’ adaptation to this market.

The rich history of the Indian Ocean has been much explored, though its present-day manifestations remain less studied. This catalog for an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, curated by Prasannan Parthasarathi and Salim Currimjee, brings together essays that contextualize the work of six contemporary artists from the region. Through a variety of mediums and forms—including watercolors, videos, collages, sculptures, and photographs—Shiraz Bayjoo, Shilpa Gupta, Nicholas Hlobo, Wangechi Mutu, Penny Siopis, and Hajra Waheed grapple with the past, present, and future of the Indian Ocean.Indian Ocean Current provides interdisciplinary perspectives on the work of these six artists, with essays drawn from environmental studies, postcolonial studies, literature, and history. Contributors trace the connections that spanned the Indian Ocean, the movement of peoples, and the evolution of plural societies.  From the mid-twentieth century, decolonization led to the creation of new nation-states, and hastily erected borders divided many. Today, the rising waters of the Indian Ocean, a consequence of climate change, strip these borders of their power. Indian Ocean Current opens up an artistic, historical, cultural, and political conversation about an area of the world famed for its cosmopolitanism but threatened by nationalism and global warming.

An extensively illustrated catalog for an exhibition of alternative comics, featuring essays that offer interdisciplinary perspectives.  This catalog accompanies an exhibition of alternative comics from the 1980s and 1990s with a particular focus upon artists who contributed to the anthologies Raw (1980–91) and Weirdo (1981–94) and comics from venues such as alternative newspapers and independent presses. Following the popularity and eventual decline of underground comics in the 1960s and 1970s, this next generation of cartoonists explored more complex themes and forms and garnered eclectic readers in new markets.Featuring 180 color illustrations, this book comprehensively examines the world of these comics from interdisciplinary perspectives. Essayists from art historical, literary, and other fields focus on the role of influential editors and publishers as well as the strategies artists employed to encourage readers to take the art form seriously. Subjects include the aesthetics of Raw and Weirdo, the punk-influenced work of Gary Panter, and the genre-breaking work of the Hernandez Brothers.

An examination of the balance between modernity and tradition in Cuba’s turn-of-the-century artistic evolution.The Lost Generation | La generación perdida accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. The modern artistic ceramic movement in Cuba, almost exclusively comprised of women artists (including Amelia Peláez, Mirta García Buch, and María Elena Jubrías), emerged toward the end of the 1940s and continued into the next decade. The ceramicists invited Cuba’s modernist protagonists, including René Portocarrero, Luis Martínez Pedro, and Wifredo Lam, to participate in designing ceramics at the Taller de Santiago de Las Vegas. The workshop thus became a locus for the fermentation of Cuban modernist expression.Juan Miguel Rodríguez de la Cruz, the workshop's proprietor, recognized the artistic value of the ceramicists’ production and he, along with the women he hired, encouraged collaboration with their male contemporaries. A symbiotic artistic practice grew in which the ceramicists introduced ideas and designs to the painters, whose fledgling attempts in ceramics took eventual flight. As the painters’ familiarity with the new medium grew, similar forms appeared in their two-dimensional renderings, which are now synonymous with Cuban modernism.During the post-Revolutionary period of 1959–85, the Taller became part of Cuba’s National Patrimony, continuing the tradition of producing serial and artistic pieces. As the Revolutionary regime wore on, the Taller’s importance waned, artists left Cuba, and independent workshops flourished. While the Taller de Santiago no longer boasts importance in artistic production today, it left an indelible mark on Cuban modernism.With essays by Cuban, American, and Cuban-American scholars, The Lost Generation | La generación perdida provides a background on the twentieth-century avant-garde movements in Cuba; delves into the narrative of an overlooked group of Cuban women ceramicists, assessing the implications of their work on modernism; and, finally, explores in depth the women artists of the third avant-garde generation (1949–58).

A thorough exploration of the artistic accomplishments and public influence of the Yeats family, focusing on the contributions of its lesser-known members.Collaborating in Conflict accompanies an innovative multimedia exhibition exploring the prolific artistic accomplishments of the Yeats family over three generations. The important contributions of lesser-known members of the Yeats family—John Butler Yeats, Susan Mary (Lily) Yeats, Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, and Anne Butler Yeats—are illuminated alongside those of its more famous figures, Jack Butler Yeats and William Butler Yeats. Featuring an enormous range of objects that are illustrated in full color, some of which have never been exhibited publicly before, it celebrates the extraordinary impact this talented family had on cultural life in Ireland during the crucial decades leading up to and following Irish independence in 1922. The volume also sheds light on the fascinating private dramas that unfolded as individual family members struggled financially, worked together peacefully in some instances, and came into bitter conflict in others.An interdisciplinary team of scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland offers new insights into historical contexts and interpretive frameworks for studying the Yeatses. Fifteen essays explore the family’s complicated personal and working relationships and examine their developments in composition and artistic techniques. The volume highlights the achievements of the Yeats women in printing, painting, and embroidery. Essays analyze the importance that locations such as Sligo held for various family members and investigate how shifting political landscapes and world events were reflected in their work. Writers also discuss the interconnections among music, theater, visual art, and poetry in the Yeatses’ artistic output.

