Seattle Art Museum – förlag

A critical look at the renegade spirit that permeates Japanese prints and the posters of fin-de-siècle ParisBoth the Edo period (1603–1868) in Japan and the late nineteenth century in France witnessed a multitude of challenges to the status quo from the rising middle class. In Edo (present-day Tokyo), townspeople pursued hedonistic lifestyles as a way of defying the state-sanctioned social hierarchy that positioned them at the bottom. Their new pastimes supplied subject matter for ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). Many such pictures arrived in France in the 1860s, a time when French art and society were undergoing substantial changes. Fin-de-siècle Paris, like Edo before it, saw the rise of antiestablishment attitudes and a Bohemian subculture. As artists searched for fresh and more expressive forms, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) and his contemporaries were drawn to novel Japanese prints. While ukiyo-e's formal influences on Toulouse-Lautrec and his peers have been well studied, the shared subversive hedonism that underlies these artworks has been less examined. Through a wide selection of Japanese prints and Toulouse-Lautrec works, this book offers a critical look at the renegade spirit inhabiting the graphic arts in both Edo and Paris, highlighting the social impulses behind a burgeoning art production.Exhibition dates: Seattle Asian Art Museum, July 21–December 3, 2023

This volume celebrates an unprecedented series of gifts to the Seattle Art Museum on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. The gifts--nearly 1,000 works from more than forty collections--have significantly enhanced the museum's holdings and reinforced the museum's dedication to artistic excellence. A Community of Collectors includes essays by nine curators who have selected some of the most significant works of art given, pledged, and promised to the museum to be featured. The book offers a sense of the collection's depth and future direction and highlights this gem shinning in the Emerald City.From seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes to Roy Lichtenstein's Still Life with Silver Pitcher; paintings by Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper and a sculpture of Gwendolyn Knight by Augusta Savage to Asmat war shields from New Guinea; the works considered here touch on the extraordinary richness and variety of the Seattle Art Museum's collections.The book includes essays by Barbara Brotherton, Michael Darling, Julie Emerson, Chiyo Ishikawa, Patricia Junker, Pam McClusky, Marisa Sanchez, Yukuko Shirahara, and Josh Yiu.

The complexity and confusion of styles and intentions are true characteristics of modern Chinese art. Just as the definition of “modernity” was subjected to reinterpretations at various points in China’s recent history, current notions of the canon are likewise subjected to change.This book — consisting of ten articles by art historians, artist, historian, and curator — explores the developments of Chinese art in the 20th century, applying critical theories to question and reinterpret concepts that are normally taken for granted. Their writings also reveal the thought processes in which the authors filtered what they considered to be important information, especially regarding people, events, dates, and artworks. As such, the topic of each article is, in itself, a result of judicious selection. This volume demonstrates how modern Chinese art history has been — and can be — written.

Showcases a collection that reflects the extraordinary variety and inventiveness of Calder’s oeuvreIn spring 2023 the Seattle Art Museum announced that patrons Jon and Kim Shirley had generously gifted the Shirley Family Collection to the museum. The collection—one of the most important private holdings of Alexander Calder’s art—is the result of thirty-five years of thoughtful acquisitions and features many significant examples from his production. It comprises more than forty-five artworks representing every decade of the artist’s career, including superlative examples of his wire sculptures, hanging mobiles, and stationary stabiles dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. This richly illustrated publication accompanies SAM’s inaugural exhibition of works from the collection, demonstrating Calder’s unique vision, which has had a profound influence on contemporary culture. It features a curatorial foreword by José Carlos Diaz; short essays by Jon Shirley tracing his evolution as a passionate and informed collector of Calder’s work and discussing the importance of scale in the artist’s sculpture, which ranges from the miniature to the monumental; and an essay by art historian Elizabeth Hutton Turner that expands on the artist’s life and his extraordinary impact on twentieth-century art. Short contributions by Alexander S. C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation and grandson of the artist, focus on ten of the collection’s artworks, situating them within Calder’s oeuvre.

Founded in 1933, the Seattle Art Museum is home to a premier collection of Chinese art. This book is the first to chronicle and analyze the growth of the collection, which was largely assembled during the first half of the twentieth century. Reviewing more than one hundred boxes of museum archives, annual reports, correspondences, and available records of all transactions, Josh Yiu provides a nuanced account of Seattle’s Chinese art collection, and reconsiders the “golden age” of collecting Chinese art in the early twentieth century. Yiu demonstrates the challenges for Westerners to acquire authentic objects of historical significance when Chinese art study in the West was in its nascent stage. He argues that a first-rate collection is a condition that needs to be maintained through relentless quest for superior objects. As a case in point, Seattle’s collection of more than 2,500 objects was not merely accumulated over time, but distilled through decades of nimble acquisitions and deaccessions.The main figure behind this story is the founding director Dr. Richard Fuller (1897–1976), who started collecting as early as the 1910s. In contrast to conventional hagiographical accounts of museum patrons, Yiu shows how Fuller’s interest shifted from tourist souvenirs to high-quality objects that represent China’s artistic legacy, and how he refined the collection over time. Gradually Fuller became a great collector through diligent study and earnest consultation with experts, such as Sherman Lee. The book thus serves as a vivid reminder that good collection requires much more than resources and “good taste.”

Few regions of the country produced such a distinctive group of artists with such a particular view on the modern world as did the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s and 1940s. Capitalizing on their particular geographical position at what was a modern art outpost — working free from the strong influences of New York and Europe, and sitting at the portal to the Far East — a close-knit group of artists sought to address the global political, social, and economic ills of their time.The seminal figures in this group — Mark Tobey and Morris Graves especially — quickly garnered critical attention in New York for their uncommon imagery and expressive technique, which drew upon spiritual tenents ranging from Zen Buddhism to the Persian Baha’i faith and their mastery of Asian calligraphy. Modernism in the Pacific Northwest presents an overview drawn from SAM’s unparalleled collection of the key figures of this generation: Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Leo Kenney, Paul Horiuchi, George Tsutakawa, Phil McCracken, James Washington Jr., and Tony Angell.

Places Monet’s intimate relationship with the Normandy coast within the context of his artistic evolutionOne understudied aspect of the life and works of Oscar-Claude Monet (1840–1926) is the artist’s engagement with the town of Étretat on the Normandy coast of France during the mid-1880s. Monet traveled there twice for extended painting sojourns and eventually created over eighty works, more than he painted of any other site away from his home. Through these visits, Monet witnessed Étretat’s shift from a quiet fishing village in a dramatic natural setting to a tourist destination.In this focused study, Chiyo Ishikawa places Monet’s Étretat works within the context of his artistic ambition and frustration at a key moment in his life and career. She also explores the changing relationship between society and landscape in late nineteenth-century France. The book features works by Monet and his contemporaries Gustave Courbet, Camille Corot, and Eugène Boudin, supplemented by photographs and ephemeral material to bring to life Monet’s experience in the region. The biographical context, in addition to the immersive visual experience, offers a vivid account of this significant aspect of Monet’s artistic progression.