Mediaeval art survives today as fragments of larger works, usually displayed by historical period, geographic location, artistic medium or iconographic theme. "Fragmented Devotion" is the first exhibition to explore the meanings these fragments have in our understanding of mediaeval art and religious life from the Middle Ages to the present. Most of these objects have bever been shown before in North America, and many have not been published since the beginning of the 20th century. The catalogue includes essays by historians, art historians, philosophers and theologians. The writings discuss the meanings these objects had in mediaeval religious practice. The essays then go on to trace how those original meanings changed when the objects were collected and installed by Alexander Schnutgen within the larger context of Catholicism and nationalism in 19th-century Germany. Finally, the contributors look at the 1920s and 1930s when the objects were installed in a museum-like setting and consider this installation in light of the developments in mediaeval art history and the policies of national socialism.

This beautifully illustrated volume presents new ways of thinking about the concept of "being Roman" - with a particular emphasis on the way people in the provinces and on the periphery of the empire reacted to the state of being a Roman subject. Accompanying an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery and the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, the book presents material that is both chronologically and geographically distant from imperial Rome, the better to characterize and understand local responses and identities within the provinces as they were expressed through material culture.

This collection offers a new look at American artist John La Farge (1835-1910) and his lifelong efforts to visualize the sacred. Most clearly reflected in his ecclesiastical paintings and stained glass windows, the latter of which appear in churches throughout the United States, La Farge's quest can be seen both in his representations of nature and still life and in his stunningly imaginative book illustrations. Multicultural and multilingual, La Farge was also influenced by travels to Japan and the South Seas, experiences that reinforced his spiritual inquiry. Accompanying a retrospective exhibition of the same name at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, John La Farge and the Recovery of the Sacred is the most comprehensive look at the artist's oeuvre in recent years. With contributions by experts in stained glass, Asian art, and more, the volume offers a variety of scholarly and technical perspectives that reveal new facets of La Farge's artistic approaches. Using everything from traditional Christian imagery to Buddhist-inspired themes, he was always negotiating the boundaries between realism and symbolism and constantly innovating.Illuminating not only La Farge's work, but also the role of religion in late nineteenth-century American culture, John La Farge and the Recovery of the Sacred continues the McMullen's long history of groundbreaking exhibitions and will appeal to all fans of this seminal American artist.

This volume, which accompanies an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, offers the first comprehensive look at the Irish dimension of the international Arts and Crafts movement.The exhibition celebrates the centenary of one of Ireland’s major twentieth-century Arts and Crafts achievements, the Honan Chapel in Cork City, consecrated in 1916 in a period of tumultuous political change. In cross-disciplinary explorations of over one hundred and fifty ecclesiastical, domestic, and politically charged objects created between 1885 and 1930, Irish and North American contributors place the Irish Arts and Crafts movement within the contexts of early Christian Irish art, nationalism, feminism, Celtic Revivalism, and modernism.Including illustrated essays by scholars such as Nicola Gordon Bowe, Janice Helland, Marjorie Howes, Paul Larmour, Tomás Ó Carragáin, and Fintan O’Toole, The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making It Irish demonstrates how extraordinary cultural innovation emerged as Ireland struggled to create new identities and reimagine its national culture during an increasingly volatile time in European history.

Since the Renaissance, art in Belgium and the Netherlands has been known for its innovations in realistic representation and its fluency in symbolism. New market forces and artistic concerns fueled the development of landscape as an independent genre in Belgium in the sixteenth century, and landscape emerged as a major focus for nineteenth-century realist and symbolist artists. Nature's Mirror, and the exhibition it accompanies, traces these landmark developments with a rich array of seldom-seen works. Nature's Mirror presents its collection of prints and drawings in chronological order, exploring the evolving dialogue between subjective experience and the external world from the Renaissance through the First World War. Essays by American and Belgian specialists examine artists within the regional, political, and industrial contexts that strongly influenced them. Featuring more than one hundred works, many from the leading private collection of Belgian art in America, the Hearn Family Trust, Nature's Mirror explores the evolution of Belgian art in this fruitful period with remarkable lucidity and detail.